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

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.