First Kindergarten | |
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| Location | 919 Charles St. Watertown, Wisconsin |
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| Coordinates | 43°11′04″N88°42′26″W / 43.18444°N 88.70722°W |
| NRHP reference No. | 72000055 |
| Added to NRHP | February 23, 1972 |
The First Kindergarten in Watertown, Wisconsin, is the building that housed the first kindergarten in the United States, opened in 1856. [1] It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 [2] [3] for its significance to the history of education. [4]
Margarethe Schurz (née Meyer) was born in Hamburg, Germany, and at age sixteen listened to a series of lectures from the German educator Friedrich Fröbel. [3] In that time and place, young children were often viewed as little beasts to be tamed so that they could become productive workers. Fröbel instead saw natural curiosity in children, which he encouraged with play, carefully chosen toys, music, stories, and nature study. He compared children to plants and a teacher to the gardener who helps them grow and bloom - hence the "garden of children." [5]
Margarethe's family was prosperous and socially progressive, favoring the unification of the many small German states into one democratic nation. After losing in the revolutions of 1848-49, some of the family left Germany. In London, Margarethe's sister started a kindergarten, and Margarethe helped, gaining experience. [6] There she married Carl Schurz, a fellow exile who fled Germany after serving as an officer on the losing side in the revolutions. [7] They immigrated to the U.S. in 1852, and in 1856 moved to Watertown. [6]
By this time Margarethe had a three-year-old daughter Agathe, and she started a kindergarten in her home for her daughter and four cousins, [3] conducting classes in German. [8] Soon others wanted the same for their children, so she expanded and moved her kindergarten to a small building in town. That building is the subject of this article, and it housed the first kindergarten in the U.S. [4] It was a one-room schoolhouse.[ citation needed ] Margarethe directed the kindergarten until 1858, when the Schurzes moved to Milwaukee. [6] Carl became a lawyer, a Republican, a key supporter of Lincoln among German-Americans, a major general in the Union Army during the Civil War, and United States Secretary of the Interior. [7]
After the Schurzes left, the Watertown kindergarten operated sporadically until the First World War, when it closed due to suspicion of all things German. [6] The school building is a simple 1.5 stories with boxed cornices and clapboard siding, 18 by 24 feet. In the years after it was a school, it served various uses: [9] cigar factory, fish store, and religious book store. [8] While it was a store, the front was substantially altered. In 1956 it was threatened with demolition, and the Watertown Historical Society moved the structure from its original location on North Second St. to its current site alongside the Octagon House and began to restore it as the kindergarten building. The building now serves as a museum. [9]
The Schurz home, in which Margarethe began her kindergarten, burned and no longer exists, so this schoolhouse is the best representative of that first kindergarten. Because this building was moved from its original location and substantially changed, the National Register doesn't consider it of great architectural significance. It does consider it significant to the history of education at a national level, because Schurz's school in Watertown was the first kindergarten in the U.S. [4]
Mention has been made of two attempts to found kindergartens, perhaps as early as 1849-1850, in Belleville, Illinois. There is no record of whether the attempts succeeded. One of the entrepreneurs, J. Fraus, married Marie Boelte who had a reputation as a kindergarten pioneer. [10]
Progressive education, or educational progressivism, is a pedagogical movement that began in the late 19th century and has persisted in various forms to the present. In Europe, progressive education took the form of the New Education Movement. The term progressive was engaged to distinguish this education from the traditional curricula of the 19th century, which was rooted in classical preparation for the early-industrial university and strongly differentiated by social class. By contrast, progressive education finds its roots in modern, post-industrial experience. Most progressive education programs have these qualities in common:
Watertown is a city in Dodge and Jefferson counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Most of the city's population is in Jefferson County. Division Street, several blocks north of downtown, marks the county line. The population of Watertown was 22,926 at the 2020 census. Of this, 14,674 were in Jefferson County, and 8,252 were in Dodge County. Watertown is the largest city in the Watertown-Fort Atkinson micropolitan area, which also includes Johnson Creek and Jefferson.
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.
Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th century in Germany, Bavaria and Alsace to serve children whose parents both worked outside home. The term was coined by German pedagogue Friedrich Fröbel, whose approach globally influenced early-years education. Today, the term is used in many countries to describe a variety of educational institutions and learning spaces for children ranging from two to six years of age, based on a variety of teaching methods.
Carl Schurz was a German revolutionary and an American statesman, journalist, and reformer. He migrated to the United States after the German revolutions of 1848–1849 and became a prominent member of the new Republican Party. After serving as a Union general in the American Civil War, he helped found the short-lived Liberal Republican Party and became a prominent advocate of civil service reform. Schurz represented Missouri in the United States Senate and was the 13th United States Secretary of the Interior.
The Forty-Eighters (48ers) were Europeans who participated in or supported the Revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe. In the German Confederation, the Forty-Eighters favoured unification of Germany, a more democratic government, and guarantees of human rights. Disappointed at the failure of the revolution to bring about the reform of the system of government in Germany or the Austrian Empire, and sometimes on the government's wanted list because of their involvement in the revolution, they gave up their old lives to try again abroad, emigrating to Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They included Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, among others. A large number were respected, politically active, wealthy, and well-educated, and found success in their new countries.
Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel or Froebel was a German pedagogue, a student of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who laid the foundation for modern education based on the recognition that children have unique needs and capabilities. He created the concept of the kindergarten and coined the word, which soon entered the English language as well. He also developed the educational toys known as Froebel gifts.
The Schoolhouse Blizzard, also known as the Schoolchildren's Blizzard, School Children's Blizzard, or Children's Blizzard, hit the U.S. Great Plains on January 12, 1888. With an estimated 235 deaths, it is the world's 10th deadliest winter storm on record.
Susan Elizabeth Blow was an American educator who opened the first successful public kindergarten in the United States. She was known as the "Mother of the Kindergarten."
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Gustav Philipp Koerner, also spelled Gustave or Gustavus Koerner, was a German-American revolutionary, journalist, lawyer, politician, judge and statesman in Illinois and Germany, and a Colonel of the U.S. Army who was a confessed enemy of slavery. He married on 17 June 1836 in Belleville Sophia Dorothea Engelmann ; they had 9 children. He belonged to the co-founders and was one of the first members of the Grand Old Party, and was a close confidant of Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd, and had an essential role in his nomination and election for president in 1860.
Friedrich (von) Beust, German soldier, revolutionary and political activist and Swiss reform pedagogue, was the son of Prussian Major Karl Alexander von Beust. Beust was born in the Odenwald, in whose great forests, as a young man, he observed Nature in her large and small aspects and collected her creatures. He learned to ride a horse in the royal stables. In 1834, he became an ensign in the 17th Prussian regiment. Under the guidance of a captain, he drew maps in his free time. He entered the division school at Düsseldorf where he was especially interested in geography, which students of Carl Ritter were teaching. He continued his studies of cartography and also science, especially anatomy. In 1845, he was ordered to Fortress Minden, where he came to the conclusion he could not fit into Prussian military discipline, bitterly resigned in 1848, and became a political activist.
Margarethe Meyer-Schurz was a German-American woman who opened the first German-language kindergarten in the United States at Watertown, Wisconsin.
Westliche Post was a German-language daily newspaper published in St. Louis, Missouri. The Westliche Post was Republican in politics. Carl Schurz was a part owner for a time, and served as a U.S. Senator from Missouri for a portion of that time.
Bertha Ronge was an activist in the causes of childhood education, women's education and religious freedom. She established the kindergarten movement in England, where she founded the first three kindergartens in London, Manchester (1859) and Leeds (1860). She followed the precepts of Friedrich Fröbel, who advocated the use of structured play activities to promote learning. Bertha Ronge was largely responsible for Fröbel's kindergarten concept gaining a foothold in England.
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