What Jane Addams Tells Us about Early Childhood Education

Bruce, Bertram C.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/96281 Copy

Description

Title

What Jane Addams Tells Us about Early Childhood Education

Author(s)

Bruce, Bertram C.

Issue Date

2015

Keyword(s)

• Jane Addams
• early childhood education
• democracy

Abstract

Jane Addams was a social reformer and one of the founders of the field of sociology. She worked to create better working conditions for immigrants, for the control of dis- ease and the development of public health, in the areas of multicultural understanding and peace activism. What she accomplished and wrote about during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Chicago stands as a model for how to infuse democracy throughout every aspect of life. Although Addams is not usually classified as a pro- gressive educator, we can draw insights from her work that are relevant to progressive education a century later. This chapter focuses on the implications for the area of early childhood education. If we were to list the major innovators in that field, we might find Fröbel, Pestalozzi, Montessori, or Steiner, but not Addams; her work had a much larger scope. Yet remarkably, and precisely because of that scope, her work speaks directly to the practical issues of early childhood education today. A similar case could be made for other aspects of education.

Publisher

Peter Lang

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/96281

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1522-6

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