Friday, October 27, 2023

"red-handed revolutionists in swaddling clothes."

The horrible dangers of Kindergarten, led  to it being outlawed by the Kaiser in 1851, as was later noted in KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION,  a pamphlet from the US Department of the Interior By ALMIRA M. WINCHESTER, 1919

No other phase of education·is more completely democratic and American than the kindergarten. In this respect the prophecy of the founder has been fulfilled that in America, the new world where new life was and is unfolding, the new education of the human race would take firm root. In Germany, the geographical birthplace of the kindergarten, little more than the outer form and the name is discoverable; the essence is missing. The kindergarten is not at home in Germany.

The edict of the Prussian Government in 1851 forbidding the establishment of kindergartens is tacit evidence that system of education for the people based upon the principle of self-activity, freedom, and respect for individuality was considered a dangerous foe to the success of military autocracy. It was charged at the time that the tendency of the kindergartens was toward atheism and revolution, an indictment that inspired the Berlin comic paper to point out as objects of suspicion "those three-year-old demagogues with their inflammatory speeches, those red-handed revolutionists in swaddling clothes."

All education should be bought to bear a closer resemblance to the original Kindergarten, where kids were to learn by play and by doing real things.

Make, fix and create...


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