PDF College in Prison: Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration by Daniel Karpowitz in History

Description

Industrious in Their Stations is the first comparative study of child labor in eighteenth-century America. Focusing on Philadelphia; Boston; and Charleston; Sundue examines the work experiences of children and analyzes regional differences in child labor according to gender; race; and class. During the eighteenth century; work was central to the lives of most young people. Work skills; learned young; were regarded as the crux of a useful education; heralded as a preventative against idleness and sin; and as representing a vital contribution to the economy. By century’s end; however; the "diffusion of knowledge" to all white citizens was being described by many political thinkers as critical to securing the new republic; and more formal education had gained popularity. But this expansion of schooling opportunities did not affect all groups of children equally. Sundue argues that controlling access to education; both academic and vocational; was an essential mechanism for controlling the potentially unruly poor. By comparing regional elite efforts to afford the young poor both vocational and formal academic education; Sundue offers a nuanced; complicated picture of how inequality was constructed both prior to and after the American Revolution; highlighting its disparate impact on class; race; and gender in late eighteenth-century America