Wheelock, Lucy

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography, (2003)

Promoted "The Ideal Republic"

Wheelock believed strongly in the notion that early-childhood education provided the foundation for a stable society. In 1891, she reminded educators at a convention of the American Institute of Instruction about the value of kindergartens. "The ideal kindergarten is the ideal republic," she said, according to DuCharme's Childhood Education article. "Its little citizens are trained to self-activity, self-control, and the 'due freedom' which comes from a regard for the rights and happiness of others."

Wheelock used one of Fröbel's books, Mother Play , as her main textbook, and adhered to his two main ideas: that children needed self-activity for intellectual growth, which involved seeing, thinking and acting for his or herself, and she also supported the idea of continuity—that there should be no break or gap between kindergarten and the primary grades. She also advocated involving mothers in early education, and they could reinforce in the home the benefits of the kindergarten curriculum. She became well-known nationally. A founding member of the International Kindergarten Union (IKU) in 1893 and its president from 1895 to 1899, she also served as chair of the 1908 National Congress of Mothers, the forerunner of the Parent Teacher Association.

The usefulness of kindergarten was still an open debate. In 1912, Wheelock told an audience at the National Education Association in Washington that "the advocates of the theory that the young child is a 'little animal,' and should be left free to carry out his animal impulses in some convenient back yard, forget the scarcity of back yards in a congested city district," she said, according to DuCharme's Childhood Education profile. "They also ignore the worldwide proof of the claim that those who guide the first seven years of a child's life may make of him what they will. The state may later have to pay $255 a year to protect itself from the neglected child," likely referring to the cost of prison, noting that a kindergarten year cost the state about one-tenth that figure.

Grew into Four-Year College

Despite skeptics, the kindergarten movement expanded rapidly, as did Wheelock's school over the years. In 1914, it opened in a new home on Boston's Riverway, and by 1929 was offering a three-year course that required graduates to spend time as student teachers. Wheelock remained head of the school until she retired in 1940. Before she departed, she arranged for its incorporation as a nonprofit institution, Wheelock College, which began granting standard, four-year bachelor of science degrees in 1941. She died of coronary thrombosis at her Boston home on October 2, 1946.

In 1937, she commemorated the hundredth anniversary of Fröbel's first kindergarten in a New York Times article. "In the modern school for 4 and 5 year olds," she wrote, "where children cover the floor with construction projects, with blocks as big as bricks, there is little external reminder of the old-time kindergarten where youngsters sat in a stiff circle or waited at their little tables with folded hands for a signal to open boxes of tiny blocks or geometric toys." She added that early-childhood ideas had become somewhat less structured, but "the daily program still shows, however, the kindergartners' agreement with Fröbel that 'play is a child's serious business' and is his introduction to the business of life."