The Changes Of Canadian Children From The 1800s To The Present

Research Paper- The changes of Canadian children from the 1800s to the present

#4 The world has experienced many changes in past generations, to the present. One of the very most important changes in life had to be the changes of children. Historians have worked a great deal on children's lives in the past. "While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about."- Author Unknown

Children were strong and ambitious. They were the money makers of the family. This paper will argue how the mindset of a child has advanced in Canada, through the 1800s to the present era, in representing a different perspective of how a child evaluates the perception of how they approach life. Canada holds many histories of the past. The differences with children from to the past to the present are that children worked and produced a lot of labor, to keep the families from starving through the 1800s, present children rarely need to work. The educational system of the past has differed a great deal from the system they have created thought out the times that have developed. Children would use their imagination to create games and play, until the generation of television came into effect. Times have changed and children are one of the many. The social construction of childhood from the 1800s is a whole lot different from the construction of childhood from the 1970s. The agenda of children have changed and adults are not concerned with children working because the standard of living in families has developed a whole new concept, for how families should live life.

The childhood of the past has changed through many eras of time. The labor work of children is not needed in a great deal no more. The 1800s was a time of labor for children. Families would have more children than now, because without a child many families could not survive. Children were needed to bring home money and feed the family. The girls were used to do the chores around the house, while the boys were used to do outside work, like cut wood. Children were influenced to do labor. They would not believe in an education, both rural and urban children. Through the industrialization children started working in family farms or in small workshops. Boys and girls would find work at mines or large factories. Children were seen as the important economic survivals to their families. By the 1890s, Canada had restructured and manufacturing led to a decline for the demand of children in full time labor. Through this time children took advantage of schooling. Children would work for paid or unpaid labor. Girls were mainly used for unpaid labor in the homes, to do chores. Girls were also used to do the grocery shopping for the family. When families did not have girls, the boys were used for these tasks. The Federal Department of Labor said that child labor was usually for the work for the pay of children under the age of 14. As time went by more jobs were offered to children. Boys found jobs delivering items to homes, from age 8 to 9. They would take fifteen deliveries a week making one dollar and fifty cents, but through the 1950s their income increased. They also found jobs selling newspapers on the streets. They would buy the papers from the companies as wholesale, rent out a corner in the city, and start selling the papers for retail value. They were known as creative businessmen. Girls found part time paid labor, doing babysitting at homes, or becoming store clerks. After world war two jobs for adults had decreased, because the business owners would start hiring the many children that finished school. Throughout the century, child labor had decreased because of the rising of the standards of living in Canada. Children in the present do not have to be forced to work to bring home money. They are influenced to go to school, develop an education and accomplish a strong profession.

Canada had a school system in the 1800s that could not attract a lot of students. The children of the past did not believe in an education. They believed in a world of work and only work. "The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives." -Robert Maynard Hutchins

They school systems from the past differ a lot from the system in the present. In the past there were only Ð'ј of the students participating in school. The ages the schools taught children were from six to sixteen. Those students were all middle class. To get an education in the past, they would charge you. The cost was about 10 shillings per student, for the year and every student had a uniform. The working class children never went to school because their parents could not afford it and they were too busy working to provide money for the family. In British Columbia the law for education had been battled against. The idea of a free school system had been brought up to mind. The province had agreed to such an idea, and soon all of Canada was running on the same system. The system started through the 1920s. The population of school children had expanded by double. The teachers had been promised higher salaries. The schools were soon mixed with middle class and working class children. The idea of a free school system was running on the taxation of both middle and working class parents. Through the years, children would go to school, get an education and provide a better type of employment to feed their families. The United States had been informed, from the Governor of Massachusetts seeking to create the same environment in his state. Through the decades that passed, many immigrants had arrived to Canada, and the children needed an education. Immigrant children in Canada had struggled a lot. In 1971 the multicultural act had promoted and celebrated bilingual frameworks. They had allowed English to be taught as a second language. The white children were not very fond of the colored. They would get away with teasing colored children. This was so bad that the colored children had to enter gyms, cafeterias and playgrounds cautiously. The Black children used to be called nigger and get teased by it. There were many fights in the schools, where it was always colored against whites. The free school system has remained the same, throughout the present. Colored children are not teased, as much. But racism still exists in the playgrounds and it's still a problem for immigrant children to have fun in school.

The children who stayed home in the past, always played with their imaginations.

They would make games to keep them occupied. They would go to the playgrounds, and sometimes go to school. Children wanted something fun, entertaining and that's where the generation