The amount of freedom and responsibility children had in previous years never fails to astonish me. Only half a century ago, my dad would take the bus by himself to and from school when he was six. That is something that you would never see today, and it is crazy to think that only forty years, how different the ideas surrounding childhood were. The idea demonstrated in “Hidden Workers” by John Bullen that children were supposed to be self supporting is quite difficult to understand considering how heavily childhood is focus on nowadays. This weeks reading also emphasizes how education was not important in the lives of the working class, and one of the reasons Canadians started to see literacy important was with the integration of tenure and lease agreements. Of course it is not surprising how much education and the importance of education has changed over time as everything typically does. However, it is so significant how education did not dictate people’s lives like they do now. Before recent years, people did not have to attend university in order to get a sustaining job. Even earlier, people did not event attend elementary or secondary school, especially if you were in the working class. This reality has been completely turned on it’s head because nowadays you have to go to school to get any sort of professional job, and even when you have a degree, it’s still difficult to get a job.
