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Ye Olde Deluder Satan Act
The first public schools were created in the Massachusetts Colony by laws passed in 1642. The purpose of the schools were to provide insstruction in reading so students could read the Bible, thus, "deluding" Satan's influence. -
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U.S. Pioneers in Early Childhood Education
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First Kindergarten in the U.S., Waterton, Wisconsin
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John Dewey (1858-1952)
John Dewey is known as the father of Progressive Education. He believed that children learned through experience. His ideas are seen in many approaches in education today including expeditionary learning, and Reggio Emilia approaches. -
Patty Smith Hill, (1868-1946)
Founder of National Association of Nursery Education which later became NAEYC. -
Caroline Pratt
Caroline Pratt developed an ECE program at the turn of the century called a Play School (1913) that lead to her development of wooden unit blocks. Pratt believed children needed to use their imagination, ingenuity and problem-solving skills to find ways to use these basic, undefined materials. Today, we see wood unit blocks as a central open-ended material in every classroom for young children. -
Lucy Sprague Mitchell (1878-1967)
Lucy Sprague Mitchell, founder of the Bank Street College of Education. Lucy worked as a teacher of young children and a teacher of teachers, and wrote many books on ECE, especially regarding children's literature. -
B.F.Skinner (1904-1988)
While a researcher with Harvard University, B.F.Skinner developed his theory on Behaviorism. Skinner, Watson, Thorndike and Bandura have had a huge influence on child development, childrearing, child therapy and ECE programs. Behavior is based upon an environmental approach of reinforcers, punishment, and associations. We see these practices in behavior modification, time out, using tokens to encourage appropriate behaviors and other modeling strategies with young children. -
1941 Landam Act and the Kaiser Child-Care Centers
Kasier Shipyards in Portland, Oregon built and operated chld-care programs in response to the passage of the Landham Act in 1941 by Congress. This act provided federal funds to communitiies affected by WWII. After the war, these centers were closed down, but they modeled business sponsored quality child care programs for employees that we see today with Google and other industry leaders. -
Arnold Gesell (1880-1961)
Arnold Gesell developed his Maturational Theory based upon his beliefs in pre-determined pathways of growth and development in young children outside of the influence of the environment. He published "The Child From Five To Ten" in 1946. Gesell and colleagues believed pushing children to accelerate their development was a practice to be avoided. Today we see Gesell's influence in ECE when we examine attitudes around kindergarten readiness (social and emotional maturation for kindergarten). -
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka
This landmark Supreme Court decision determined that segregation by race is unequal and therefore unconstitutional. This decision opened doors for other inequalities to be addressed as well including those with disabilities, or those who do not speak English. While schools today cannot legally separate students by race, disability, gender or economic status, we still see segregation. -
Project Head Start
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law as part of his 'War of Poverty' a variety of programs including Head Start. Today, Head Start serves over 1 million children, employs 200,000 staff and sponsors 1,600 Head Start grantees in the United States. -
IDEA 1975
n 1975, Public Law 94-142 was signed by President Ford. This law became known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This law provides for free education for all children regardless of their disabilities or the severity of their disabilities, revolutionizing publicly funded ECE programs to provide for the individual needs each child with a disability. -
Howard Gardner
In 1983, Gardner published his book "Frames of Mind" in which he proposed that we are currently using too narrow a technique for measuring IQ. His theory of Multiple Intelligences suggests that children use a variety of itnelligences to complete tasks and achieve accomplishments and ECE programs should teach to, support and use all 8 Intelligences.
a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/16/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-are-not-learning-styles/?tid=auto_compl -
Developmentally Appropriate Practices
In 1987, NAEYC published Bredekamp and Copple's DAP book to provide guidance to early childhood education programs seeking accreditation with NAEYC. This accreditation required developmentally appropriate activiites and expectations as opposed to having programs teach a modified academic public school curriculum. This text remains a seminal text on the subject of developmentally appropriate practices in ECE.
