| Review | Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive era, 6.3

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| Review | Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive era, 6.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Seen and Heard: The Scientific Study of Children

SMUTS, ALICE BOARDMAN. Science in the Service of Children, 1893–1935. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. ix + 381 pp. Introduction, notes, index. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-3001-0897-4.
Contemporary scholars recognize the importance of investigating the physical, psychological, and cognitive development of children. This was not always the case. Until the late nineteenth century, the general public feared that the study of children would threaten the privacy of the family. Health officials and researchers argued that children were unable to clearly communicate their thoughts or feelings, making them unfit subjects for study. Others maintained that studying children might actually harm them. Alice Boardman Smuts, an historian and founding member of the History Committee of the Society for Research in Child Development, provides a compelling analysis of how these attitudes changed.	1
Smuts's narrative traces the emergence of three different "movements" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These movements promoted the scientific examination of children, the establishment of child guidance programs, and the creation of state and federal children's bureaus. The aim of all three programs was to amass biological, psychiatric, and sociological information about children, adolescents, and (eventually) infants.	2
Readers of this journal will find Smuts's discussions of the emergent discipline of psychology and pragmatism especially useful. Early advocates of experimental psychology such as G. Stanley Hall (father of the child study moment) believed that systematic observation of children would lead to a greater understanding of their behaviors and abilities. Social reformers could use this information to campaign for changes in child rearing and pedagogical practices, which would help all children reach their full potential, or so Hall and others hoped.	. . .

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