Kindergarten

Historical Perspectives

Froebel's “child's garden” was intended for children between the ages of 3 and 7 and focused on development through play, music, movement, interaction with the outdoors, and opportunities to engage in independent and creative activities. Froebel felt that the best setting for children was a place where they could explore their own interests, and believed that children learned through active exploration with materials and interaction with others. These views of children and learning were considered radical at the time.

Froebel's kindergarten was brought to the United States in 1857 by Margarethe Schurz, who opened the first Froebelian program, in Wisconsin, and by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, who opened a kindergarten in Boston in 1861. Between 1890 and 1910, America's interest in kindergarten grew and continued to be based on the belief that early formal academic instruction was detrimental to the development of young children. Over the next several decades new kindergartens were established in urban areas impacted by poverty. Most kindergartens were privately funded until the 1920s, when they began to be more commonly included in public schools.

Froebel's philosophy continued to drive kindergarten practice until the 1970s, when the educational value of early childhood programs began to be recognized. In reaction to the Soviet Union's successful 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, American education policymakers became more aware of the emerging research on cognitive growth in infants and young children and began to focus on intervention programs such as Head Start. With more mothers working outside of the home, the attention to quality in early [Page 498]childhood programming was growing in importance. All of these factors contributed to a greater focus on the academic dimensions of child development. As a result, kindergarten experienced a shift from a play-based curriculum to one that focused on the formal teaching of discrete skills, which was strongly reinforced during the assessment movement of the 1990s. As a result, kindergarten classrooms became more like first-grade classrooms.

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