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The Kindergarten concept was barely forty years old in the United States at the time. It had originated in Germany, the term coined by noted educator Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852). He had endured a sad childhood. In 1837, Fröbel started a "Play and Activity Institute" in Bad Blankenburg, a spa town in the state of Thuringia. He renamed it a kindergarten, or "garden for children," around 1840. Though it was somewhat regimented, Fröbel's classroom offered young children an opportunity for learning via interaction with other children, songs and games, and independent playtime. He also devised a set of geometric blocks known as Fröbel's Gifts, which could be assembled in various combinations to form three-dimensional structures. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) owned a set of them as a child, and later wrote that they greatly later influenced his ideas for buildings.
Fröbel's ideas caught on in Germany, especially after well-born and even royal women took them up. At the castle of one benefactor, he ran a school that granted its women graduates the Kindergaertnerin or "kindergarten teacher" title, which was the first professional degree for women in Europe. His ideas came to the United States via a wave of German immigration, and one of his former students founded the first American kindergarten in 1838 in Columbus, Ohio, which had many German-Americans. Another German-born woman, Margarethe (Margaretta) Meyer Schurz, founded a similar school in Dodge County, Wisconsin in the 1850s. These first kindergartens were German-language schools that served local immigrants. The first English-language kindergarten was founded in Boston in 1860 by Elizabeth Peabody, a pioneer in early childhood education and follower of Fröbel who soon became a mentor to Wheelock. After her visit to the Chauncy-Hall kindergarten, Wheelock sought out Peabody, who suggested she enroll in a kindergarten-teacher training school that Ella Snelling Hatch ran in Boston. It was a one-year course, and Wheelock and another woman were its only students. She returned to Chauncy-Hall in 1879, fully trained in Fröbel's theories, and became an assistant in the kindergarten school and eventually oversaw it. Wheelock varied from Fröbel's model and drew some criticism from the more criticism from the more conservative adherents of the kindergarten movement. As a kindergarten teacher, she installed a sandbox in her classroom, and wrote her own songs and stories for the children. Her reputation spread, and she was often asked to lecture in communities that were considering starting their own early-childhood classes in their public school systems. In 1888, when the Boston city council voted to launch a kindergarten program, Wheelock was invited to train the necessary teachers. Chauncy-Hall would play host to this program, which had few qualified teachers for the age group. |
There were just six students in Wheelock's first class of teacher-hopefuls, but her program quickly caught on and became an appealing profession for middle-class women. Two years later, in 1890, "Miss Wheelock's Kindergarten Training School" was founded as an independent institution. Promoted "The Ideal Republic"
Wheelock believed strongly in the notion that early-childhood education provided the foundation for a stable society. In 1891, she reminded educators at a convention of the American Institute of Instruction about the value of kindergartens. "The ideal kindergarten is the ideal republic," she said, according to DuCharme's Childhood Education article. "Its little citizens are trained to self-activity, self-control, and the 'due freedom' which comes from a regard for the rights and happiness of others." Wheelock used one of Fröbel's books, Mother Play, as her main textbook, and adhered to his two main ideas: that children needed self-activity for intellectual growth, which involved seeing, thinking and acting for his or herself, and she also supported the idea of continuity—that there should be no break or gap between kindergarten and the primary grades. She also advocated involving mothers in early education, and they could reinforce in the home the benefits of the kindergarten curriculum. She became well-known nationally. A founding member of the International Kindergarten Union (IKU) in 1893 and its president from 1895 to 1899, she also served as chair of the 1908 National Congress of Mothers, the forerunner of the Parent Teacher Association. The usefulness of kindergarten was still an open debate. In 1912, Wheelock told an audience at the National Education Association in Washington that "the advocates of the theory that the young child is a 'little animal,' and should be left free to carry out his animal impulses in some convenient back yard, forget the scarcity of back yards in a congested city district," she said, according to DuCharme's Childhood Education profile. "They also ignore the worldwide proof of the claim that those who guide the first seven years of a child's life may make of him what they will. The state may later have to pay $255 a year to protect itself from the neglected child," likely referring to the cost of prison, noting that a kindergarten year cost the state about one-tenth that figure. In 1937, she commemorated the hundredth anniversary of Fröbel's first kindergarten in a New York Times article. "In the modern school for 4 and 5 year olds," she wrote, "where children cover the floor with construction projects, with blocks as big as bricks, there is little external reminder of the old-time kindergarten where youngsters sat in a stiff circle or waited at their little tables with folded hands for a signal to open boxes of tiny blocks or geometric toys." She added that early-childhood ideas had become somewhat less structured, but "the daily program still shows, however, the kindergartners' agreement with Fröbel that 'play is a child's serious business' and is his introduction to the business of life." |
Lucy goes to Froebels Home! - 1911
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Froebel Comes to Wheelock
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The Written Works of Friedrich Froebel
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Froebels Letters on The Kindgerarten |
Elizabeth Peabody Palmer
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
(May 16, 1804 – January 3, 1894) was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.
With a grounding in history and literature and a reading knowledge of ten languages, in 1840, she also opened a bookstore that held Margaret Fuller's "Conversations". She published books from Nathaniel Hawthorne and others in addition to the periodicals The Dial and Æsthetic Papers. She was an advocate of antislavery and of Transcendentalism.
Peabody also led efforts for the rights of the Paiute Indians. She was the first known translator into English of the Buddhist scripture the Lotus Sutra, translating a chapter from its French translation in 1844. It was the first English version of any Buddhist scripture.
Early years: Peabody was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, on May 16, 1804. She was the eldest daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, and Elizabeth (née Palmer) Peabody, the granddaughter of Joseph Palmer, a general during the American Revolutionary War. The Peabodys were a two-income family. Elizabeth advocated for preschool child education and taught school. Nathaniel was an apothecary, doctor, and dentist. Her sisters were Mary, reformer, educator, and pioneer in establishing kindergarten schools and Sophia, painter and the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Peabody had three brothers, Nathaniel, George Francis, and Wellington Peabody. George and Wellington died in the twenties. Nathaniel relied on Peabody for his living expenses.
The Peabody family lived in Salem, Massachusetts, and worshiped at the Second Church (later Unitarian Church) there. The children received a thorough education at home. Elizabeth Peabody operated a school from the family home, providing a classical education for boys and girls. Nathaniel tutored the Peabody children. Peabody developed an interest in philosophy, theology, literature, and history over the years and she spoke ten languages.
(May 16, 1804 – January 3, 1894) was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.
With a grounding in history and literature and a reading knowledge of ten languages, in 1840, she also opened a bookstore that held Margaret Fuller's "Conversations". She published books from Nathaniel Hawthorne and others in addition to the periodicals The Dial and Æsthetic Papers. She was an advocate of antislavery and of Transcendentalism.
Peabody also led efforts for the rights of the Paiute Indians. She was the first known translator into English of the Buddhist scripture the Lotus Sutra, translating a chapter from its French translation in 1844. It was the first English version of any Buddhist scripture.
Early years: Peabody was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, on May 16, 1804. She was the eldest daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, and Elizabeth (née Palmer) Peabody, the granddaughter of Joseph Palmer, a general during the American Revolutionary War. The Peabodys were a two-income family. Elizabeth advocated for preschool child education and taught school. Nathaniel was an apothecary, doctor, and dentist. Her sisters were Mary, reformer, educator, and pioneer in establishing kindergarten schools and Sophia, painter and the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Peabody had three brothers, Nathaniel, George Francis, and Wellington Peabody. George and Wellington died in the twenties. Nathaniel relied on Peabody for his living expenses.
The Peabody family lived in Salem, Massachusetts, and worshiped at the Second Church (later Unitarian Church) there. The children received a thorough education at home. Elizabeth Peabody operated a school from the family home, providing a classical education for boys and girls. Nathaniel tutored the Peabody children. Peabody developed an interest in philosophy, theology, literature, and history over the years and she spoke ten languages.
In 1820, the Peabodys moved to a farm in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and Peabody taught and ran the school beginning at age 16, based on what she learned from her mother's tutelage. Peabody taught from an enlightened perspective, helping her students build character, grow spiritually, and engage in discussions about school work. In 1822, the Peabodys left the farm life of Lancaster for the social city life of Salem, where Nathaniel worked as a dentist.
Educator:Peabody operated a private school for girls in Boston from 1822 to 1823. She was a governess to the children of Benjamin Vaughn in Hallowell, Maine, and taught other children in Maine. In 1825, Peabody set up a school in Boston, and Mary helped run it. Peabody and Mary developed an "active interest" in the work of Samuel Gridley Howe and his school, Perkins School for the Blind, after they visited the school with Mann, who sat on the board of trustees. After 1822, Peabody resided principally in Boston where she engaged in teaching. She also became a writer and a prominent figure in the Transcendental movement.Peabody and her sister Mary operated a school in Brookline, Massachusetts, from 1825 to 1832, when there was a scandal about finances. Peabody opened a school for women to empower women. She held reading parties, gave lectures, and conducted discussions on a variety of subjects. During 1834 and 1835, Peabody worked as an assistant teacher to Amos Bronson Alcott at his experimental Temple School in Boston. After the school closed, Peabody published Record of a School, outlining the plan of the school and Alcott's philosophy of early childhood education, which had drawn on German models. Kindergarten: In 1859 or 1860, Peabody opened the first public kindergarten in the country on Beacon Hill in Boston with her sister Mary. They influenced the creation of public kindergarten schools. The school taught reading, writing, arithmetic, gymnastics, singing, and French. They encouraged moral and positive social engagement among the children.[18] The sisters wrote the Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide in 1863 to provide information about how to set up and operate a kindergarten Peabody published and authored a number of works, including this selection:
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When Peabody opened her kindergarten in 1860, the practice of providing formal schooling for children younger than six was largely confined to Germany. She had a particular interest in the educational methods of Friedrich Fröbel, particularly after meeting one of his students, Margarethe Schurz, in 1859. In 1867, Peabody visited Germany to study Fröbel's teachings more closely. Through her kindergarten and as editor of the Kindergarten Messenger (1873–1877), Peabody helped establish kindergarten as an accepted institution in American education. In 1877, she organized the American Froebel Union.[2] She also wrote numerous books in support of the cause. The extent of her influence is apparent in a statement submitted to Congress on February 12, 1897, in support of free kindergartens:
The advantage to the community in utilizing the age from 4 to 6 in training the hand and eye; in developing the habits of cleanliness, politeness, self-control, urbanity, industry; in training the mind to understand numbers and geometric forms, to invent combinations of figures and shapes, and to represent them with the pencil—these and other valuable lessons… will, I think, ultimately prevail in securing to us the establishment of this beneficent institution in all the city school systems of our country. In 1840, Peabody established the West Street Bookshop near Beacon Hill and Boston Common in Boston and had a home above the bookstore where her sisters and parents lived with her. Sophia and Mary lived there until they were married. Peabody purchased foreign journals and books for her business, which was part bookstore, a lending library, and a place for scholars, liberal thinkers, and transcendentalists to meet. It was there that Margaret Fuller held "Conversations" for women beginning on November 6, 1839. Topics for these discussions and debates included fine arts, history, mythology, literature, and nature. Fuller served as the "nucleus of conversation" and hoped to answer the "great questions" facing women: "What were we born to do? How shall we do it? which so few ever propose to themselves 'till their best years are gone by",[31] Many figures in the woman's rights movement took part, including Sophia Dana Ripley, Caroline Sturgis, and Maria White Lowell. Peabody lived above the bookstore until 1852 when the bookstore and library closed down. Members of the Transcendentalist movement had begun to disperse since the mid-1840s, and income from the bookstore gradually declined. In 2011, the Boston Landmarks Commission designated the building a Boston Landmark. After Peabody shut down the West Street Bookshop in 1852, she moved in with her parents in West Newton, Massachusetts, and cared for them. Peabody moved in with her sister Mary in Concord in 1859. Peabody died on January 3, 1894, aged 89. She is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. 
Elizabeth Peabody Museum
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