Child Rearing Practices By Margaretha Schurz - 1656 Words

Margaretha Schurz, a German immigrant who studied under Froebel, reproduced the first American kindergarten in the United States in 1855, in her home (O’Conner, 1995). Mrs. Schurz encouraged other women to follow the curriculum which was not only based on child-rearing practices but centered on the whole-child, including their spiritual, physical, and moral development (Froebel, 1974). Thus the movement began because this new working-class woman wanting more for their toddlers than just daycare supervision. Out of charity for the working women who could not stay home to raise their children, privately run Frobelian kindergartens became more commonplace (O’Conner, 1995). Today kindergarten, with the unified starting age of five, has†¦show more content†¦This creates a projection for failure; once too many courses are not mastered, the probability the child will graduate with a diploma lessens (Prince, Pepper, Brocato, 2006). This is significant because ac cording to the U.S. Census Bureau (2005), high school graduation status is a strong predictor of earning potential. Without earning potential, the poverty cycle continues and the next generation suffers. President Lyndon B. Johnson, in his first State of the Union Address, declared war on poverty (Johnson, 1964). The government desired to eradicate the causes of poverty by providing job opportunities, thus creating the Job Corps. However, President Johnson strongly believed early childhood education was the answer to breaking the poverty cycle and assembled a panel of child development experts to design an educational program to meet the needs of disadvantaged preschool children (Hustedt Barnett, 2011). Dr. Robert Cooke of John –Hopkins University and other panel members declared, â€Å"The need for an urgency of these programs is such that they should be initiated immediately† to improve the opportunities and achievement of the children of the poor (1965, p. 2). Their recommendations for a head-start program are discussed in the Cooke Report, There is considerable evidence that the early years of childhood are the