Kindergartens were originally conceived by Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852), a German educator, as preschool instruction for children three to seven years of age. The word kindergarten means “child’s garden” in German and reflects Froebel’s belief that education should help children realize their natural, inner potential. Thus, the curriculum emphasized the moral development of children as well as their intellectual and physical development. Although conceived in Germany, the kindergarten movement gained its momentum and popularity in the United States. This entry looks at the kindergarten’s origins in Europe and its development in the United States.
Laying A Foundation
Froebel’s own unhappy childhood almost certainly influenced his interest in the education of young children. At the University of Jena in 1799, he focused his studies on physics, mathematics, and architecture. During the next three years he was influenced by the philosophical ideas of two German philosophers: Johann Fichte and Friederich von Schelling. Froebel soon developed his own philosophy in which God was the “Divine Unity” whose spirit infused all things. Thus, all things were interconnected.
After graduating from the university, Froebel decided to pursue a career in education. He studied with the Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, continued his studies at the University of Gottingen, served in the army (1813–1817), and eventually became the principal of a school in Kielhau, Germany. Froebel’s practical experience as an educator influenced his philosophical ideas. According to Froebel, the purpose of education is to teach children how to observe and to try to understand the “divine characteristics” of all the interconnected things in the world. His philosophy is outlined in The Spirit of Man (1826), which he wrote while at Kielhau.
In 1837, Froebel opened his first kindergarten in Blankenburg, Germany. He developed a curriculum based upon his set of “Gifts” and “Occupations,” a series of twenty teaching toys and activities that taught a child through play. The purpose of the Gifts and Occupations was to help children understand the unity that Froebel believed was inherent in everything in the world, while at the same time providing them with the tools to shape, and perhaps master, the world in which they lived. Gardening, games, and group singing also helped the children learn to play and work together.
Due to a lack of sufficient funds, the school in Blankenburg had to close in 1844. Froebel spent the next five years traveling throughout Germany promoting kindergartens. In 1849 he once again tried to establish a kindergarten, this time in Libenstein, Germany. Because of kindergartens’ association with radical political ideology, the Prussian government banned them in Germany in August 1851. Froebel died in June 1852.
Traveling To U.S. Shores
By the mid-1850s, educators in the United States were discussing and writing about the kindergarten movement. Henry Barnard described the kindergarten exhibit he had seen in 1854 at an educational exhibit in London in an article in the American Journal of Education. Margarethe Schurz, a former student of Froebel’s, established a German-speaking kindergarten in Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1856.
The Peabody Influence
Elizabeth Peabody (1804–1894), an experienced educator with connections to the leading intellectuals and philosophers in New England, met Schurz in Boston in 1859. Peabody was a Transcendentalist who believed that the human soul, or spirit, could rise above the material and physical world and become one with God’s divine spirit. After learning more about the kindergarten movement from Schurz, Peabody familiarized herself with Froebel’s work.
In 1860 she opened a kindergarten in Boston. It was the first English-speaking kindergarten in the United States. Her assistant was Mary Mann, the widow of education reformer Horace Mann (1796–1859). Elizabeth and her sister, Mary Peabody, published the Kindergarten Guide in 1863. In order to learn more about the Froebel’s ideas, Elizabeth went to Europe in 1867–1868. When she returned, she continued to advance the kindergarten movement and the Froebelian system through correspondence, lectures, and a new journal, the Kindergarten Messenger.
One of those attending a lecture by Peabody was Milton Bradley (1836–1911), a Massachusetts board game manufacturer. Because he was so intrigued with Froebel’s ideas, Bradley began to make kindergarten and art materials and published a book by Edward Weibe, Paradise of Childhood, which was the first book to explain the Froebelian system in detail to an American audience.
Susan Blow’s Role
Another visitor to Europe during the early 1870s who was impressed by the kindergarten classes she saw there was Susan Blow (1843–1916), the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis businessman and politician. Upon her return to the United States she began lobbying William Torrey Harris (1835–1909), Superintendent of the St. Louis Public Schools, to set up a public kindergarten. Harris agreed to assign a public school primary teacher to help Blow set up an experimental kindergarten in space he provided.
First, Blow went to New York to get further kindergarten training. Then Blow returned to St. Louis in 1873 to begin her own kindergarten training program for teachers and classes for children. The Des Peres kindergarten, which began in August 1873 in St. Louis, was the first successful public school kindergarten in the United States.
Dissemination of the kindergarten idea continued through the vehicle of the International Expositions. There were two demonstration kindergartens on exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, one of which was the Des Peres kindergarden. Both kindergartens generated a great deal of interest and helped spread the kindergarten movement across the country. By 1879 there were 53 kindergarten classes and 131 paid teachers. Volunteers and unpaid assistants also helped in the kindergartens, some of whom were in training to become teachers.
Controversy
Opponents to the kindergarten movement argued that kindergartens were too expensive, that they spoiled young children, and that it would be impossible to train kindergarten teachers. Superintendent Harris and the St. Louis School Board recognized that the training in the skills and habits (punctuality, cleanliness, industry, and politeness) provided by the kindergarten curriculum would benefit future workers in the manufacturing sector. He also believed that it was important to give children, especially those from poorer neighborhoods, the opportunity to have an extra year of schooling, while at the same time getting them away from the corruption confronting them on the streets, and perhaps even their own homes.
Kindergartens were used as one of the primary vehicles for the Americanization of immigrant children. They provided the opportunity to instill the values of a democratic and capitalistic society in the children, helping them to become loyal workers and citizens. During the late nineteenth century, charity kindergartens were set up in churches and settlement houses for the children of the very poor in most large cities. It was believed that by working closely with the parents of these children, it would be possible to improve the life of the whole family and encourage the children to rise above a life of poverty. Many of the teachers in these charity kindergartens spent part of their day out in the neighborhoods, encouraging older children to enroll in school and taking on many of the duties of the modern-day social worker.
The kindergarten movement continued to receive support from public school systems across the country. By 1898 there were 4,363 kindergartens, with a total of 189,604 pupils and 8,937 teachers. Gradually, kindergartens were shifting away from so much volunteer and parental involvement as they became more integrated within public school systems. Criticisms of the curriculum also grew: Some felt that Froebel’s “Gifts” and “Occupations” discouraged creativity in children, while others objected to Froebel’s system because it was not developed as a result of observing young children. John Dewey (1859–1952) disagreed with Froebel’s belief that the mind of a young child already contained some universal principles.
A new approach, known as the Progressive kindergarten movement, was supported by John Dewey, G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924), Anna E. Byran (1858–1901), and Patty Smith Hill (1868–1946), head of the Kindergarten Department at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Progressives believed that morality was defined by the culture in which the child lived and not something that was inherent within each child. Therefore, the purpose of kindergarten should be to help the child learn to cope with a culture and world that were becoming more complicated and demanding everyday. The National Kindergarten Association was founded in New York in 1909. By the end of World War I, kindergartens were an important component of the public school system in most of the larger towns and cities in America. They continue to be a major component of most school systems today.
Bibliography:
- Beatty, B. (1995). Preschool education in America: The culture of young children from the Colonial Era to the present. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
- Ross, E. D. (1976). The kindergarten crusade: The establishment of preschool education in the United States. Athens: Ohio University Press.
- Shapiro, S. (1983). Child’s garden: The kindergarten movement from Froebel to Dewey. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
- Weber, E. (1969). The kindergarten: Its encounter with educational thought in America. New York: Teachers College Press.
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