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Jeanne at jcurran@csudh.edu
Subject line: jjex1: stubborn child
First message line: Your name and class.

Source materials for the following questions will be found in Readings in Juvenile Delinquency, ed. by Weis, Crutchfield, and Bridges, 1996, Pine forge Press. Part I, pp. 1-20.

Answer by e-mail to jcurran@csudh.edu
Subject: jjexercise - stubborn child
Be sure to include your name!
Try to answer in 25 words or so. Make each answer integral, so that I can read it without reference to the exercise or the question itself.

1. What solution does Marvin Wolfgang, editor of the text series, offer to the dilemma of the explosion of literature on juvenile delinquency in recent years? (p. xv)

   Wolfgang suggests that no one can any longer read all the classics and stay current, but a reader such as this gives us the chance to read the best of what has been written, so that we can gain quick mastery of a broad field of knowledge. This is especially important at a time in history when all canons are being challenged. Note, for example, Harold Bloom's The Western Canon.

2. What is a canon? (lecture)

   That group of texts which any given group believes essential to literacy and cultural heritage for its group.

3. John Sutton gives a modern interpretation to the "stubborn child" law of the Puritans. He describes the Puritan's as having two tendencies that anticipated modern juvenile justice. What are these two tendencies, and what did they presage? (p. 6)

   1. "Socialization of the law and family," by which Sutton means that the family was recognized as a major factor in the infrastructure of the community, and given the role of socializing children into normative community standards for behavior.

   2. "Limiting conflict and maintaining established authority," by which Sutton seems to mean that the Puritan community wished to brook no upheaval and questioning of recognized authority. The "stubborn child" law put all on notice that normative behavior would be supervised and held accountable.

4. What role did gender play in the establishment of the juvenile justice system? (Platt, pp. 7-12)

   Gender played a mixed role in the establishment of the juvenile justice system.

   1. From a more liberal than conservative perspective, primarily middle-class women who were seeking liberation from the confines of the "private sphere" found charities for "child-saving" and delinquent children sectors of the infrastructure in which they could engage their discretionary time in community work, while staying within the female sphere of concerns. Thus this was a relatively safe activity that gave them refuge from being seen as suffragettes and troublemakers, and yet satisfied some of their needs to expand their interests and use their skills.I have called this a more liberal perspective because, as Platt describes it, "child-saving" offered new roles outside the private sphere of the home, without demanding the tremendous social risk of the suffragette. So not radical.

   2. From a rather more conservative perspective, "child-saving" grew from abolitionist concerns that opposed all vices, and brought adolescents under control of a new sector of government, which in turn offered key roles to women. I have called this conservative because, as Platt describes, hierarchy and authority are of more concern than the welfare of the disadvantaged.

5. Platt says "What seemingly began as a movement to humanize the lives of adolescents soon developed into a program of moral absolutism through which youth was to be saved . . ." What would Minow say about categorical thinking here? What would Freire suggest about the zeal of the reformers? (lecture)

   1. Minow would voice concern that this is not a categorization issue. We oversimplify when we seek to place motives in one category or the other. Minow often uses a law she believes to be "bad" law when it is the only resource available. So Minow might say that if there is good in seeing to the welfare of some of these children, that might be the best that can be done at that point, and she would thus probably not refuse it, though she would continue to work for better laws with better recognition of difference.

   2. Freire would say that these zealous "child-savers" could not claim title to genuine revolution in the interest of the children, for they claim to "know" what is best for the children, and have not given the children or the poor in whose midst the children are found and to whom the children belong, any voice in the aid being offered. Typical hierarchical behavior with denial of a forum to the voice of the different.

6. Does Platt present a "left" or "right" perspective here? Justify. (pp. 7-12)

   Left. Hot clue: ""[T]he behavior selected for penalizing by the child-savers . . . was most directly relevant to the children of lower-class migrant and immigrant families." (at p. 9)

7. What does Platt mean by "[t]he child-savers made a fact out of the norm of adolescent dependence?"

   Jeanne's interpretation: All children are economically and, to some extent, physically and emotionally dependent, especially in early years. To turn that into a fact is to treat it as though it means the same for all children. Minow would caution us against such wicked little unstated assumptions. The poor have many fewer resources available, so that the traditional dependency of the child becomes more critical in the deprived context in which the lower class child finds himself/herself.

8. Is due process an issue in the juvenile justice system in its origins? and in its present development? (pp. 16-19)

   Yes. In Freire's sense, the child and those to whom it is linked have no forum in which to be heard. Things are being done "to" them, not "with" them. Still a major issue today, which is why the Juvenile Justice Act of Washington pays specific attention to procedures.