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Children's Social Worlds: a Captivating Core Course

Charting THE COURSE

"This allows you to tie in service work into your academics," he says.

Minow says that volunteers enrich the course by relating their own ser- vice experiences in section.

"The volunteers bring very immediate impressions and questions about children," Minow says.

But she adds that she believes the course can also add perspective to the student's volunteer work.

"It gives them a different lens to the work they're already doing," she says.

Children's Studies?

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What does the course say about the field of children's studies?

Kagan cautions that it's too early to begin talk of an undergraduate concentration.

"I think it's possible, but we have to wait and see," he says. "Is there a coherent body of knowledge? One course does not make a concentration."

Students have similarly mixed views about such a concentration."

"I don't see how anybody could spend half their coursework at Harvard taking course exclusively related to children," Sawicki says.

But teaching fellow Marie-Anne Suizzo says she believes Harvard should take the lead creating the new field of study.

"If Harvard wants to be a leader, it needs to step up and be a leader and demonstrate that it values education and children," Suizzo says

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