Kindergarten in the Company Town: Revisiting "Progressive" Education

• In Event: Education and the Progressive Era

Abstract

This paper re-examines common historiographic constructions of progressive education, namely through the lens of ideological-political camps like "administrative" and "pedagogical progressives." Primarily, this paper complicates these constructions by examining managerial and rhetorical actions by Rufus Wood. Wood was a steel company executive in Sparrows Point, Maryland at the turn of the 20th century who successfully advocated for the state's first public Kindergarten and compulsory schooling laws, among others. Furthermore, this paper raises questions about historical origins of relationships between industry and public schooling.

Author

• Joel Miller, University of Maryland - College Park