History 371

Devine

Spring 2014

Paper Assignment #1 Option B: David Nasaw, Children of the City

This essay is due Monday, March 3rd. You may email your essay to me as an attachment (the preferred method), turn it in to the History Department office (Sierra Tower 610) during business hours, or hand it to me in person.

If you did not submit an essay on Pudd’nhead Wilson, you must do this paper.

If you are submitting this essay as a draft and intend to work with a writing tutor on a revision of your essay, you must submit a complete draft of 1500 words. Please indicate in the subject line of your email or on the first page of the hard copy of your paper whether your submission is a draft or a final version.

If you submit a draft, your final version will be due ONE WEEK after your appointment with the writing tutor. To make an appointment, call the History Department at 818.677.3566.

All students are welcome to make an appointment with me to go over a draft before submitting a revision and the same deadline will apply.

INSTRUCTIONS

How Long?

• Papers MUST be 1500 words and no more than 1900 words.

Format?

• Typed, double-spaced, 12-point font with one-inch margins all around.

• Please remember to number your pages.

• Give your essay a title that indicates what the paper is about. (Something more revealing than “Essay #1” or “Children of the City”) Clever titles will be duly noted.

• Base your essay entirely on the assigned course reading. Don’t go to the internet to do your thinking for you. I will be obvious to me that you are just regurgitating someone else’s ideas and your grade will reflect that.

Don’t forget to put your name at the top of page 1 of the essay before you email it. (People actually forget to do this.)

How to cite?

If you are quoting directly from the book, cite the author and page number in parentheses within the body of the text, i.e. (Nasaw, 47). All direct quotes MUST be in quotation marks and must be cited. Paraphrases of ideas drawn from the book MUST also be cited. This could mean giving a range of pages from which you are drawing: (Nasaw, 36-39)

How will I be graded?

You will be graded on:

1)    focus (do you have a thesis statement and does it answer the question asked?)

2)    evidence (do you back up your argument with specific information from the reading?)

3)    coherence (is your argument consistent and understandable throughout the piece?)

4)    scope (does your paper deal with the question in appropriate depth and breadth?)

THE ASSIGNMENT

Answer ONE of the following questions:

Question #1

In 1915, one “child saving” reformer declared,

“These children out on the city streets are having their childhood stolen from them. They are exploited by greedy adults, denied a proper education, and become victims to the darker forces that are all around them. They are exposed to all the wrong values, corrupted by their adventures on the streets, and left ill-prepared to become honest, hard working citizens when they grow up. It is outrageous and a failure of our society that we allow them to live such lives.”

Upon hearing this, “Smitty,” a twelve-year-old newsie responded, “Ahh, she’s nuts. None a’ that stuff is true at all.”

Who do you think is closer to the truth, the reformer or “Smitty?”

In answering, establish in the first paragraph (or even better, the first sentence) who you think is closer to the truth – the reformer or “Smitty.” To make things easier on yourself, use the reformer’s quote as a guide to organize your paper. Address each point she makes and evaluate to what extent the evidence in Nasaw’s book confirms or refutes that point. Cite specific evidence from Children of the City to support your evaluation.

Question #2

Social scientists have long argued that the environment in which young people grow up and the experiences they have as children dramatically affect the kind of adults they become. Their work ethic, their values, their assumptions about how the world works, their character strengths and flaws, their attitudes about earning and spending money, their openness to new experiences, even the way they interact with the people around them -- all, to some extent, are attributable to environment and experience.

How did the environment in which the “children of the city” grew up and the experiences they had as children shape them? Overall, would you say their environment and experiences had a positive or a negative impact on these turn of the century kids?

Support your answer by drawing on a wide variety of specific evidence from Nasaw’s, Children of the City.

Question #3

Create a character and tell his or her story of growing up in the city around the turn of the 20^th century (i.e. 1895-1905). This may take the form of an “autobiography,” a short story, a letter, or a series of diary entries. Try to be as detailed and authentic as possible, drawing from specific information Nasaw’s Children of the City.

Among the various things you might include in your story: your character’s age and ethnic background, what things your character does, what games s/he plays, where s/he lives, what it is like to live there, how s/he makes money, some of his/her “tricks of the trade” at work, what s/he likes to spend money on, the requirements of his/her job, his/her likes and dislikes, the different things s/he sees during the course of a day, what s/he thinks of his/her parents, what s/he thinks of other adults (policemen, reformers, teachers), his/her favorite places, why s/he likes or dislikes living in a city.

You will also want to describe the surroundings in which s/he lives: what does his/her neighborhood look/smell/sound like? How is it different that neighborhoods s/he works in? What things might your character see and do during the course of a normal day?

This is your chance to be creative while still demonstrating you have carefully read the book. The most important thing (and the way to get a good grade) is to make clear to the reader that you are familiar with the material in David Nasaw’s book and are able to put that material together into a coherent story. Be sure your paper is historically accurate – that is, don’t have your character watching TV or listening to the radio when the setting is the year 1910. The best papers will literally transport the reader back in time so they can experience what life was like for a young “child of the city.”