CARE AND EDUCATION OF YOUNG CHILDREN OF PAUPER AND WORKING CLASSES: NEW LANARK,SCOTLAND, 1790–1825? |
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| Abstract: | The 1800's in Scotland was a time of growing poverty, destitution, and industrialization. Into this world, the New Lanark community developed by David Dale and Robert Owen grew and prospered. Owen modified Dale's system when he became manager in 1800. Provision for child care and education from one to ten or twelve years, adequate housing and health care, use of a library and continuing education, wholesale purchase of necessities–these were all a part of a society designed to form a new character which would promote the collective good. Education, under Owen, included a mixture of Pestalozzian and Lancasterian elements with nature walks, manipulatives, guidance through natural consequences, monitorial organization, and military drills. Issues such as the role of parents in the care and education of their children, the use of paternalistic models to serve the children of the poor, the paradoxical curricula, the equality of services for children, the role of the group well‐being and the collective in goal structures for early childhood programs, so much a part of New Lanark's “model experiment” in social engineering can stimulate thinking about contemporary efforts by today's commercial and/or industrial concerns to emulate its objectives and its practices (suitably modernized). Gaining perspective from a different time and place allows us to see current issues with greater depth and clarity. |
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