THE WORLD OF PEOPLE, THINGS, AND IDEAS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY. CHILDREN.
"There are no children," Korczak wrote, "there are people, but with a different conceptual horizon, a different scope of experience, different impulses, different play of feelings."
This overused quote is now perceived almost exclusively romantically, and, of course, outside of historical context, but in 1914, it had a direct and immediate connection to life. Children, in today's understanding, really did not exist then; childhood at the beginning of the 20th century differs from childhood at the beginning of the 21st century no less dramatically than adulthood.
In wealthy homes, children were sent to live in the children's part of the house from birth, first under the care of wet nurses and nannies, then governesses, then private tutors. The children were brought to their parents in the morning to say hello and in the evening to wish them goodnight. By the age of six or seven, home education ended, and the heirs were sent to private boarding schools until the boys entered university , or the girls got married.
In poor families, toddlers were already rocking infants’ cradles, seven-year-olds helped with household chores and jobs, ten-year-olds were sent to apprenticeships and service, and fourteen-year-olds were considered adults, with boys going to work and girls preparing for marriage.
Most adults barely had means to dress and feed their ever-growing brood. Children of all ages and both sexes often slept side by side in one bed, clothes were endlessly darned, patched, and somehow stitched, passing from oldest to youngest until they turned into rags. An individual pair of shoes to fit each child in the family was an unaffordable luxury for many. The idea that children needed to be developed, entertained, motivated, and supported from infancy to adulthood would have seemed absolute madness to parents of that time.
Infants with very severe congenital defects either died at birth or did not survive beyond one or two years, those with less severe defects until the age of five. Almost half of the children born did not survive to fifteen due to diseases and wars.
Unmarried mothers and their children were universally ostracized, so such newborns were often abandoned in wealthy homes, churches, or shelters, just like unwanted dogs in shelters today. Orphanages were common. They usually housed children from birth to 14 years old providing them with some basic education and life skills. Mass deinstitutionalization of orphanhood worldwide would only begin after the Second World War, and even then, not everywhere. In countries where guardianship and foster families were financially supported by the governments, deinstitutionalization of orphanhood occurred pretty quickly and efficiently, although not without problems and sometimes tragic distortions. In countries where standards of living remained low, orphanages still exist.
Schools, nurseries, and kindergartens at the beginning of the century mostly occupied adapted premises, such as rooms allocated for this purpose in the homes of wealthy residents. Individual owners of large enterprises with high female employment rates (for example, textile factories) started opening nurseries and kindergartens for the children of their workers; at continuous cycle enterprises operating 24/7, round-the-clock (weekly) nurseries and kindergartens were opened in some places. Each such school or kindergarten embraced a small mixed-age group of children with a teacher, most often a female teacher. There were no playgrounds or sports grounds at these institutions yet. Mass construction of schools would not begin till the introduction of compulsory schooling.
Teaching methods in these schools were simple: reading aloud, copying from the board, and memorization. They taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and the Bible. Physical punishment was widespread. The idea of preparing children for school or teaching them to read and write in advance was unthinkable to anyone. If a child could not cope with the program of such a school for any reason, they were declared unteachable and ruthlessly expelled. Sports or arts were also not included in the curriculum of these schools, nor were foreign languages. In expensive private boarding schools, all of this was present in considerable quantities, although the general living conditions (food, rooms, etc.) were quite simple and pretty harsh.
” Sometimes I get the impression that it's better to drown children than to send them to modern schools," wrote Maria Skłodowska-Curie, then not yet a Nobel laureate, to her sister at the beginning of the century.
High schools were few and large with admissions granted only to the most capable students, who would then continue their education in colleges and universities; those who were wealthier went to private schools, while those who were poorer attended first state schools. Standardized multiple-choice testing was not yet introduced, although entrance (selection) and final examinations, both oral and written, in high school and universities were quite traditional.
Since everything from now on will be about school and children, let's stop here for now.