Highlights Archives
Kindergarten: 150 Years of First-Day Tears
It's back to school time! Thousands of Wisconsin children are headed to school this fall — some for the very first time. Kindergarten is a rite of passage for kids and their parents, a rite of passage that began 150 years ago here in Wisconsin.
In 1856, Margarethe Schurz opened the nation's first kindergarten at her home in Watertown, Wisconsin. Schurz, a German immigrant, wanted her daughter to receive the education she would have had back in Europe, and so invited her four cousins to come to the house each day for games, singing and crafts. As word of her school spread, Schurz moved the kindergarten to a small building downtown so more children could attend.
Schurz had first learned about the kindergarten movement as a teenager in Germany from noted educator and kindergarten advocate Friedrich Froebel. Froebel believed that the preschool period was essential for both the sound education of the individual as well as the health of society. Inspired by his teachings, Schurz moved to London, where she helped her sister run a Froebelite kindergarten called the England Infant Garden. It was in London that she met her husband Carl Schurz, a German revolutionary who had fled his native country.
Schurz carried Froebel's educational philosophy with her to America. After living in Philadelphia for a few years, the Schurzes settled in Watertown in 1856. The kindergarten opened a few months later. Class was conducted in German, a trend that continued in many of the nation's early kindergartens. When her husband's career took her away from Watertown, Schurz entrusted the school to Miss Juessen, Carl's cousin. The school continued until World War I, when it closed due to opposition to the use of the German language.
Elizabeth Peabody visited the Watertown kindergarten in 1859 and became a quick convert to the cause. Peabody became a nationally known advocate of early education and helped bring kindergartens into widespread use.
Although Schurz died on March 15, 1876, her legacy lives on in the schools that she once described as gardens "whose plants are human." Her schoolhouse still stands, though moved from its original location to the grounds of the Octagon House in Watertown.
The Watertown Historical Society will be holding a Kindergarten Appreciation Day on Sunday, August 27, at 2 p.m., to pay tribute to the first kindergarten in the country. Visit the Watertown Historical Society's Web site for more information.
:: Posted August 25, 2006
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