5.3 Liminality: Interpreting Research on Learning in the Context of the History of Childhood

Abstract

How childhood has been investigated and interpreted in the twentieth century is examined with regard to how “normal” learning takes place from infancy to adolescence. Social and behavioral scientists in the twentieth century at major universities in the United States and Canada following from European models pursued efforts to formalize normal stages of child growth and learning by age level. Funded by major philanthropies and government agencies, research agendas were developed that were guided by positivistic assumptions about psychological and biological reality based on medical models of research into human growth. Researchers assumed that their efforts would lead to universal truths about human learning. They neglected to take into account cultural and social factors that influence learning characteristics and official interpretations of what constitutes supposedly advanced versus delayed learning patterns. Major figures and social movements such as the mental hygiene movement that influenced research are included in the discussion. Basic concepts about human development were established in this period. It is concluded that it is vital that historians visit these ideas and their origins in a critical way.