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Fredrich Froebel
Fredrich Froebel established the idea of kindergarten. The kindergarten Froebel created was different than the kindergartens we see nowadays. Now teachers give their students homework, teach them their numbers, the alphabet, and many other things Froebel did not include in his work. He believed that children learn and develop better when playing and creating, so he came up with "gifts," which were different objects like building blocks that encouraged free thinking.
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Horace Mann
Horace Mann started the public school system. He believed that every child should have the ability to at least have a basic education in order to become a good well-rounded citizen that can participate during voting periods and make decisions for his or her community. The public schools would be funded by taxes. Mann started schools where teachers could train and become more professional. He helped establish the first teacher training schools in Massachusetts in 1838.
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Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington was born a slave, but once he was freed, he knew African-Americans needed to be educated, and that is exactly what he did. He believed that education would be the only way that African-Americans could gain social equality and have a better future, so once he was educated and taught for a while, he founded the Tuskegee Normal Institute in Alabama, which was a teachers training school for African-Americans that also focused on industrial education.
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Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori studied children who had learning and developmental disabilities and came up with methods on how to teach them. Montessori was the first female physician in Italy, and when she became interested in teaching, she approached it in a very scientific and philosophical way. She knew these children had potential; it was just a matter of figuring out how to teach them. Her curriculum focused on more hands-on learning rather than direct instruction.
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Margaret Bancroft
Margaret Bancroft opened up the first private boarding school for disabled or developmentally delayed children. She believed that disabled children would not be able to thrive in regular schools and needed teachers who were trained in special education. Her students responded very positively to her methods. Bancroft even influenced the medical profession to wake up and realize that they had the ability to help cure some of the students' deficiencies and disabilities.
http://bit.ly/2kaqgYe
