Chapter 6: Gender and Schoolwork in the United States, 1850-1920

Gender has played an inescapably powerful role in shaping early childhood education in the United States. Though both women and men contributed vital efforts to establishing kindergartens and other forms of early childhood education in the mid-1800s, the work quickly became identified with women. Many of the women who pioneered teaching young children believed that their gender endowed them with unique attributes for the work, and further, that it was within their exclusive domain (Beecher, 1851; Mann, 1868). Indeed, many exercised authority in teaching young children, carefully studying the ideas of Froebel and other influential theorists, organizing their facilities and curriculum, and otherwise managing the enterprise of shaping the lives of young children—all relatively free from outside intervention.