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JOHN DEWEY'S HIGH HOPES FOR PLAY: DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION AND PROGRESSIVE ERA CONTROVERSIES OVER PLAY IN KINDERGARTEN AND PRESCHOOL EDUCATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2017

Barbara Beatty
Barbara Beatty*
Affiliation:
Wellesley College
*
email: bbeatty@wellesley.edu
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Abstract

Exploring John Dewey's hopes for play reveals much about the key role he thought it played in education in a democratic society. Placing Democracy and Education in the context of Progressive Era controversies over play in the kindergarten movement and preschool education illustrates Dewey's view that teacher-guided free play could reconcile the dilemma of the need for individual agency and social discipline. Dewey built upon and critiqued the scripted play pedagogy of kindergarten founder Friedrich Froebel. Drawing in part from progressive kindergarten teachers, Dewey constructed his own notion of play that he argued fostered experiential learning, voluntary participation, and social order. For Dewey, play and work were naturally linked in ways in which the needs of the child and society coalesced. Analysis of sources from the kindergarten movement and the Sub-primary Department at the University of Chicago Laboratory School provide background for interpreting some of Dewey's writings on play, which influenced modern contests over how young children learn and should be taught.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 424 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2017 

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References

NOTES

1 Dewey, John, Democracy and Education (New York: MacMillan, 1916), 58 Google Scholar; John Dewey, “Froebel's Educational Principles,” The Elementary School Record, Number Five, Kindergarten (June 1900): 143. I want to thank Ken Hawes and Christina Groeger for their helpful comments and suggestions.

2 With sources on play and how to define it too numerous to mention, I focus here concretely on what Dewey said about play. For a history, see, among others, Chudacoff, Howard P., Children at Play: An American History (New York: NYU Press, 2007)Google Scholar. For more on play and work see, among others, Brehony, Kevin J., “Working at Play or Playing at Work? A Froebelian Paradox Re-examined” in Kindergarten Narratives on Froebelian Education: Transnational Investigations, eds. May, Helen, Nawrotzki, Kristen, and Prochner, Larry (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 15–31 Google Scholar.

3 Froebel, Friedrich, The Education of Man, trans. Hailmann, William N. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1887), 35 Google Scholar; Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967)Google Scholar. On the ideal of the protected child, see among others, Mintz, Steven, Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

4 Kraus-Boelte, Maria and Kraus, John, Kindergarten Guide, An Illustrated Hand-book (New York, 1877)Google Scholar, quoted in Beatty, Barbara, Preschool Education in America: The Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 44 Google Scholar.

5 Rodgers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 116 Google Scholar; McGerr, Michael, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (New York: Free Press, 2003), 7 Google Scholar; Vandewalker, Nina Catharine, The Kindergarten in American Education (New York: MacMillan, 1908), 140–45Google Scholar. On German, German-American, and American kindergartens, see among others, Allen, Ann Taylor, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800–1914 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Beatty, Preschool Education; and Lascarides, V. Celia and Hinitz, Blythe F., History of Early Education (New York: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar.

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7 Beatty, 74–75, 102; Rodman Wilson Paul, “Phoebe Apperson Hearst,” George Harmon Knoles, “Jane Eliza Lathrop Stanford,” and Blodgett, Geoffrey, “Pauline Agassiz Shaw” in Notable American Women, eds. James, Edward T. and James, Janet Wilson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Lascarides and Hinitz, 511–15; Vandewalker, 73; Ann Taylor Allen, Barbara Beatty, and Roberta Wollons, “How Did the Kindergarten Movement Provide Women with Opportunities for Professional Development and Social Activism” in Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000, eds. Kathryn Sklar and Thomas Dublin, http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/projectmap.htm.

8 “A Week in the Hampton Kindergarten,” Southern Workman 36 (Oct. 1907): 537–44Google Scholar; Yates, Josephine Silone, “Education and Genetic Psychology,” Colored American Magazine 10 (1906): 293–97Google Scholar; Beatty, 108–9; Lascarides and Hinitz, 513–15.

9 Peabody, Elizabeth, “Genuine Kindergarten,” Kindergarten Messenger 3 (May 1874): 12–13 Google Scholar; Kraus, John, “The Kindergarten (Its Use and Abuse) in America” in National Education Association, Addresses and Proceedings, 1877 (Salem, OH: NEA, 1877), 205 Google Scholar; Peabody, Elizabeth, “Valedictory of the Kindergarten Messenger,” New England Journal of Education 3 (Dec. 1876): 297 Google Scholar; Cashman, Sean Dennis, America in the Gilded Age: From the Death of Lincoln to the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: NYU Press, 1984)Google Scholar; U.S. Commissioner of Education, Report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1897–98 (Washington, DC: Department of Education, 1899), 2537 Google Scholar. On Peabody, among others, see Ronda, Bruce A., ed. Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, American Renaissance Woman (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Ronda, Bruce A., Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer on Her Own Terms (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

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11 Martin, John Dewey, 164–69; Ryan, Alan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 149–53Google Scholar; Marvin Lazerson, “If All the World Were Chicago: American Education in the Twentieth Century,” History of Education Quarterly (July 1984): 165–79.

12 Mayhew, Katherine Camp and Edwards, Anna Camp, The Dewey School: The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago, 1896–1903 (New York: Appleton-Century, 1936), 8, 14, 56–73 Google Scholar; Larry Prochner and Anna Kirova, “Kindergarten at the Dewey School, University of Chicago, 1898–1903” in Kindergarten Narratives, 106. On the laboratory school, see, among others, Dewey, John, The School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1899)Google Scholar; De Pencier, Ida B., The History of the Laboratory Schools, The University of Chicago, 1896–1965 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967)Google Scholar; and Tanner, Laurel N., Dewey's Laboratory School: Lessons for Today (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

13 Prochner and Kirova, “Kindergarten at the Dewey School, University of Chicago, 1898–1903” in Kindergarten Narratives, 99–119; Durst, Anne, Women Educators in the Progressive Era: The Women behind Dewey's Laboratory School (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beatty, Preschool Education, 82–83; Beatty, Barbara, “Alice Putnam,” Macmillan Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd Ed., ed. Guthrie, James W. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 1957–59Google Scholar; Beatty, Barbara, “Anna Bryan” in American National Biography, Vol. 13, ed. Garraty, James A. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 805–6Google Scholar; Lascarides and Hinitz, 260–69. Beatty, Barbara, “Alice Putnam” and “Anna Bryan” in Historical Dictionary of American Education, ed. Altenbaugh, Richard (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 306–7, 63Google Scholar.

14 Anna Bryan, “The Letter Killeth,” Journal of Proceedings and Addresses, National Education Association, 1890: 573–75; Beatty, Barbara, “’The Letter Killeth’: Americanization and Multiculturalism in Kindergartens in the United States, 1856–1920” in Kindergartens and Cultures, ed. Wollons, Roberta (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 42–58 Google Scholar.

15 Camp and Edwards, Dewey School, 61; Scates, Georgia P., “THE SUB-PRIMARY (KINDERGARTEN) DEPARTMENT,” The Elementary School Record 1 (June 1900): 129 Google Scholar.

16 Camp and Edwards, Dewey School, 61; Georgia P. Scates, “The SUB-PRIMARY,” 129; Block, James E., The Crucible of Consent: American Child Rearing and the Forging of Liberal Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 339 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Scates, “The SUB-PRIMARY,” 134.

18 Scates, “The SUB-PRIMARY,” 138.

19 John Dewey, “Froebel's Educational Principles,” The Elementary School Record 1 (June 1900): 148, 151, 152, 154.

20 Dewey, “Froebel's Educational Principles,” 157.

21 Dewey, “Froebel's Educational Principles,” 144, 145, 144, 143.

22 Pratt, Caroline, “Pedagogy as a Creative Art” in eds. Pratt, Caroline and Stanton, Jessie, Before Books (New York: Adelphi, 1926), 8–10 Google Scholar. And see Beatty, Preschool Education, 136–42.

23 Dewey, John, “Play” and “Play and Education” in A Cyclopedia of Education, Vol. 4, ed. Monroe, Paul (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 727, 726Google Scholar; Block, Crucible of Consent.

24 Dewey, John and Dewey, Evelyn, Schools of To-Morrow (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1915), 103, 109Google Scholar.

25 Dewey and Dewey, Schools of To-Morrow, 315–16; Beatty, Preschool Education, 116–19; Lascarides and Hinitz, History of Early Childhood Education, 260–69; Kilpatrick, William Heard, The Montessori System Examined (Boston: Riverside, 1914)Google Scholar.

26 Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Barbara Beatty, “From Laws of Learning to a Science of Values: Efficiency and Morality in Edward L. Thorndike's Educational Psychology,” American Psychologist (Oct. 1998): 1145–52; Beatty, Barbara, “Psychologizing the Third R: Hall. Dewey, Thorndike, and Progressive Era Ideas on the Learning and Teaching of Arithmetic” in When Science Encounters the Child, eds. Beatty, Cahan, and Grant (New York: Teachers College Press, 2006), 35–55 Google Scholar.

27 Dewey, Democracy and Education, 58, 59, 198, 200.

28 Dewey, Democracy and Education, 205, 202, 203, 205, 206.

29 Antler, Joyce, Lucy Sprague Mitchell: The Making of a Modern Woman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

30 Beatty, Preschool Education, 126–27; Lassonde, Stephen, “Age, Schooling, and Development” in The Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World, ed. Fass, Paula S. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 211–28Google Scholar; Larry Cuban, “Why Some Reforms Last: The Case of the Kindergarten,” American Journal of Education (Feb. 1992): 166–94; Kristen Dombkowski, “Will the Real Kindergarten Please Stand Up? Defining and Redefining the Twentieth-Century U.S. Kindergarten,” History of Education (Nov. 2001): 527–45; Jennifer Lin Russell, “From Child's Garden to Academic Press: The Role of Shifting Institutional Logics in Redefining Kindergarten Education,” American Educational Research Journal (Apr. 2011): 236–67.

31 Daphna Bassok, Scott Latham, and Anna Rorem, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade,” AERA Open I:4 2016: 1–31.

32 Barbara Beatty, “Transitory Connections: The Reception and Rejection of Jean Piaget's Psychology in the Nursery School Movement in the 1920s and 1930s,” History of Education Quarterly (Dec. 2009): 442–64; Paley, Vivian Gussin, A Child's Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Common Core State Standards English Language Arts Standards Language Kindergarten, http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/K/6/. For play advocacy and protest against the Common Core for kindergarten, see many recent books on the importance of play and the websites of Defending the Early Years and the Alliance for Childhood.