Kindergarten

The origins of the kindergarten movement of the late 19th century derive from a fundamental change in how Europeans envisioned and understood young children. The traditional view—that children were tainted by the original sins of Eve and Adam and thus were depraved and best governed by strict authority—was attacked by John Amos Comenius (1592-1670), John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), and Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827). These humane philosophers and educators argued that children are innocent, impressionable, and capable of being educated without harsh discipline by skillful teachers who understand their intelligence and emotional capabilities. Children are thus best prepared for school in homes where love rather than unwavering discipline prevails. In 1837 Pestalozzi’s pupil Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) established in Germany a kindergarten for little children that emphasized games, social activities, art, music, and physical movement. Froebel and like-minded early-childhood educators believed that literacy skills and arithmetic were more effectively introduced between the ages of six and eight.

Inspired by Froebel, Margaretha Schurz (wife of reformer Carl ScHURz) in 1857 started a kindergarten in Watertown, Wisconsin, and others soon sprang up. Between 1870 and 1900 kindergarten classes were established in many publicly supported urban and rural schools, but they usually failed to realize Froebel’s ideas. In rural one-room schools with 10-20 students, the five-year-old kindergartners were thrown in with all ages and grades (up to 14-16-year-old eighth-graders) and were often ignored while the teacher prepared older students in demanding subjects for state examinations. Teacher turnover was high, with 90 percent spending less than five years in any one school, and teachers normally were young and inexperienced, with only two or three years of education beyond the eighth grade. They were hired by local school boards and were occasionally observed and evaluated by state officials. In urban schools or towns large enough to operate a graded school, the kindergarten children were assigned their own teachers (whom principals evaluated frequently) and had special rooms and learning materials.

When parents sent children to public kindergarten, they took the first step in a transition from family-controlled to state-controlled education. Henceforth, while parents retained the responsibility of feeding, clothing, and maintaining the health of their children, the schools would try to educate them according to their merit for independent, selfreliant behavior. Indeed, if families failed to develop proper health habits or instill moral training in their children, the schools at least would get them off the streets, rid their heads of lice, improve their posture through scoliosis inspection, and develop their characters while teaching them basic skills. In the late 19th century, kindergartens were the beginning of eight to 10 years of schooling for the typical child, 95 percent of whom then went out to work for the rest of their lives.

See also Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer.

Further reading: Lawrence Cremin, The American Common School: A Historical Conception (New York: Teachers College Press, 1951); Barbara Finkelstein Governing the Young: Teacher Behavior in Popular Primary Schools in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Falmer Press, 1989); Wayne, Fuller. The Old Country School: The Story of Rural Education in the Midwest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).

—Harry Stein

King, Clarence (1842-1901) geologist Clarence Rivers King—American geologist and founder-leader of federal surveys—was born in Newport, Rhode Island, on January 6, 1842. King’s mother raised and educated him after his father died at Amoy in 1848 while in the China trade. With his stepfather’s aid, King attended Yale (Ph. B., 1862). From 1863 to 1866 he worked throughout California with Josiah Whitney’s state-sponsored geological survey until he became solely responsible for his twice-widowed mother, two stepsiblings, and eight other persons. In 1867 King returned east and won approval for his U. S. Geological Exploration of the 40th parallel sponsored by the Army Corps of Engineers. By 1872 King and his men had mapped and assessed the geology and mineral resources of a 100-mile swath of land flanking the transcontinental railroad between California’s Sierra Nevada and Colorado’s Front Range. In 1872 King earned national renown by exposing a cunning “diamond hoax” in Colorado and publishing Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, a volume of stories real and imagined based on his years with Whitney. King’s episodic interpretations of geologic history and organic evolution (1877) clashed with the gradualist views of his friend and collaborator, Yale paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh.

In 1878 King completed Systematic Geology, his synthesis of the 40th-parallel studies, and strove to establish a national federal survey that would consolidate the missions of his organization, one led by John Wesley Powell, and two others also examining the public domain. As a member (1876) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), King advised Marsh’s NAS committee, which was charged by Congress to plan for reforming the federal mapping and scientific surveys. At Interior Secretary Carl ScHURZ’s request, King cowrote legislation based on the NAS plan. King and Powell promoted its passage by Congress on March 3, 1879; a month later, King became director of the new U. S. Geological Survey (USGS). He and Powell also served on the Public Lands Commission, authorized by the same statute.

Congress and President Ruthereord B. Hayes established the USGS principally as a bureau of practical science to help the mineral industry aid the nation’s reviving economy by eliminating shortfalls in gold and iron production. Although the USGS’s initial appropriation was only two-thirds of that of the three surveys it replaced, King immediately launched the new agency on a scientific program of applied economic geology (as mandated) and supporting basic studies (to provide new discoveries to apply). He also cofunded and participated in cooperative investigations for the 10th census.

While leading the USGS, King continued to display professional brilliance, personal magnetism, a natural style of command, and a genuine sympathy for everyone who worked for him. He intended to remain as director, however, “only long enough to appoint its staff, organize its work, and guide the force into full activity.” The agency’s ethics clauses prevented King from mining investments or consulting within the United States, activities that would yield the larger income he needed to support his family and his lifestyle. In March 1881, after recommending Powell as his successor, King resigned as director. Soon, as King noted with dismay, Powell deemphasized practical science and turned the USGS into an agency for topographic mapping and general geology.

King returned to New York City, his professional and social base, where he had been a spellbinding raconteur in the Century Club since 1876. Thereafter, with mixed success, King promoted mines in Mexico, ranches in Wyoming, a bank in Texas, and other ventures. King returned often to Washington, where he, Marian and Henry Adams, and Clara and John Milton Hay sometimes convened their informal “Five of Hearts Club.” From 1888 King also led a second life in Brooklyn in a loving but clandestine common-law marriage to Ada Todd, a black nursemaid who bore him five children. In 1893 King published his estimate of the Earth’s age, but a nervous breakdown ended his hope of resuming leadership of the USGS. The financial panic later that year destroyed King’s resources, leaving him hopelessly in debt to Hay. King refused continued offers from academe or additional help from Hay and resumed active work as a mining consultant. These efforts increasingly damaged his health. Tuberculosis forced King to California and then to Arizona, where he died on December 24, 1901.

Further reading: Thurman Wilkins, Clarence King: A Biography (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988); Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (New York: Penguin Press, 2009).

—Clifford M. Nelson