‘Like sending coals to Newcastle:’ Impressions from and of the Anglo‐American Kindergarten Movements

Abstract

Developed by the German pedagogue Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852), the Kindergarten offered a revolutionary educational program for young children. In the mid‐nineteenth century, after several decades of limited success in the German states, Froebel’s Kindergarten began to be transplanted to other countries, including the USA and England. The transplants did not grow independently of one another, however. Connections between the earliest US and English kindergartners (kindergarten teachers) contributed to transatlantic networks very much like those described by Daniel T. Rodgers in Atlantic Crossings (Cambridge, MA, 1998), an analysis of turn‐of‐the‐century transnational progressive politics. From the 1850s onward, as national kindergarten movements developed, a loose Anglo‐American network of kindergarten advocates took shape. This network ensured that the US and English kindergarten movements maintained a common identity and shared ideologies even while facing different circumstances. While the long‐term connections between English and US kindergartners had positive effects on both, participation in this transatlantic community left English kindergartners feeling behindhand compared with their American counterparts. English kindergartners’ lack of success led them to support the nursery school, a new and distinctly English version of the kindergarten that was eventually much celebrated in the USA. Rodgers’ model of reticulated transnational progressive exchange helps to explain the initiation and development of the English and US kindergarten movements as national manifestations of a transnational phenomenon.

Notes

¹ Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998: 33.

² Meyer, John W., and Francisco O. Ramirez. “The World Institutionalization of Education.” In Discourse Formation in Comparative Education, edited by Jürgen Schriewer. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000: 111–32.

³ Emphasis in the original. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 24.

⁴ Baylor, Ruth. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: Kindergarten Pioneer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965: 128; Allen, Ann Taylor. Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800–1914. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991.

⁵ Denner, Erika. Das Fröbelverständnis der Fröbelianer: Studien zur Fröbelrezeption im 19. Jahrhundert. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 1988: 10–25, 91; Heiland, Helmut. Fröbelbewegung und Fröbelforschung; bedeutende Persönlichkeiten der Fröbelbewegung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. In Beiträge zur Fröbelforschung. Vol. 3, edited by Helmut Heiland. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1992: ch. 3.

⁶ Baylor, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, 29; von Bülow‐Wendhausen, Bertha, Freiin. The life of the Baroness von Marenholtz‐Bülow. New York: Harison, 1901.

⁷ Cunningham, Peter. “Innovators, Networks and Structures: Towards a Prosopography of Progressivism.” History of Education 30, no. 5 (2001): 433–52; Nawrotzki, Kristen Dombkowski. “The Anglo‐American Kindergarten Movements and Early Education in England and the USA, 1850–1965.” Doctoral dissertation, Ann Arbor, 2005; Brehony, Kevin J. “The reception and obstacles to the implementation of the kindergarten in England 1850–1900.” In Naar Duits model: De receptie van Duitse pedagogische idealen uit vroege negentiende eeuw (Jaarboek voor de geschiedenis van opvoeding en onderwijs, 2003), edited by Nelleke Bakker, Hans van Crombrugge, and Marjoke Rietveld‐van Wingerden. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003: 21–42.

⁸ Leibschner, Joachim. Foundations of Progressive Education: The History of the National Froebel Society. Cambridge: Lutterworth, 1991. Pruitt, Lisa. Guide to the Archives of the Association for Childhood Education International. College Park: University of Maryland College Park Libraries, 1988: 1.

⁹ Nawrotzki. The Anglo–American Kindergarten Movements, chapter 3.

¹⁰ Brehony, “Reception and Obstacles”; Lazerson, Marvin. “Urban Reform and the Schools: Kindergartens in Massachusetts, 1870–1915.” In Education in American History, edited by Michael B. Katz. New York: Praeger, 1973: 220–36.

¹¹ Hailmann, William N. “Adaptation of Froebel’s System of Education to American Institutions.” Addresses and Proceedings—National Education Association of the United States (1872): 141–7.

¹² Murray, E. R. The Story of Infant Schools and Kindergartens. London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1911; Jenkins, “Froebel’s Disciples in America”; Baylor, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.

¹³ The apocryphal report is said to have been published as “Report on the 1854 International Exhibit of Educational Systems and Materials in London.” American Journal of Education (1855). See, e.g. Beatty, Barbara. Preschool Education in America: The Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995: 58.

¹⁴ Mitchell, Muirhead. “Rev. M. Mitchell’s General Report.” In Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education 1854–5, Committee of Council on Education. London, 1855.

¹⁵ Baylor, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.

¹⁶ “End of the Kindergarten Conference.” New York Times, 3 April 1880: 3.

¹⁷ Barnard, Henry. Papers on Froebel’s Kindergarten, with Suggestions on Principles and Methods of Child Culture in Different Countries. Hartford: Office of Barnard’s American Journal of Education, 1881.

¹⁸ Lyschinska, Mary J. “The Kindergarten Principle in Infant Schools.” In Barnard, Papers on Froebel’s Kindergarten, 526–28; Manning, E. Adelaide. “Some Difficulties and Encouragements in Kindergarten Work,” in ibid., 514–22.

¹⁹ E. Adelaide Manning to Elizabeth P. Peabody, 11 September 1882, cf. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Papers, Yellow Springs, OH.

²⁰ Froebel’s first work to be published in English was Mutter‐ und Kose‐Lieder, published in England in 1885. The International Education Series co‐published at least five kindergarten books in New York and London in the 1890s; at least twelve other book‐length translations, exegeses and teachers’ guides were co‐published in the USA and England from 1869 to 1910.

²¹ By 1912 the Froebel Society’s library regularly received sixty‐five English and US educational periodicals—some via subscription, most as trades for its Child Life. Liebschner, Foundations of Progressive Education, 66.

²² Hill, Patty Smith. “Editorial Notes.” The Elementary School Teacher 9, no. 1 (1908): 46.

²³ Brehony, Kevin J. “An ‘Undeniable’ and ‘Disastrous’ Influence? Dewey and English Education (1895–1939).” Oxford Review of Education 23, no. 4 (1997): 427–45; Findlay, Maria E. “Educational Issues in the Kindergarten: Miss Blow and Dr. Dewey.” Child Life XI, no. 47 (1909): 77–80; id. “Educational Issues in the Kindergarten: Miss Blow and Dr. G. Stanley Hall.” Child Life XI, no. 46 (1909): 54–56; Owen, Grace. “An English Student’s Impressions of American Kindergartens.” Child Life II, no. 6 (1900): 97–102.

²⁴ Nawrotzki. The Anglo‐American Kindergarten Movements, ch. 6.

²⁵ These included The Kindergarten Magazine (1891–1906), The Kindergarten and First Grade, and The Elementary School Teacher.

²⁶ Findlay, Maria E. “The Kindergarten Movement in America.” Child Life II, no. 7 (1900): 158–63; M. E. C. “American Kindergartens.” Child Life VII, no. 29 (1906): 19–22; Dalton, K. B. “Kindergartens in America.” Child Life IX, no. 35 (1907): 131–3.

²⁷ Owen. “An English Student’s Impressions”, 102.

²⁸ Manning to Peabody, 11 September 1882.

²⁹ Brehony. “Reception and Obstacles”.

³⁰ Emily A. E. Shirreff to Elizabeth P. Peabody, n.d. (1885), cf. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Papers, Yellow Springs, OH.

³¹ Michaelis, Emilie. “A Lecture on the Kindergarten.” Child Life II, no. 4 (1882): 53–54.

³² Shirreff to Peabody, 1885.

³³ Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 368.

³⁴ M. E. C., “American Kindergartens”, 20.

³⁶ Arundel, Lilian. “Some Educational Work in other Lands (II).” Child Life XI, no. 46 (1909): 50–54.

³⁵ “Free Kindergartens in Great Britain.” Child Life VII, no. 26 (1905): 94–100.

³⁷ Dalton, “Kindergartens in America”, 131.

³⁸ Woodham‐Smith, “History of the Froebel Movement”; McMillan, Margaret. The Nursery School. London: J.M. Dent, 1919; New York: E.P. Dutton, 1930.

³⁹ Nawrotzki, Kristen D., and Kevin J. Brehony. “Saving Money or Saving Children?” Paper presented at the European Educational Research Conference, Hamburg, Germany, September 2003.

⁴⁰ Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 25.