Puberty, reproductive strategies and Baby M aren't topics most Core courses are likely to cover.

But they are some of the diverse themes covered in Social Analysis 56: "Children and Their Social Worlds," a course created this year as part of the Harvard Project on Schooling and Children (HPSC).

The project, one of President Neil L. Rudenstine's five interfaculty initiatives, has had little impact on the College curriculum thus far. But the HPSC eventually hopes to create more courses--and eventually an undergraduate concentration--in children's studies.

"Children and Their Social Worlds" is the first new undergraduate course in children's studies. The course explores the issues facing today's children from the perspectives of history, psychology, anthropology and law.

The course aims to "take the basic knowledge about children that social scientists have gathered and apply that to social problems," says Starch Professor of Psychology Jerome Kagan, one of the course's three professors.

In this year of extremely limited offerings in the Core program, students have flocked en masse to "Children." According to head teaching fellow Aruna Sankaranarayanan, 269 students have enrolled in the course, far exceeding the teaching staff's initial expectation of 100 to 150 students.

"It's heartening to know that students are responding with the same enthusiasm that we [the teaching staff] respond to these issues," Kagan says.

And it's not difficult to find reasons for the popularity of "Children." Students applaud the course's interdisciplinary approach, relevance to their service work and the star-studded faculty, in addition to the interesting subject matter.

"It's something you actually want to learn, not something you have to learn," says Gregory S. Sawicki '97.

Interdisciplinary Approach

Like the Project on Schooling and Children itself, "Children" is based on an interdisciplinary approach.

Each of the course's three professors--Kagan, Larsen Professor of Education and Human Development Robert A. LeVine and Professor of Law Martha L. Minow--brings different expertise and a different angle to the course.

"We each do our own lecture...and go through each stage of child development with our own perspective," Minow says.

Students say that the approach works better than in other courses with multiple professors.

"[The professors] pull it off very well for the first year" of the course, says Alisa N. Kendrick '97. "It's obvious they communicate and gear their lectures to work together and incorporate things from [the other professors' lectures]."