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Show SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, MARRIOTT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH KINDERGARTEN MOVEMENT institution.27 Like its predecessor, the Free Children participate in a school Kindergarten Association also considered its outing. most important duty to ratify free public kindergartens. In 1895 the Free Kindergarten Association succeeded in securing passage of a school law permitting attendance of children four to six years of age, with the cost to be covered by the school district. Thanks to this campaign, Utah included kindergarten as an integral part of its school system and as a provision of the new state constitution.28 On March 29, 1895, LDS women, including Sarah M. Kimball, Ellis R. Shipp, Emmeline B. Wells, and Mary Isabelle Horne, met in the home of Georgiana Fox Young, to establish the Utah Kindergarten Association for the purpose of opening kindergartens by Mormons and promoting the usefulness of kindergarten education among Mormon mothers. The Association established five kindergartens, namely in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Wards as well as in Forest Dale. Graduates of the Brigham Young Academy (BYA) kindergarten department and those students who completed the Utah Kindergarten Association’s kindergarten training taught in all five of the ward kindergartens.29 Like the 27 Regarding the history of the Neighborhood House see: Lela Horn Richards, Fifty Years of Neighborhood House 1894-1944 (Salt Lake City: Neighborhood House and Day Nursery Association, 1944). 28 Article X Section 2 of The Constitution of the State of Utah, 1895, states: “The Public School system shall include kindergarten schools, common schools, consisting of primary and grammar grades, high schools, an Agricultural College, a University, and such other schools as the Legislature may establish.” 29 Utah Daily Chronicle, May 21, 1895. 139 |
