Patty Smith Hill and the Progressive Kindergarten Curriculum

25 PATTY SMITH HILL AND THE PROGRESSIVE KINDERGARTEN CURRICULUM ROSE A. RUDNITSKI The Kindergarten Today Circle time is purposeful. The children take turns reading the daily message. The rule seems to be that no one can help the child unless the child points to the word and looks at them. That is the signal that the class can help. Children are invited to read. If they decline, it is all right. "Perhaps, next time," Lois [a pseudonym] suggests. Lois reminds them that the schedule is changed and thanks them for being patient. One boy is asked if he needs to sit alone for awhile. He shakes his head. (Rudnitski & Erickson, 1993) Kindergarten today may be conducted like the above class, or it may be a place where "free play" is the primary activity of the day. In fact, the kindergarten "day" may be a half-day in the United States of the I990's. Throughout the 20th century, there have been conflicting views on what kindergarten should look like and the types of activities that should take place there. The conflict might not exist if it had not been for the efforts of one woman, Miss Patty Smith Hill, of Louisville, Kentucky, a bright, energetic "kindergartner" who changed the American kindergarten curriculum forever, and fused it to the elementary school as the essential initial experience in public education. The Kindergarten at the Turn of the Century Patty Hill described the kindergarten curriculum of her day as based on the romantic-idealistic movement in Germany, characterized by the philosophies of Kant, Fichte, and others, and strengthened in America by the idealism of the Transcendental School in New England (Hill, 1909). In practice, teachers in American kindergartens wholeheartedly embraced the pedagogy of Friedrich Froebel (1897), the German philosopher who had founded many kindergartens in Europe. Froebel's methods brought to life the belief that humanity was becoming more civilized as time progressed, and that this process would be enhanced by the resolution of the conflict between instinct and duty. The goal of public education was essentially to help the masses to accomplish this resolution in their own lives. The beginning of the transfer of the derivation of motivation, the impulse as it was called then, from instinct to duty was the training children received in Froebelian kindergartens. A kindergarten taught by a Miss Emma and Miss Julia in the church basement of a "prairie town" in the United States of the late I9th and early twentieth centuries was described in this way: In those days, one's chief responsibility in kindergarten, as in school, was to learn to do as one was told. There was a white circle painted on the floor. There was a locked cupboard to which Miss Julia kept the key. One sat on the white circle while Miss Emma told a story embodying some spiritual "lesson" and one did not squirm or ask questions. One sat in a little red chair, "hands folded at the edge of the table," when Miss Julia unlocked the cupboard, placing in front of each child The Gift, while Miss Emma explained precisely what was to be done with it. Richard might aspire to a pattern of his own design on his pegboard. Kathleen might feel more like clay modeling than paper weaving. Margery might prefer cutting paper doll dresses from her blue paper to folding it into a geometric form. But in the kindergarten one did as one was told, all except David who blew into tantrums of outraged dignity and thwarted ambition and was finally refused as a kindergarten pupil by Miss Emma (Amidon, 1927, p.506). Patty Smith Hill's reaction to a similarly critical student during circle time was quite different from Miss Emma's. As an educator, Miss Hill was resolved to listen to her students and to learn from them. In a 1927 interview, she stated, 26 When I look back on my long experience in teaching, I am always grateful for what I have learned from the children. If one is not absorbed in administering "a system," one can learn so much in a school room! There was little Howard, for instance, back in the first...