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From Perfection to Habit: Moral Training in the American Kindergarten, 1860–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Dom Cavallo
Dom Cavallo*
Affiliation:
The State University of New York at Stony Brook
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Extract

Ever since Nina Vandewalker wrote the first comprehensive history of the American kindergarten in 1908 historians of education have thought of the 1890s as a period of transformation in the theory and practice of kindergarten pedagogy. Historians agree that progressive kindergartners inspired by the child-centered psychologies of G. Stanley Hall and John Dewey initiated a critique of the Froebelian pedagogy upon which the kindergarten curriculum had been based since its introduction into the United States in the 1860s. Historians also agree that by 1920, after a long and sometimes bitter struggle, progressives emerged as victors in the battle with Froebelians for control of the curriculum. What historians have not agreed upon are the social import and educational consequences of this struggle.

Type
Article II
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , Summer 1976 , pp. 147 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. For perceptive discussions of these issues see Weber, Evelyn, The Kindergarten, Its Encounter With Educational Thought In America (N. Y., 1969), pp. 47–93.Google Scholar

2. Vandewalker, Nina, The Kindergarten In American Education (N. Y., 1908), pp. 243–245.Google Scholar

3. Lazerson, Marvin, “Urban Reform And The Schools: Kindergartens In Massachusetts, 1870–1915,” in Katz, Michael, ed., Education In American History (N. Y., 1973), pp. 228–236.Google Scholar

4. In 1870, ten years after Elizabeth Peabody founded the first kindergarten in the U. S., there were less than twelve kindergartens in the country and only one teacher training school. By 1880 over four hundred kindergartens in thirty states were being supplied with professionally trained young women by ten training schools. Vandewalker, , Kindergarten, p. 23, Weber, , Kindergarten, p. 36.Google Scholar

5. Committee of Nineteen, Pioneers Of The Kindergarten in America (N. Y., 1924), pp. 22–23; Strickland, Charles, “The Child And The Race,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of Wisconsin, 1963), pp. 117, 126–129; Smith, Timothy, “Progressivism In American Education,” Harvard Educational Review, 31 (Spring, 1961): 180; Vandewalker, pp. 14–16; Weber, pp. 2–3, 23–29.Google Scholar

6. Hunter, Thomas, “The Kindergarten In Normal Training,” in Barnard, Henry, ed., Kindergarten And Child Culture Papers (Hartford, Conn., 1884), p. 536.Google Scholar

7. Blow, Susan, “Kindergarten Nursery Songs,” in Barnard, , p. 599.Google Scholar

8. Harris, William T., “The Kindergarten In The Public School System,” in Barnard, , p. 636.Google Scholar

9. Lazerson in Katz, , pp. 225–228; Adler, Felix, “Free Kindergartens And Workingman's School,” in Barnard, , p. 687; Mann, Mary Peabody, “The Kindergarten And Homes,” in Barnard, , pp. 554–556; Peabody, Elizabeth, “The Origin and Growth of the Kindergarten,” Education, 2 (May, 1882): 507–527; Peabody, Elizabeth, “Froebel's Principles And Methods In The Nursery,” in Barnard, p. 570.Google Scholar

10. Blow, Susan, Educational Issues In The Kindergarten (N. Y., 1908), pp. 56–57; Blow, Susan, Symbolic Education (N. Y., 1894), pp. 19–20; Blow, in Barnard, , p. 576; Harris in Barnard, p. 638.Google Scholar

11. Peabody, Elizabeth, “Record Of A School,” in Miller, Perry, ed., The Transcendentalists, An Anthology (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 142.Google Scholar

12. Alcott quoted in Miller, , p. 141; Weber, , p. 5; Blow, , Symbolic, p. 191.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., pp. 36, 191; Weber, , pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., pp. 36–38; Committee of Nineteen, The Kindergarten (Boston, 1913), p. 28; Blow, , Symbolic, pp. 59, 116–118.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. 135; Harris, William T., et al, “The School Of Psychology,” Kindergarten Magazine, 13 (1900): 595.Google Scholar

16. Kilpatrick, William, Froebel's Kindergarten Principles Critically Examined (N.Y., 1916), pp. 160–161.Google Scholar

17. Blow in Barnard, , p. 606.Google Scholar

18. Committee of Nineteen, Kindergarten, p. 93; Kilpatrick, , p. 112.Google Scholar

19. Blow, , Symbolic, p. 34.Google Scholar

20. Katz, Michael, The Irony Of Early School Reform (Boston, 1968), pp. 117–118.Google Scholar

21. Vandewalker, , pp. 23, 67–69.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., pp. 63, 111.Google Scholar

23. Weber, , pp. 66–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Vandewalker, , pp. 232–238.Google Scholar

25. Hall, G. Stanley, “Recreation And Reversion,” Pedagogical Seminary, 22 (Dec. 1914): 510–520; Educational Problems, 2 vols. (N. Y., 1911); “Child Study: The Basis Of Exact Education,” Forum, 16 (Dec, 1893): 429–441.Google Scholar

26. Dewey, John, The School And Society (Chicago, 1899), pp. 113–115; Dewey, John and Dewey, Evelyn, Schools of Tomorrow (N. Y., 1915), pp. 105–120; Dewey, John, Democracy And Education (N. Y., 1916), pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., pp. 39–48.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., pp. 120–154, 164–167, 196–197, 418.Google Scholar

29. For examples see Sanborn, Laura, “The Effect of Vigorous Play on Body Control,” Kindergarten Magazine, 14 (Sept., 1901), pp. 531–534; Fuller, Grace, The Use of Kindergarten Gifts (Boston, 1918); Weber, , pp. 50–55, 97.Google Scholar

30. Ibid.Google Scholar

31. Thorndike, Edward, Notes On Child Study (N. Y., 1903), pp. 42–44; Education (N. Y., 1912), p. 92; Educational Psychology, vol. 1 (N. Y., 1913), p. 280.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., pp. 227–228.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., pp. 1, 89, 227.Google Scholar

34. “The Kindergarten Curriculum,” Bureau Of Education Bulletin, 16 (1919): 6–7.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., p. 11.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., pp. 12–17. The fact that the project method incorporated ideas from both Dewey and Thorndike does not, of course, mean that their educational psychologies were identical. Dewey never surrendered his commitment to an inner-realm of moral autonomy, a commitment rooted in his early philosophical idealism. However, this did not deter Dewey from searching for a “scientific” treatment of the moral decision-making process. If, as Dewey maintained, ideals were “facts,” then the process which created them must be as susceptible to scientific analysis as any other physical fact. If the individual analyzed the social conditions in which his moral action took place, and could fit his desires and goals within a framework that detailed their antecedent conditions and potential consequences, the analysis of his “objective” social situation became normative. As Morton White has pointed out, this led Dewey to identify the normative with the factual in his ethical theory. And the identification of the normative with the factual was the basis of the project method of curriculum organization. It is no surprise, therefore, that so many disciples of Dewey among progressive kindergartners subscribed to Thorndike's S-R theory without renouncing Dewey. See, Dewey, John, “Logical Conditions Of A Scientific Treatment Of Morality,” in Archambault, Reginald, ed., John Dewey On Education (N. Y., 1964), pp. 22–60; White, Morton, Social Thought In America (Boston, 1947), pp. 212–216.Google Scholar

37. Hill, Patty S., “Introduction,” in Burke, Agnes, et al, A Conduct Curriculum For The Kindergarten And First Grade (N. Y., 1923), pp. xxi–xiii.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., p. xvi.Google Scholar

39. Kilpatrick, William, “The Project Method,” Teachers College Record, 19 (Sept., 1918): 320–330.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., p. 329.Google Scholar

41. Strickland, , pp. 121–123.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., pp. 126–129.Google Scholar

43. Wiebe, Robert, The Search For Order (N. Y., 1967), p. 133.Google Scholar

44. Ibid., pp. 129–166.Google Scholar

45. For another example of this style of moral training see, Cavallo, Dom, “Children's Play And Social Reform: The Movement To Organize Children's Play During The Progressive Era,” History Of Childhood Quarterly (forthcoming, Spring, 1976).Google Scholar