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Show UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY this time philosophers and educators such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Claud Adrien Helvetius, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi redefined the Middle Age idea that children were mini-adults to be used as servants in homes to a different view that encouraged the treatment and education of children consistent with their age.1 Friedrich Froebel was one of the most prominent and influential nineteenth century proponents of kindergarten education.2 His ideas were brought to the United States by German immigrants in the 1850s. 3 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody became an enthusiastic American follower of Froebel’s theories in the 1860s.4 By the 1870s Peabody not only urged the establishment of kindergartens but she also called for the creation of kindergarten training schools. Due to her direct influence, a number of Froebel and kindergarten associations were formed throughout the United States in the 1880s. Elizabeth Peabody believed “... that the average woman is sufficiently gifted by nature to make a good kindergartner… one who could not be educated to become a kindergartner, should never dare to become a mother.”5 Although kindergarten education was a womanly duty, it required appropriate training: “any soundly cultured, intelligent, genial-tempered young woman, who loves children, can appreciate and practice it [kindergarten work], if —and only if—she is trained by a teacher.”6 These ideas regarding kindergarten reached Utah more gradually where Camilla Cobb, adopted daughter of German immigrant and educator Karl G. Maeser, opened the first kindergarten in 1874 after attending Dr. Adolph Douai’s training school in New Jersey.7 The kindergarten was established in 1 For more information about educators in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see: S. P. ChaubeAkhilesh Chaube, Western Educational Thinkers (New Delhi, India: Concept Publishing Company, 2002). 2 Friedrich Froebel was a German pedagogue who recognized that little children have unique needs and capabilities. He developed the word “kindergarten” and also the concept of early childhood education. In Froebel’s theory the kindergarten is a place for children where they can observe and interact with nature, and also a location where they themselves can grow and develop in freedom from arbitary political and social imperatives. For more information about Froebel and his method, see Joachim Liebschner, A Child’s Work: Freedom and Guidance in Froebel’s Educational Theory and Practice (Cambridge, UK: Lutherworth Press, 2006). 3 Kristen Dombkowski Nawrotzki, “The Anglo-American Kindergarten Movements and Early Education in England and the USA, 1950-1965,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2005), 42. 4 Elizabeth Peabody was an educator, philosopher, and writer. As a literature lover she opened a bookstore in her hometown, Boston. She was able to read in ten different languages and translated the first English version of a Buddhist scripture. Peabody was an advocate of antislavery and Transcendentalism. She also made efforts for the rights of the Paiute Indians. For additional details about Elizabeth Peabody’s life, see: Bruce A. Ronda, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer On Her Own Terms (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). 5 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Lectures in the Training Schools for Kindergartners (Boston: D. C. Heath & Company, 1897), 16. 6 Elizabeth Peabody, Moral Culture of Infancy, and Kindergarten Guide (New York: J. W. Schemerhorn & Co., 1870), iii. 7 As a new convert to Mormonism, Camilla Cobb came to Utah from Germany in 1857. She taught in her private elementary school and served in the LDS Primary Association for thirty-seven years. Catherine Britsch Frantz, “Camilla Clara Mieth Cobb. Founder of the Utah Kindergarten,” in Colleen Whitley, ed., Worth Their Salt,Too (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000), 45. 134 |
