Maris A. Vinovskis – författare

Teenage pregnancy is one of the most incendiary public issues of our day. Yet after all the investigation and government effort, what is really known about the problem of adolescent pregnancy and how to deal with it? What is the role of the social scientist and historian in a public issue of this kind? This study sets the question within its historical framework and discusses a host of current issues and policy considerations. The author begins by examining adolescent sexuality and childbearing in early America and evaluating whether there has been an 'epidemic' of adolescent pregnancy in American history.

In classrooms and in living rooms, in research institutions and on Capitol Hill, teenage pregnancy is one of the most controversial public issues of our day. Yet after all the investigation and government effort, what is really known about the problem of adolescent pregnancy and how to deal with it? And what is the role of the social scientist and historian in a public issue of this kind? In this study, Maris Vinovskis--a prominent demographic historian and a participant in both Carter''s and Reagan''s Presidential initiatives on teenage pregnancy--sets these questions within a historical framework and discusses a host of current issues and policy considerations. Vinovskis begins by examining adolescent sexuality and childbearing in early America and evaluating whether there has in fact been an "epidemic" of adolescent pregnancy in American history. In the following chapters, he addresses the rise of adolescent pregnancy as a national issue and assesses the government''s response to it, both in Congress and the Presidency. Bringing his unique qualifications as a historian and a policy planner to his study, Vinovskis offers readers a provocative new context for understanding a pressing public issue of the 1980s.

One of the most popular and enduring legacies of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs, Project Head Start continues to support young children of low-income families - close to one million annually - by providing a range of developmental and educational services. Policy makers proposing to reform and update Head Start often invoke its origins to justify their position, but until now no comprehensive political history of the program has existed.Maris A. Vinovskis here provides in "The Birth of Head Start" an in-depth look at the nation's largest and best-known - yet politically challenged - early education program. He sets the record straight on the program's intended aims, documenting key decisions made during its formative years. While previous accounts of Head Start have neglected the contributions of important participants such as federal education officials and members of Congress, Vinovskis' history is the first to consider the relationship between politics and policy making and how this interaction has shaped the program.This thorough and incisive book will be essential for policy makers and legislators interested in prekindergarten education and will inform future discussions on early intervention services for disadvantaged children.

One of the most popular and enduring legacies of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs, Project Head Start continues to support young children of low-income families - close to one million annually - by providing a range of developmental and educational services. Policy makers proposing to reform and update Head Start often invoke its origins to justify their position, but until now no comprehensive political history of the program has existed.Maris A. Vinovskis here provides in "The Birth of Head Start" an in-depth look at the nation's largest and best-known - yet politically challenged - early education program. He sets the record straight on the program's intended aims, documenting key decisions made during its formative years. While previous accounts of Head Start have neglected the contributions of important participants such as federal education officials and members of Congress, Vinovskis' history is the first to consider the relationship between politics and policy making and how this interaction has shaped the program.This thorough and incisive book will be essential for policy makers and legislators interested in prekindergarten education and will inform future discussions on early intervention services for disadvantaged children.

One of the most popular and enduring legacies of President Lyndon B. Johnson''s Great Society programs, Project Head Start continues to support young children of low-income families-close to one million annually-by providing a range of developmental and educational services. Yet as Head Start reaches its fortieth anniversary, debates over the function and scope of this federal program persist. Although the program''s importance is unquestioned across party lines, the direction of its future—whether toward a greater focus on school readiness and literacy or the continuation of a holistic approach-remains a point of contention. Policymakers proposing to reform Head Start often invoke its origins to justify their position, but until now no comprehensive political history of the program has existed. Maris A. Vinovskis here provides an in-depth look at the nation''s largest and best known—yet politically challenged—early education program. The Birth of Head Start sets the record straight on the program''s intended aims, documenting key decisions made during its formative years. While previous accounts of Head Start have neglected the contributions of important participants such as federal education officials and members of Congress, Vinovskis''s history is the first to consider the relationship between politics and policymaking and how this interaction has shaped the program. This thorough and incisive book will be essential for policymakers and legislators interested in prekindergarten education and will inform future discussions on early intervention services for disadvantaged children.

In this book, an eminent educational historian examines some important aspects of American schooling over the past centuries, illuminating the relation between education and other broad changes in American society and providing a historical perspective for contemporary efforts at school reform.Maris Vinovskis critically reviews and integrates recent work in educational history and provides new research on neglected topics. He discusses such issues as: the gradual shift from the family to the public schools in the responsibility for educating the young; the rise and fall of infant schools between 1840 and 1860; the crisis in the teaching of morality in the public schools of the mid-nineteenth century; early efforts to provide schooling for impoverished children; and the evolution of the belief that education improves individual economic and social mobility. He also studies school attendance and discovers that a much higher percentage of children may have attended public high schools in the nineteenth century than has been assumed, investigates when the practice of placing children in grades according to their age became widespread, and assesses whether different age groups in previous eras varied in their support for schooling—as they seem to be doing now.

In this book an eminent scholar and policymaker analyzes the lessons history can teach those who wish to reform the American educational system. Maris Vinovskis begins by tracing the evolving role of the federal government in educational research, providing a historical perspective at a time when there is some movement to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. He then focuses on early childhood education, exploring trends in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He examines the troubling history of the Follow Through Program, which existed from 1967 to 1994 to help Head Start children make the transition into the regular schools, and he reviews the development of the Even Start Program, which works to improve the literacy of disadvantaged parents while providing early childhood education for their children. He discusses changing views toward the economic benefits of education and critically assesses the validity and usefulness of the idea of systemic or standards-based reform. Finally he develops a conceptual framework for mapping and analyzing education research and reform activities.

This important contribution to scholarship in social science history examines the development of public education in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. Until the 1950s educational historians emphasized the relationship of schooling to the political system and the development of a common American culture. In recent years a social history perspective has emerged that stresses the socioeconomic influences that tie education to other institutions and processes in society rather than to political ideals. Carl Kaestle's and Maris Vinovskis's study is firmly grounded in this newer perspective. However, their work questions the adequacy of any single-factor explanation of the broad educational changes that occurred during this period - whether it be the emergence of factory production or the broader concept of modernization. They argue that these educational changes were the result of the complex interaction of cultural, demographic and economic variables operating in varying ways in different communities over time. Ethnicity, religion, urban status, the occupational structure, income distribution and wealth of the community all emerge as significant factors in this interaction.

The American Civil War has been the subject of thousands of books and articles, but only a small fraction of this literature examines the impact of the war on society and on the lives of the participants. This volume of essays, which focuses on the North, is intended as an initial reconnaissance by social historians into the study of the Civil War. The first essay, 'Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War?' places the war in the broader context of other American wars by comparing casualty rates. The essay also examines rates of enlistment for the North and the South, and the significance of pensions for Union soldiers and their windows. Subsequent essays look at the support for the war in small towns; the influence of nineteenth-century values and culture on Union soldiers; the nature and role of large-scale relief efforts for soldiers in Philadelphia; and the impact of the war on the politics of Chicago. The final two essays discuss the continuing importance of the war for its survivors: one by looking at those who joined the major national organization of Union veterans; and the other by studying the impact of the Civil War on Union widows in three Northern towns. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the need for historians to rediscover the impact of the Civil War on nineteenth-century society.

Representing new approaches to the study of the family and historical demography, this collection of essays analyzes the relationships of demographic processes in different population groups to household structure and family organization, and their implications for family behavior. Emphasizing dynamic rather than structural factors, the essays thus move beyond earlier studies of family history. Essays by the editors, Richard Easterlin, George Alter, Gretchen Condran, and Stanley Engerman focus on patterns of fertility in relation to urban and industrial development, economic opportunity and the availability of land, and race and ethnic origin. The remaining essays, by Laurence Glasco, Howard Chudacoff, and John Modell, deal with family organization over time as affected by such factors as the practice of boarding, the role of kin, family budgeting strategy, and migration. The authors not only challenge the prevailing assumption that rapid urbanization is responsible for the decline in the fertility rate; they also contend that, contrary to the prevailing theories of social change, the emergence of nuclear households was not a consequence of industrialization.Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Representing new approaches to the study of the family and historical demography, this collection of essays analyzes the relationships of demographic processes in different population groups to household structure and family organization, and their implications for family behavior. Emphasizing dynamic rather than structural factors, the essays thus move beyond earlier studies of family history. Essays by the editors, Richard Easterlin, George Alter, Gretchen Condran, and Stanley Engerman focus on patterns of fertility in relation to urban and industrial development, economic opportunity and the availability of land, and race and ethnic origin. The remaining essays, by Laurence Glasco, Howard Chudacoff, and John Modell, deal with family organization over time as affected by such factors as the practice of boarding, the role of kin, family budgeting strategy, and migration. The authors not only challenge the prevailing assumption that rapid urbanization is responsible for the decline in the fertility rate; they also contend that, contrary to the prevailing theories of social change, the emergence of nuclear households was not a consequence of industrialization.Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Many Americans view today's problems in education as an unprecedented crisis brought on by the rise of contemporary social problems. In Learning from the Past a group of distinguished educational historians and scholars of public policy reminds us that many current difficulties-as well as recent reform efforts-have important historical antecedents. What can we learn, they ask, from nineteenth-century efforts to promote early childhood education, or debates in the 1920s about universal secondary education, or the curriculum reforms of the 1950s? Reflecting a variety of intellectual and disciplinary orientations, the contributors to this volume examine major changes in educational development and reform, consider how such changes have been implemented in the past, and warn against , exaggerating their benefits. They address questions of governance, equity and multiculturalism, curriculum standards, school choice, and a variety of other issues. Policy makers and other school reformers, they conclude, would do well to investigate the past in order to appreciate the implications of the present reform initiatives.

Studies in American Historical Demography is a collection of the best studies in American historical demography. The book discusses some methodological and conceptual considerations in the trends in American historical demography; the demographic history of colonial New England; and the marital migration in Essex County, Massachusetts, in the colonial and early federal periods. The text also describes the historical trends in parental power and marriage patterns in Hingham, Massachusetts; the use of demographic data that are, or may be, retrieved from colonial New England gravestones; and the mortality rates and trends in Massachusetts, Massachusetts. The estimates of the vital rates of the United States black population during the 19th century; the two-parent household; as well as the differential fertility in Madison County, New York, 1865 are also considered. The book further tackles the socioeconomic determinants of interstate fertility differentials in the United States in 1850 and 1860; cohorts of native born Massachusetts women, 1830-1920; and the demographic change and the life cycle of American families. Historians, demographers, anthropologists, economists, and sociologists will find the book invaluable.