Despite efforts to resist, by the end of the 19th century, almost all of the Middle East had fallen under the control of European powers. Whether in the form of a protectorate or colony, European powers made changes to the indigenous educational… [more]

The map, issued by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), shows the percentages of substantially overweight, or obese, low-income children by county and in territories and tribal organizations where Native Americans live. The problem extends to both… [more]

This module traces the shifting ways that age of consent laws have been defined, debated and deployed worldwide and from the Middle Ages to the present, and explores how such laws figure in debates over the nature of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, in campaigns against prostitution and child marriage, and teenage pregnancy, as well as struggles to achieve gender and sexual equality.

Cities in Italy passed legislation aimed at preventing or reducing the effects of plague. Since the scientific view was that plague was caused by miasma or bad air, the measures targeted rotting and smelling matter, viz. cloth which could retain… [more]

During the great outbreak of bubonic plague or black death in the hot summer of 1665 in London, special bills of mortality were issued that listed causes of death. By mid-July over a thousand deaths a week were reported on handbills that were stuck… [more]

The Dolben's Act of 1788 was proposed by noted abolitionist Sir William Dolben before the English Parliament. While it was meant to restrict the slave trade, it actually had an adverse effect on children. The act mandated that no more than two fifths… [more]

During the first two decades of the Meiji era, the new government invested a great deal of effort into building the institutions of the modern Japanese state. By the 1880s, officials and other commentators had begun in earnest to articulate the moral… [more]

During the 1870s, the Meiji government established many institutions based on the examples from Europe and the U.S., and many intellectuals advocated a thoroughgoing transformation of Japanese society and culture patterned after the model of… [more]

The following paragraphs came at the beginning of a 109-article plan, promulgated in 1872, to establish a national school system under the direction of the new Meiji government. This ambitious plan divided the country into eight university… [more]

By the early 20th century, urbanization and industrialization led many reformers to focus on child welfare and a recognition of children's rights as separate from those of adults. Several years later, Congress responded by creating the U.S.… [more]