The Anglo-American kindergarten movements and early education in England and United States of America, 1850--1965.

Abstract

This dissertation compares the movements for kindergarten education in England and the USA from 1850 to 1865. These movements, inspired by the work of German educator Friedrich Froebel (1782--1852) and led by middle- and upper-class women, advocated a new, humanist-inspired form of early education that contrasted with Anglo-American traditions of rote-learning and Three Rs instruction. Although the kindergarten class is their best-known contribution, these movements for Froebelian education in England and the USA neither began nor ended with the issue of public school kindergartens. Divided chronologically into two halves (1850--1917 and 1918--1965), this study argues that a complex and changing combination of structural and ideological factors made the kindergarten attractive to Anglo-American social and educational reformers who in turn mobilized long-lived movements for free and universal access to particular forms of early childhood education. In both countries, the efforts of twentieth-century kindergarten activitists shaped and were influenced by national and international movements for child study, nursery schools, compensatory education and child care. This study locates the transnational history of the kindergarten amidst context-specific responses to educational innovation; in perceptions about relationships between the family, experts, and the state; in definitions of childhood; in the professionalization of Anglo-American early childhood educators; and in the nature of Euro-American intellectual affinities and exchange. While the provision of early childhood education in England and the USA was determined by nation-specific policy contexts, the values and pedagogics promoted by early childhood educators and educationists transcended national boundaries and were significantly shaped by processes of transatlantic exchange.