Law, Justice and Society: Chapter Eight

When reading this chapter before our discussions in class, I was really disappointed at the fact that children were really treated as they were back in the seventeenth century. When I first learned about this kind of treatment done to children last year, it made me sick to my stomach. The first thing I would think of when I heard about the New York House of Refuge (NYHR) was the movie “Annie”. In this film the children were driven to work in very poor conditions and are treated as slaves. This kind of house or workplace was thought to be very good in the eyes of the community, but really it was often of worse living condition then living in a broken down home. The New York House of Refuge was said to be a place where children could receive work training and spiritual training. Instead they were pushed around and abused. When children arrived at this hellhole they were to stay there until they grew to be adults. There was not any way of getting out or anything. Eventually, it became all what the children knew of.
Finally, in the late 1800’s a new era began and the Child Savers movement started. This was a much better living environment than that of the NYHR. Instead of saying that they wanted to help the children who came to them, they actually did. They provided them with work and spiritual training. This was a much better atmosphere because it was also very family orientated and they children were treated as they should have been from the very start. The textbook provided a lot of very useful information to this, however if you check out more on http://www.rny.nysed.gov/a/research/res_topics_ed_reform_history.shtml and also http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=215-OQtLnfsC&dq=Child+savers&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=dmE9zkek1q&sig=yH_uHP116qu-Idq577kQsMkvbxE&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPR9,M1.