Historians such as Seth Koven and Carolyn Steedman have shown how visual and literary depictions of children helped move late-nineteenth-century middle- and upper-class audiences to join in child-saving philanthropy aimed at the deserving poor. This essay focuses on an analysis of the promotional literature of the free kindergartens. Starting from…

The Russian Revolution of February 1917 displaced the autocracy of the Romanov royal family and aimed to establish a liberal republican Russia. The Bolsheviks, who came to power a few months later in the revolution of October 1917, announced that their new policy in education "had no analogy in history." Their reforms sought to establish…

Head Start, the federal program that provides preschool education, health, and social services for children from poor families, is one of the United States' most popular government programs. Created in 1965, it has endured as a symbol of commitment to children, serving just fewer than one million children a year in neighborhood sites across the…