Dissertation
How Science Became Child’s Play: Science, Technology, and the Culture of American Childhood, 1890-1970[1]
The science-infatuated child is a familiar figure in contemporary American popular culture. In the movie “Explorers” (1985), a very young River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke labor in a basement laboratory, crafting an improbably functional spaceship. “Dexter’s Laboratory,” a Cartoon Network series that ran from 1996 to 2003, featured a boy genius who hides his lab from his clueless parents. The band They Might Be Giants’ jaunty song “Robot Parade” (2002) predicts a future in which “children will work together/to build a giant cyborg.” And the dinosaur-obsessed preschooler is such a fixture across the country that teachers exchange ideas on the Internet in attempts to maximize children’s paleontological interest. Despite the enormous presence of science in younger children’s lives, Americans have serious public fears about flagging science achievement, and dread the consequences that American young adults’ lack of proficiency could have for American power.
This dissertation is a history of the way that American entrepreneurs, authors, museum personnel, and journalists, amongst other interested adults, created opportunities for “fun” science for American children between the turn of the century and the postwar era, and the meanings that they attached to their endeavors. I’m arguing that the promotion of “science play” reflects anxieties and hopes about the possibility of science as a public project. These innovations in scientific culture for children occurred during a time when American scientists strengthened their institutional standing, gained increased government funding, and became ever-more visible in the public sphere through advances in industrial production, transportation, medicine, and weaponry. An analysis of children’s scientific culture can show how Americans visualized this social force as part of their everyday lives.
The story of how science reached children in the years 1890-1970 is also a story about the formation of a child-specific popular culture. This dissertation demonstrates that scientific education took place in a number of cultural realms, many of which were new or had undergone drastic transformations in the first half of the twentieth century: the classroom, the toy store, magazines and books, children’s museums, and, eventually, television. This dissertation differs from previous histories of science education in that it seeks to show how much science took place outside of the formal school context. Museum personnel devised schemes that would allow city children to experience the thrill of scientific discovery in controlled and specific environments. Publishers of children’s books represented the new “realities” of modernity through the publication of photographically illustrated encyclopedias, while publishers of science fiction pulps enjoyed a large audience of young people. Manufacturers of science toys suggested that the clubhouse, the basement, or the living room rug could serve as laboratories. And during and after World War II, organizers of science fairs and clubs hoped that children would hone their skills outside of school, suggesting that this route to science participation would allow gifted kids a chance to contribute to the American scientific community. By situating science learning in this broad cultural field, this project will show that ideas about science learning are inextricably linked with this era’s creation of new concepts of modern citizenship, consumption, and nationhood.
[1] This title is, of course, tentative.
