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Research Paper- The changes of Canadian children from the 1800 s to the present # 4 The world has experienced many changes in past generations, to the present. One of the very most important changes in life had to be the changes of children. Historians have worked a great deal on children's lives in the past. "While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about. "- Author Unknown Children were strong and ambitious. They were the money makers of the family. This paper will argue how the mindset of a child has advanced in Canada, through the 1800 s to the present era, in representing a different perspective of how a child evaluates the perception of how they approach life.
Canada holds many histories of the past. The differences with children from to the past to the present are that children worked and produced a lot of labor, to keep the families from starving through the 1800 s, present children rarely need to work. The educational system of the past has differed a great deal from the system they have created thought out the times that have developed. Children would use their imagination to create games and play, until the generation of television came into effect. Times have changed and children are one of the many.
The social construction of childhood from the 1800 s is a whole lot different from the construction of childhood from the 1970 s. The agenda of children have changed and adults are not concerned with children working because the standard of living in families has developed a whole new concept, for how families should live life. The childhood of the past has changed through many eras of time. The labor work of children is not needed in a great deal no more. The 1800 s was a time of labor for children. Families would have more children than now, because without a child many families could not survive.
Children were needed to bring home money and feed the family. The girls were used to do the chores around the house, while the boys were used to do outside work, like cut wood. Children were influenced to do labor. They would not believe in an education, both rural and urban children. Through the industrialization children started working in family farms or in small workshops.
Boys and girls would find work at mines or large factories. Children were seen as the important economic survivals to their families. By the 1890 s, Canada had restructured and manufacturing led to a decline for the demand of children in full time labor. Through this time children took advantage of schooling. Children would work for paid or unpaid labor. Girls were mainly used for unpaid labor in the homes, to do chores.
Girls were also used to do the grocery shopping for the family. When families did not have girls, the boys were used for these tasks. The Federal Department of Labor said that child labor was usually for the work for the pay of children under the age of 14. As time went by more jobs were offered to children. Boys found jobs delivering items to homes, from age 8 to 9. They would take fifteen deliveries a week making one dollar and fifty cents, but through the 1950 s their income increased.
They also found jobs selling newspapers on the streets. They would buy the papers from the companies as wholesale, rent out a corner in the city, and start selling the papers for retail value. They were known as creative businessmen. Girls found part time paid labor, doing babysitting at homes, or becoming store clerks. After world war two jobs for adults had decreased, because the business owners would start hiring the many children that finished school. Throughout the century, child labor had decreased because of the rising of the standards of living in Canada.
Children in the present do not have to be forced to work to bring home money. They are influenced to go to school, develop an education and accomplish a strong profession. Canada had a school system in the 1800 s that could not attract a lot of students. The children of the past did not believe in an education. They believed in a world of work and only work. "The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. " -Robert Maynard Hutchins They school systems from the past differ a lot from the system in the present.
In the past there were only 1 / 4 of the students participating in school. The ages the schools taught children were from six to sixteen. Those students were all middle class. To get an education in the past, they would charge you.
The cost was about 10 shillings per student, for the year and every student had a uniform. The working class children never went to school because their parents could not afford it and they were too busy working to provide money for the family. In British Columbia the law for education had been battled against. The idea of a free school system had been brought up to mind.
The province had agreed to such an idea, and soon all of Canada was running on the same system. The system started through the 1920 s. The population of school children had expanded by double. The teachers had been promised higher salaries. The schools were soon mixed with middle class and working class children. The idea of a free school system was running on the taxation of both middle and working class parents.
Through the years, children would go to school, get an education and provide a better type of employment to feed their families. The United States had been informed, from the Governor of Massachusetts seeking to create the same environment in his state. Through the decades that passed, many immigrants had arrived to Canada, and the children needed an education. Immigrant children in Canada had struggled a lot. In 1971 the multicultural act had promoted and celebrated bilingual frameworks. They had allowed English to be taught as a second language.
The white children were not very fond of the colored. They would get away with teasing colored children. This was so bad that the colored children had to enter gyms, cafeterias and playgrounds cautiously. The Black children used to be called nigger and get teased by it. There were many fights in the schools, where it was always colored against whites. The free school system has remained the same, throughout the present.
Colored children are not teased, as much. But racism still exists in the playgrounds and it's still a problem for immigrant children to have fun in school. The children who stayed home in the past, always played with their imaginations. They would make games to keep them occupied.
They would go to the playgrounds, and sometimes go to school. Children wanted something fun, entertaining and that's where the generation of television came out. The great inventor of electricity, Thomas Edison, had given many inventors the chance to create a vision, and a dream. The television had many inventors, from Zworykin to Farnsworth, many contributed to the electric dream that sits in almost every family's living room. In 1964 Marshall Mcluhan argued that television is a radical break in the history of western civilization, a new technological revolution making us change from the old to the new, which used to be the print linear thinking to the new electronic holistic thinking. Television had come to symbolize childhood.
The traditional culture of children with its fairy stories, and its trial and error learning, and identification with parental models had been changed to a new society, the new culture. Television is a new form of communication, a new technology for children. The electronic device is what keeps children sitting there for hours. "Television has changed a child from an irresistible force to an immovable object. " -Author Unknown Children plan their Saturday mornings with sitting and watching cartoons first, than to go out to the field and do labor. With the many first years of television, parents were worried that children would not go to school or get their work done, but schoolwork was still done. Families spent more time with their children and children were known as the heavy viewers. Throughout the years children started having choices of what to watch, they had program preferences.
The children that reached grade five had finally started to differentiate between commercials and the real show. Times had changed and so had children and now through our times children can tell the difference in kindergarten because they watch so much television. Violence in the 1960 s had been an issue for children. Cartoons like, "Tom and Jerry" had been filled with violence and children were learning. Parents were worried, but there was one creator who would cancel out the violence in his cartoons, Walt Disney. Generations had passed and the media had to realize that they were not parents or teachers but rather they were the companions of children exploring the human condition.
Canada has experienced many changes. The history of Canadians has remained an icon to the future of the many. The childhood of the past has differentiated a lot. There have been many changes and children today are keeping up to pace with the fast changing society.
The standards of living have increased, where the many lower class families, can also have a television screen in their living rooms. This paper has argued that the mindset of a child had advanced in Canada, through the 1800 s to the present era, in representing a different perspective of how a child evaluates the perception of how they approach life. The differences with children from the past to the present are that children worked and produced a lot of labor, to keep their families from starving. The educational system of the past had differed a lot from the system they have created for the present. Children would use their imaginations, until the generation of television had came into effect. The children have experienced many changes.
And childhood will always be a different story to tell for generations to come. Bibliography MLA Format Prochner, L. & Howe, N. (2000). Early Childhood Care and Education in Canada. Vancouver & Toronto: UBC Press. Sutherland, N. (1997). Growing Up: Childhood in English from the Great War to the Age of Television.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated. Sutherland, N. (1978). Children in English-Canadian Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated. Parr, J. (1982). Childhood and Family in Canadian History.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Limited. Ashworth, M. (1993). Children of the Canadian Mosaic: A Brief History to 1950. Toronto: The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Parr, J. & Janovicek, N. (2003). Histories of Canadian Children and Youth.
Canada: Oxford University Press. Ishwaran, K. (1979). Childhood and Adolescence in Canada. Canada: Mcgraw-Hill Ryerson Limited.
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