5 - American and German Women in the Kindergarten Movement, 1850-1914

Summary

Boston reformer Elizabeth Peabody, though duly respectful of the awesome intellectual and bureaucratic authority wielded by St. Louis School Superintendent William Torrey Harris, had no hesitation in arguing with him. In 1877, Harris wrote that the Froebel kindergarten, which he had introduced into the St. Louis school system in 1873, would have to be “Americanized” in order to meet the needs of American children. Peabody responded indignantly, “I hope . . . that you will distinctly say that by Americanizing it you do not mean departing from Froebel's principle. . . .Froebel in his lifetime specially recognized the fact that the spirit of society in America was more coincident with his system than that of his Fatherland. He thought of emigrating to establish it here.” Historians of American early childhood education such as Michael Steven Shapiro often picture the Americanization of the kindergarten chiefly as a movement away from its German counterpart in response to uniquely American conditions. However, this process did not show American rejection of foreign influences, but rather the continuing relationship of German and American cultures. Although the American kindergarten developed differently from its German counterpart, German influences were important at each stage in its development from 1856 to 1914. German and American kindergarten activists stayed in contact, visited each other, and often used the differences in their situations and ideas as a basis for cross-cultural dialogue.