Phoebe Hearst • Bertha von Bulow • Elizabeth Peabody • Helen Keller

One of the great contributions of the Froebel Kindergarten was offering perhaps the first significant career for women outside the home (just as nursing was also getting started). In the mid 19th century, women were not expected (or even widely allowed) to work professionally. This meant a life of domestic work tethered to men (fathers, husbands, brothers) or the church. The Kindergarten attracted many ambitious, intelligent women and allowed them to become self-supporting (and often business owners themselves) while providing perhaps the highest human calling — the education of the human race. Many famous women were involved in Froebel’s cause; Baroness Bertha von Marenholz Bulow, Helen Keller, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Elizabeth Peabody, Anna Bissell, Phoebe Hearst, Mrs. Leland Stanford, Mrs. Grover Cleveland, Margaret Hamilton, Elizabeth Harrison (… the list is a long one and I’ll let you Google those listed for more info). I recall a feminist publication a few years ago made the assumption that Froebel began using women as his Kindergarten teachers because men had refused to take part. Nothing could be further from the truth. Below is written his reasoning in his own words. I hope you can read between the lines and see how urgently he felt the need for women to take control of education (and thus society) and how much he worked to empower mothers toward early education of their children. Contrary to what John Taylor Gatto has written, Froebel (and his followers) did not advocate removing children from the care of their families and placing them into a state-run system. That resulted of taking us off the Froebel “gold standard” … but that’s another post.

Women are to recognize that childhood and womanliness (the care of childhood and the life of women) are inseparably connected; that they form a unity, and that God and nature have placed the protection of the human plant in their hands. Hitherto the female sex could take only a more or less passive part in human history, because great battles and the political organization of nations were not suited to their powers. But at the present stage of culture nothing is more pressingly required than the cultivation of every human power for the arts of peace and the work of higher civilization. The culture of individuals, and therefore of the whole nation, depends in great part upon the earliest care of childhood. On that account women, as one-half of mankind, have to undertake the most important part of the problems of the time — problems that men are not able to solve. If but one-half of the work be accomplished, then our epoch, like all others, will fail to reach the appointed goal. As educators of mankind, the women of the present time have the highest duty to perform, while hitherto they have been scarcely more than the beloved mothers of human beings. ~ Friedrich Froebel

P.S. This is not to say (nor did Froebel obviously believe) that men are unable to provide early childhood education (either as fathers or teachers). Although their numbers are relatively few (due to laws, restrictions, or prejudice), there are many wonderful examples of male Kindergarten teachers (including my friend John Derrig … we miss you John, but your joyful spirit lives on in our hearts. ).