@article{1479006,
      recid = {1479006},
      author = {Block, James E.,},
      title = {The Crucible of Consent : American Child Rearing and the  Forging of Liberal Society /},
      pages = {1 online resource},
      abstract = {A democratic government requires the consent of its  citizens. But how is that consent formed? Why should free  people submit to any rule? Pursuing this question to its  source for the first time, The Crucible of Consent argues  that the explanation is to be found in the nursery and the  schoolroom. Only in the receptive and less visible realms  of childhood and youth could the necessary synthesis of  self-direction and integrative social conduct-so  contradictory in logic yet so functional in practice-be  established without provoking reservation or  resistance.From the early postrevolutionary republic, two  liberal child-rearing institutions-the family and  schooling-took on a responsibility crucial to the growing  nation: to produce the willing and seemingly self-initiated  conformability on which the society's claim of freedom and  demand for order depended. Developing the institutional  mechanisms for generating early consent required the  constant transformation of child-rearing theory and  practice over the course of the nineteenth century. By  exploring the systematic reframing of relations between  generations that resulted, this book offers new insight  into the consenting citizenry at the foundation of liberal  society, the novel domestic and educational structures that  made it possible, and the unprecedented role created for  the young in the modern world.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1479006},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674062610},
}