I just ran across this article about preschools run in high school classrooms. Several larger area high schools have Family and Consumer Science classes where students learn about child developement as they engage in activities with the 3 to 5 year olds.

May and I recently received an alert from our colleague Ben Welter, who writes the Yesterday’s News blog. He had just found an old article about another very different child development study lab back in 1919.
The headline reads: “Babies Serve as Laboratory Material at ‘U’ .
Home Economics Classes Will Use Infants to Practice on.”

Apparently the University of Minnesota had a home economics lab with two homeless babies Russell and Earl, referred to in the story as “soft pink bits.” The students and teachers took shifts taking care of the two babies around the clock. They were fed things like blanc mange (Blancmange? I thought they were an obscure 80’s band) and cod liver oil. (yummy.)

He was unable to find out whatever happened to Russell and Earl but let’s hope they found good homes.

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