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This collection of essays addresses twentieth-century historical and contemporary issues regarding children who are considered to be at risk. The essays explore the language of risk as it is used by the courts, the schools, governmental agencies, and child advocates, those who discover risks and create correctives for children who both need protection and threaten to disturb the social order. The tasks require an exploration of differing, often contradictory, concepts of the child and society that are embedded in public policy debates. Deepening the complexity of the problems, institutions to which we look for solutions are too often faced with conflicts that arise when the needs of the child are at variance with the needs of the institutions themselves. These dilemmas are central to understanding our failure to achieve adequate public policy solutions for children at risk.
"This is an excellent example of sound multi-disciplinary research. It should be very useful for those in the fields of educational policy and history, sociology, political science, government planning, welfare reform, child development, juvenile justice, and family policy." — Barbara Beatty, Wellesley College
"So much of what has been published on education for this population has been focused on curriculum and pedagogy. We have needed a good exploration of public policy issues, which is the precise emphasis of this book. It is crucial to situate the discussion in an historical context." — Barry M. Franklin, Kennesaw State College
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Roberta Wollons
Part I: Historical Public Discourse
1. Child Saving in Modern America 1870s-1990s
Hamilton Cravens
2. Status Offenders, Criminal Offenders, and Children "At Risk" in Early Twentieth-Century Juvenile Court
Steven Schlossman and Susan Turner
3. Structuring Risks: The Making of Urban School Order
Joseph L. Tropea
Part II: Reconceptualizing Children at Risk
4. Making Controversy: Who's "At Risk?"
Michelle Fine
5. Children's Legal Rights? A Historical Look at a Legal Paradox
Michael Grossberg
6. Inventing the Problem Child: "At Risk" Children in the Child Guidance Movement of the 1920s and 1930s
Margo Horn
Part III: Contemporary Public Discourse
7. Children at Risk: Students in Special Education
Alan Gartner and Dorothy Kerzner Lipsky
8. Language and Ethnicity as Factors in School Failure: The Case of Mexican-Americans
Patricia Gandara
9. Adolescent Pregnancy and Child Support
P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Maris A. Vinovskis
10. Reversing the Poverty Cycle with Job-Based Education
Robert I. Lerman
11. Public Policy and Child Care: The Question of Quality
Judith D. Auerbach
12. Public Policy and Child Protection
James Garbarino and Kathleen Kostelny
Contributors
Index