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Show L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY Women and the Kindergarten Movement in Utah By ANDREA VENTILLA T he account of the kindergarten movement in Utah in the late nineteenth century offers an opportunity to reevaluate important issues in Utah’s history regarding women and education. These include the role of women and educational associations of the territory in fostering the kindergarten movement, the establishment of the first kindergartens and kindergarten training schools in Utah as well as the role of religious organizations in that effort, the reaction of the territorial and state education superintendents to the developing kindergarten movement, and how and when the women of Utah were able to make kindergarten attendance free and part of public education. Essential to the understanding of the early kindergarten movement in Utah is the arrival during the 1870s of missionaries and educators from Protestant denominations who saw education as the means to win converts from the Mormon faith. Consequently, the attitudes of Mormon and non-Mormon women toward each other The kindergarten movement in helped shape a united effort to promote Utah was enhanced by the training at Utah’s universities. These kindergartens. students and faculty at Brigham Paradigms about children and childhood discovery began to change during the eigh- Young University were members teenth century Enlightenment in Europe. At of the Myster Club in 1906. Andrea Ventilla is a PhD candidate in the Department of History of Education at the University of Pecs, Hungary. She would like to thank Angela Hagen and Gabor Ventilla for their assistance. This article received the 2012 Helen Papanikolas Award for the best student paper on Utah Women’s History. 133 |
