The "Child-Institutionalized" in Canada, Britain and the United States: A Trans-Atlantic Perspective

Although it has been somewhat like Waiting for Godot after a genre of books which seemed to consist of documents and articles, and having been sorely disappointed in Family, Schools, and Society: In Nineteenth Century Canada (1975) on this count, at last we have a substantially documented and thoroughly researched work in Canadian education to make a trans-Atlantic perspective of child-centred reform possible. Neil Sutherland's Children in English Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth Century Consensus (1976) is such a book and as its title suggests (but he fails to cogently argue) it describes how the mid-nineteenth century urge to reform expressed itself in a multitude of activities, programs, attitudes, and laws, intended to improve the life of the most vulnerable member of society — the child. In many ways it is a confusing book for it details as much of childhood as seems possible in one volume and herein lies a serious weakness. Child nurture, family relationships, public health, nose-blowing demonstrations, teeth brushing drills, mental hygiene, baby health clinics, industrial schools, juvenile legal reform, feeble-mindedness, eugenics, immigration and communicable dis ease — these are a few of the topics it covers. In this respect Sutherland is frequently pioneering new territory not only in Canadian education but also Canadian social history, but one is left frustrated, seeking throughout its pages for a strong central thesis to tie it all together. Perhaps an Introduction to the book could have provided the sense of focus it needed. Nonetheless I must hasten to add that 1 cannot praise Professor Sutherland enough for the painstaking effort put into this book. It gives us what has been lacking, some solid groundwork from which to formulate appropriate interpretations. It is a solid work, and demonstrates once again that the monograph is, in the long run, invaluable, and that no matter how succinctly argued, articles cannot pro vide us with the comprehensive coverage necessary for significant advancements in scholarship. The facts do not speak for themselves but neither can we explain them or formulate interpretations without them. Sutherland's work gives us an abundance of facts and will prove eminently useful for historians of Canadian childhood for years to come.

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