Why I Taught the Source

Childhood is an ever-changing concept that varies from culture to culture across time and space, yet people often think of childhood as universal. Teaching students about children in the past is often a challenging endeavor for this very reason. I have developed an exercise that uses the material culture designed for children's care and use—diapers, baby food, clothing, toys—in order to investigate contemporary American childhood. Analyzing these sources of evidence using a material culture method challenges students to think critically about how childhood is understood in their own culture. This exercise demonstrates that childhood is culturally constructed by people living in a particular time and place and creates opportunities for students to think critically about the lives of children in the past. Simultaneously, this exercise provides an effective introduction to material objects as a primary source.

As a historical archaeologist, my aim is to teach students about people in the past by making use of the everyday material objects they made and used. Material culture objects can be understood in two primary ways. First, as functional items that help with particular tasks considered necessary and important. Second, as symbols encoded with meanings about social relationships and cultural values. Contemporary objects are subject to the same analyses and understandings, allowing them to serve as a gateway to the past.

How I Introduce the Source

I begin with a class discussion of the following four ideas written on the board so students may reflect on these points throughout the discussion.

Childhood is:

• Based on an assumed relationship to biology
• Culturally constructed
• Embodied and performed
• Materially coded and marked

I ask students to think about each point and to come up with examples. One way to generate discussion if students are struggling is to create opportunities to discuss children in contrast to adults. Some possible questions I have found to be effective are:

• What are things adults can do that children cannot (and vice–versa)?
• When, biologically, does someone become an adult? Is this different then when someone is socially recognized as an adult?
• When someone is behaving in a "child-like" manner, what does that mean?
• What types of clothing, hairstyles and accessories are appropriate for adults but not children (and vice-versa)?

This discussion is then followed by an exercise that is designed to acquaint students with the everyday lives of children. It can be presented as an in-class activity using objects or pictures of objects, an internet-based project using a series of websites, or an out-of-class activity that requires students to go to a store and "shop" for a series of items. I have found the web-based and shopping trip permutations to be the most effective because they allow students to engage with both objects and accompanying text. These latter two options also require no product purchasing or photocopying. For ease of presentation, I will use the web-based exercise as the primary example here.

I divide my class into smaller groups of three or four which makes for a more even distribution of topics of inquiry. Moreover, this exercise is most effective when multiple students examine the same source so that different perspectives might emerge. Each group is then assigned a particular type of material culture source to be investigated using a series of specified websites:

• Group 1: Diapers
  
  More images available at http://www.pampers.com/en_US/home/, www.huggies.com, and www.luvs.com
.
• Group 2: Baby Food
  
  More images available at http://www.gerber.com, www.beechnut.com, and www.enfamil.com.
• Group 3: Clothing
  
  More images available at http://www.childrensplace.com, www.mymiraclebaby.com, and www.babystyle.com.
• Group 4: Toys
  
  
  
  More images available at http://www.fisher-price.com and www.mattel.com.

Reading the Source

I present the idea that objects are both functional and stylistic and that each attribute of an object can tell us important things about their creators and users. In preparation for a class discussion that will focus on their findings, I handout the following guidelines to each group:

1. Discern the function(s) of each object. Function on the most basic level can be understood as what the object is designed to do. The function of diapers, for example, is to contain the excretions of a non-"potty trained" child. It is important, however, to go beyond the basic function to the more complex types of roles an object is supposed to fulfill.
2. Look at the style of the objects. These are aspects of the items that are not directly related to function (i.e., if these aspects were present, absent, or different the object would still function as intended but appear different). What types of ideas about children are reflected in these non-functional aspects of the items?
3. Who is supposed to use each item? Who is each item designed for? Are their "sub-groups" of users?

Reflections

Once students have completed their website investigations, I ask members of each group to report on their findings. I usually give each group a section of the board where members can write key observations about each question. Significant patterns inevitably emerge across the different categories of objects. Some of the most important are:

1. The category of "child" is subdivided in many ways. Some of these are biological: crawlers, toddlers, independent sitters, supported sitters, solid-food eater. Others are age-based: newborns, 2-4 months, 3+ years. And, still others are social: play ready, preschoolers.
2. All of these objects are designed to promote the proper development (physical, mental, social) of a child. There is a suggestion that there is a single normative way for children to progress and grow.
3. Childhood is a highly gendered stage in life from the moment of birth. Color schemes, decorative patterns, and functional designs all vary according to gender.
4. There is very little emphasis on the individuality of children, except how an individual child is progressing relative to developmental norms. These discussions often emphasize the role of the parents over the preferences of the individual child.

Each of these points relates to the general ideas about childhood introduced in the initial discussion. Taken together, this activity and the contextualizing discussions permit the revelation that childhood is not universal. Childhood in contemporary America is understood in biological and developmental terms, emphasizes gender, de-emphasizes children as cultural actors, and is seen as requiring an array of highly specialized objects. If childhood is culturally constructed, it can be constructed differently at different points in history. This revelation is important for students who are embarking on a study of children in other time periods or other cultures.

One of the most comprehensive online collections of Egyptian material culture, the Eternal Egypt website provides invaluable information and photos of many thousands of artifacts from all historical eras of the Egyptian past. Fortunately for scholars and educators of childhood, there is an easy-to-use portion of the website devoted to games and toys, bringing to life the leisure pursuits of children who have lived in Egypt through history.

The Games and Toys component of the Eternal Egypt website is an easy-to-navigate collection of 21 artifacts, mostly from the Pharaonic era, used as toys or games by children of the past. Visitors may click on any artifact to be taken to a new page dedicated to explaining the toy or game in question. Expert information is provided, including the era of the toy, the materials from which it was made, where it was discovered, and in which museum or collection it currently resides. Clear images are provided as well, along with descriptions of the toy in question and explanations about how it might have been used. A handy zoom feature allows viewers to explore the item up close, making small details very clear. Moreover, IBM Text-to-Speech technology has been integrated into the site, making it possible to listen to descriptions while you are exploring the zoom imagery. These are the same descriptions given to visitors of the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, giving remote viewers a similar experience to those fortunate enough to encounter these artifacts first-hand.

Each page also provides links for more information about the time during which the toy was made and enjoyed, as well as the technique used for manufacturing it and the materials from which it was created. For example, the "child's spinning toy" from the 18th Dynasty allows modern children to compare and contrast their own spinning tops by interacting with those of ancient Egyptian children. Maps and timelines are also provided, as well as key topics for further exploration of the society and history of the toy’s era. All of these features are fantastic teaching tools and will serve educators well. Students and teachers may also register to create and store their own "collections" of artifacts on the website. This allows visitors to save items most interesting to them and helps them curate their own virtual museum of Egyptian artifacts.

An interesting classroom exercise might include an examination of the popular themes of historical Egyptian toys. For example, students visiting the site will quickly notice that monkeys and other primates were popular themes for historical children's entertainment. They may compare their own society's fascination in primate-themed toys and try to determine the reasons for this similarity. Another productive exercise may be to recreate some of the popular toys of the past—such as Senet and Backgammon—in a classroom setting, giving students a hands-on experience related to the pastimes of their historical counterparts.

Beyond the section on Games and Toys, there are additional resources available through the search function. A search on "child" yields 112 results; "girl" returns 33 items and "boy" returns 23.

This site is a fantastic resource for educators who want to infuse their classrooms with a sense of humanity. Teaching the past—particularly the ancient past of a foreign country—can be a challenge, but by integrating the material culture of entertainment, and especially that of children, teachers can better humanize their subjects for their students. Eternal Egypt is a wonderful resource for those educators and scholars who would like to get "up close and personal" with the material culture of the Egyptians in the comfort of their own classrooms.

Read a review of the entire Eternal Egypt website on World History Matters, http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/d/241.html.