ALFRED L. CASTLE

Harriet Castle and the Beginnings of Progressive
Kindergarten Education in Hawai'i 1894-1900

T H E LATE 19TH CENTURY saw a number of Euro-American changes
in the focus of philosophical thought. The general thrust of thesechanges was to concentrate on becoming, rather than being.
Thinkers such as John Dewey (1859-1952), drawing on theadvances of anthropology and biology, gave philosophic expression
to the dynamic character of experience. Many philosophers,
dissatisfied with pure speculation, sought ways to make philosophy
directly relevant to practical affairs. Such changes in philosophic
orientation would affect many American institutions. In Hawai'i,
Dewey's ideas were first introduced by Harriet Castle (1847-1924)
and made an early impact on the teaching practices of kindergartens in Honolulu from 1894 to 1900.
The idea of kindergartens began in Germany with Friedrich
Froebel (1782-1852) and was later transported to the UnitedStates. Its first partisans were Germans who, having despaired ofliving in Germany after the collapse of the Revolution of 1848,
pulled up their stakes and journeyed to the American MiddhWest. There in 1855, in Watertown, Wisconsin, Mrs. Carl Schurz,a former student of Froebel, established America's first kinderAlfredL. Castle is Associate Professor ofHistory at Hawai'i Pacific College and has publishedin history and philosophy.
The Hawaiian Journal of History, vol. 23 (1989)

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garten. Five years later the first English-speaking kindergarten,
owned and managed by Elizabeth Peabody, was established in
Boston.1 In 1873, the city of St. Louis opened the first tax-supported
kindergarten in the U.S. 2
In Hawai'i, kindergartens were begun under private auspices.
The Kingdom's first kindergarten teacher might have been Miss
Birch Fanning, who arrived in Honolulu August 3, 1889. Although
she announced her plans to start her own kindergarten, she ended
up as a teacher for Punahou Preparatory School on Beretania
Street in 1892. This experience was short-lived, and Punahou did
not begin a permanent kindergarten program until 1900.3
The first kindergarten was established by Francis M. Damon
in 1892 and was connected to the Chinese Mission of which hehad charge. Because of the success of this experiment, the Woman's
Board of Missions, founded in 1878, organized four kindergartensin 1893. Separated along racial lines, they were organized forJapanese, Portuguese, Hawaiians, and for a group classified as"other races."
The Portuguese kindergarten was started on Miller Street by
Reverend Henry Soares. By 1895, the Chinese kindergarten
enrolled 36, the Portuguese kindergarten 53, the Hawaiian
kindergarten 40, the Japanese kindergarten 28, and the "foreign"(Caucasian) kindergarten 48.* All of these were early attempts toprovide free co-educational education to underserved or unserved
children of working parents.
As imperfect as these poorly funded and struggling initialkindergartens were, they represented a growing awareness in
Hawai'i that a heterogeneous, non-English speaking populationof children were presenting a serious problem to grade schoolwork. Indeed, crowded classes had forced a ruling by which theRepublic's Department of Public Instruction forbade the attendance of children under six years of age in grade schools. With
crowding, furthermore, came a growing concern that the ideal ofuniversal education could never be realized. Public school enrollment reached 14,522 in 1897, while private school enrollment
reached 3,954.*
Mary Tenney Castle (1819-1907), the pioneer missionary andHARRIET CASTLE AND PROGRESSIVE KINDERGARTENS

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wife of Samuel Northrup Castle, had raised her children to accept
responsibility for bettering society. Educated in New England,
she had been closely involved with child education reform,
abolition, feminism, and prison reform before coming to Hawai'iin 1841. In the 1890s, she and her daughter Harriet would beearly supporters of reforming kindergartens organized by race.
They were two of the early supporters of offering a greater numberof kindergartens for Hawai'i's children. More importantly, as theysaw it, traditional formalist instruction, which stressed repetition,
memorization, and rigid discipline, was no longer adequate
preparation for a rapidly changing world. The various private
kindergartens could be rendered more effective if unified along
the new and progressive direction being set by John Dewey.
In 1895, supported by Mary Tenney Castle's gift of $10,000, thevarious free kindergartens were unified under the direction of the
newly organized Free Kindergarten and Children's Aid Association of the Hawaiian Islands (FKCAA). Its key leaders were:Charles M. Hyde (1832-1899), its first president; Harriet Castle
its financial secretary and driving force; and Mabel (Mrs. Henry)
Castle (1864-1950), its publicist. Other prominent member s
included the wives of business and civic leaders: Clara Bingham,
Emma Dillingham, Cornelia Bishop, Cherilla Lowrey, Frances
Hobron, Mary Whitney, and Agnes Judd. 6 With the separationof the new Association from its old Board connection, a nonsectarianpolicy was adopted. The FKCAA's common goal, pursued withconsiderable zeal, was to provide lifetime learning and moral andcitizenship skills to the underserved population of children ofworking parents. Such schools, it was thought, would provide
needed education in addition to early social skills in an increasingly
economically complex Hawai'i.
Because of its newness, the FKCAA was soon in search of an
educational methodology to implement its mission. Harriet Castle,
the guiding spirit of the Association, would be responsible forshaping this direction through importing the pedagogical views ofJohn Dewey, a friend of the Castle family. Although the generalrole of Dewey was noted in Charlotte Dodge's history of the

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THE HAWAIIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORYFKCAA,7 his specific link to the Association through Harriet
Castle has not been previously examined.
John Dewey, one of America's foremost pragmatists, is still best
known for his educational philosophy. Born in Burlington,
Vermont, Dewey was educated at the University of Vermont and
The Johns Hopkins University. He later taught at the Universityof Minnesota, the University of Michigan, the University of
Chicago, and Columbia College. His theory, which would help toshape education for the 20th century, resulted from his rejectionof the rigid and formal approach to education that dominatedschools in the late 19th century. Such an approach was incorrect,
he argued, because it was based upon an erroneous psychology inwhich the child was thought of as a passive creature upon whom
information and ideas had to be imposed.
Equally distressing to Dewey was an education based on
sentiment and idealization of the child. This approach urged thechild to choose what he wanted to study. For Dewey, this approach
ignored the lack of sophistication of the child's experience. For thechild, education ought to be a continuous reconstruction ofexperience in which practical problems were solved through trial
and error. Once solutions were found, future solutions to identicalproblems would become part of a child's habits and intelligence.
Dewey's slogan, "Learn by Doing," was meant to call attention
to the child as a naturally active, curious, and exploring creature.
Any properly planned education, therefore, should be sensitive tothis active dimension of life and must guide the child in such a
way as to maximize his or her participation in different types ofexperience. The end of education must be development of thechild's creativity and autonomy.
As Dewey saw it, the child's nature is neither completely
malleable nor forever fixed. With Aristotle, Dewey believed thatthe function of education is to encourage those habits and tendencies that constitute intelligence. Dewey stressed creating the proper
type of environmental conditions for eliciting and nurturing thesehabits. In the correct and controlled environment, adaptive
lifetime habits could be formed. Moreover, education, as thecontinuous reconstruction and growth of experience, also develops

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the child's moral character. Virtue is taught by cultivating
fair-mindedness, objectivity, imagination, openness to new experiences, and the courage to change one's mind in the light of
new facts.
Dewey thought the school was best understood as a miniaturesociety; as such, it should be representative of the essential
institutions of this society. As an ideal society the school is thechief means of social reform. In the controlled social environmentof the school, trained teachers could develop creative individuals
who could work effectively to. eliminate existing social evils andbuild a better society. For Dewey, the school is the medium fordeveloping habits for systematic inquiry and for tolerance of the
new and untried.
In a rapidly industrializing America, Dewey feared the threat
posed by unplanned technological, economic, and politicaldevelopment to the future of democratic practice. These rapid
and unplanned changes, he also feared, would increase humanaberration and decrease the amount of shared experience that is
so vital for the democratic community. For him and for his
followers, the school in a democratic society was the best hope forthe creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all
could share and participate.
The pedagogic implications of these ideas were grasped quickly
by the civic leader Harriet Castle. Educated at Punahou School,
reared in an intensely intellectual environment, and convincedthat women could make a difference in a patriarchal society
through educational and moral leadership, she became one of
Hawai'i's most important kindergarten reformers. The result ofher adherence to Dewey's ideas is best seen in the reasons givenby the early founders for the establishment of the FKCAA, thetraining of the instructors, and the education that was planned
for the children.
Henry Castle (1862-1895), brother of Harriet and the youngest
child in a family of nine, was the first in the Castle family torecognize Dewey's importance. A voracious reader and widely
read in the philosophical literature of 19th century Europe, he
was an honors graduate of Punahou School. Enrolling at Oberlin

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College in Ohio in 1879, he became the roommate and fast friendof George Herbert Mead. Indeed, Mead married Henry's older
sister, Helen K. Castle, in 1891. It was through Mead, an
outstanding philosopher in his own right, that Henry and Harrietcame to understand John Dewey's philosophy. It was also throughMead that the Castles became close friends of John Dewey.8
While undergraduate students at Oberlin College and later as
graduate students at Harvard, Mead and Castle spent many hours
speaking of the instrumentalist and pragmatist challenges to
traditional, more static idealist philosophical systems. Mead, wholater became one of the nation's leading pragmatist philosophersfrom his important post as chairman of the University of Chicago's
Philosophy Department, spent many hours testing his ideas inconversations with Henry Castle.9 Later, after his marriage toHelen Castle, he served as a frequent host to Harriet Castle andJohn Dewey at the Mead home in Chicago. Thus, prior to thefounding of the Kindergarten and Children's Aid Association in
1895, Harriet was fully impressed with, and knowledgeable of, theDewey-Mead orientation to philosophical analysis and pedagogy.
Through personal correspondence, reading, and lengthy discussions with Mead, Dewey, and her brother Henry, Harriet became
convinced that early education should reflect the new view ofhuman development being discussed in the highest corridors ofacademia.10
With Dewey, Harriet and her brother Henry understood that if
education was to be relevant and meaningful it would need to betransformed. Moreover, they wanted education to constantly
expand the range of social situations in which individuals perceived
issues and made and acted upon choices. They wanted schools to
inculcate habits that would enable individuals to control theirsurroundings rather than merely adapt to them. Traditional
formal education, which emphasized memorization and conformity to lessons taught by an authoritarian teacher, was incapableof providing an education that would improve society by making
it more "worthy and harmonious." 11 No longer isolated from thereality of a quickly changing society, the progressive school would
become "an embryonic community life" active with types ofHARRIET CASTLE AND PROGRESSIVE KINDERGARTENS

125

occupations that reflect the life of the larger society. As Dewey
said:
When the school introduces and trains each child of society into
membership within such a little community, saturating him withthe spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments ofeffective self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best guaranteeof a larger society which is worthy, lovely and harmonious.12
Dewey's educational theory included a condemnation of "theold school" for the passivity of its methods and the rigid uniformityof its curriculum. For too long the educational center of gravity
had been "in the teacher, the textbook, anywhere and everywhere
you please except in the immediate instincts and activities of thechild himself."13 The essence of the new pedagogy was to shift thiscenter of gravity back to the child. The business of the new school
would be to
not only facilitate and enrich the growth of the individual child,
but also to supply the same results, and for some, technicalinformation and discipline that have been the ideas of educationin the past.14
Throughout the 1890s, Harriet Castle traveled to leadingkindergartens on the Mainland and visited with leaders of theincipient movement of progressive education and teacher training.
In 1897, she toured Chicago's famed Hull House as a guest ofJane Addams and Addams' assistant, Alice Holden. Harriet wasparticularly interested in the efforts of the distinguished Hull
House staff to apply some of the innovative ideas of Dewey toeducational conditions in Chicago.15 Most importantly, she grewincreasingly confident that Hawai'i could also have success with
Dewey's educational innovation.16
As financial secretary for the FKCAA, Harriet was responsible
for raising funds to make the organization viable, as well as forselecting personnel and preparing the annual report. In both herfund raising and her personnel selection, she played a crucial rolein setting the path for the organization for years to come. Her

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influence would prove to be crucial to the FKCAA's earlyimplementation of Dewey's ideas.
The archives of the FKCAA are filled with ledger books andscrapbooks of her personal appeals to friends and to businesses andprospective donors not personally known to her. It is clear that
she had taken on the entire funding efforts for the young organization. She hoped for numerous small donations, and envelopes
were sent out for monthly pledges. In addition, she placedcollection boxes at the downtown Hobron's Drug Store, the officesof Castle and Cooke, and Thrum's Book Store. Contributions
produced sums varying from five dollars to five cents. In 1895,$777.85 was raised to supplement the seed grant of her mother
Mary Castle. In later years, benefit events with local talent andamateur entertainers would add to this total.17
In her appeals to local businessmen, gifts to progressive kindergartens were presented as good investments and "a saver of future
tax expenses for jails, prisons, and almshouses" in Hawai'i.
Further, adequately funded kindergartens were good influences
against the "great cloud of anarchy that has been slowly gatheringand spreading over the civilized nations of the earth." 18 One
appeal, written to prospective donors in February of 1895,
concluded that "we long to gather in all of the little ones whom
we constantly see about the city, but our borders are so limited."19
Other letters would give emphasis to the need by concluding,"The hope of the world lies in the children."
Harriet's interest in training teachers for progressive education
began in earnest in 1896. In that year, she participated in the
Chicago Froebel Association's Training School for Kindergartners
led by John Dewey. In this month-long seminar, she received
intensive study in Dewey's pedagogy and psychology. The Meads
hosted her during her lengthy stay, and one can imagine that the
day's expert instruction became the evening's source of penetrating
discussion.
Harriet's notes, which for a period were used to guide FKCAA
education, emphasized the role kindergarten teachers could playin producing independent future citizens. Obedience was a means,
not an end. Further, teachers must guide their immature charges,

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but the true object of education would be the development of
reasoning, thinking individuals responsible for their own behavior.
Most specifically, to become this thinking, reasoning, intelligent,
self-directing individual, the child must begin by assuming
responsibilities as soon as he or she is able to do so, adding tothem from year to year. At ten, with but slight supervision, thechild should be able to take care of his or her body, take baths,
dress and undress, put clothes away, and keep possessions inorder.20
In an important pamphlet prepared by Harriet to support her
plea for funding, she gave clear expression to her faith in Deweystyle education. The pamphlet, entitled "The Kindergarten and
the Public School," was prepared after a lengthy 1897 tour of
Columbia University Teachers College and the Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn. Both institutions were early leaders in the field of
progressive education. The pamphlet was widely distributed todonors, community leaders, and prospective leaders alike. In it,
Harriet argues that the object of the kindergarten is to develop thewhole child in a balanced fashion. For her, the foundations of thismethod are the facts attested to by science and experience. These,as she saw it, were:
1. The brain grows with the greatest rapidity between the agesof three and seven. The increase of later years is small comparedwith its growth in these years.
2. Two weeks practice of holding objects in his right hand will
make the infant in his first year right handed for life.
3. This is the age of sense perception; the child learns from what
he sees, hears, tastes, touches, and smells; and, therefore, as his
environment is, so will he be.
4. If the child is saved to a good life, there will be no grown-up; man to punish.
5. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old
he will not depart from it.21
The pamphlet quotes authorities who supported Harriet's visionof a kindergarten. For example, William T. Harris, U.S. Commis-

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sioner of Education under President Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)
had claimed that "two years of the child's life in the kindergarten
will start into development activities of muscle and brain which
will secure deftness and delicacy of industrial power in all after
life."22 Harriet added her own observation that the kindergarten
would lead to permanent character changes. Specifically, kindergarten would mean "fewer saloons and better homes, fewer
policemen, fewer courts, fewer prisons, fewer paupers, less insanity,and consequently less public expense along these lines and moremoney for other purposes."23 Such thinking was, of course,
common among supporters of progressive reforms in education
across the United States.
For Harriet, education at the kindergarten level must "develop
in these citizens of today as well as tomorrow the habits, attitudes,
appreciations, and skills necessary for the life in democracy."24
Furthermore, this primary instruction would provide miniature
democracies where "situations arise which give opportunity for thedevelopment o f . . . habits, attitudes, appreciations, and skills
necessary for life." Perhaps most importantly, young pupils would
be taught to think for themselves, to reason, to judge and toevaluate the facts of experience. Since environments change, set
and static standards of conduct would not be enough. Morality,
correctly understood, "is an active attitude, not a passive one.
Habit must be formed through action. We must learn to be good."
Kindergarten education, through teaching perseverance, flexibility, cooperation, initiative, self-control, and life-long reasoning
skills, would provide citizens capable of sustaining both democracy
and progress in social institutions.26
Harriet Castle, like Dewey, viewed the teacher's role as that ofa skilled guide. The kindergarten teacher should create ideal
situations for both sense training and discipline of thought. All
instruction should recall that thinking does not occur for its own
sake. Rather, "it arises from the need of meeting some difficulty,
in reflecting upon the best way of overcoming it, and thus leads
to planning . . . mentally the results to be reached, and deciding
upon the steps necessary and their serial order."26 With Dewey,
she felt that this was the best preparation for pure speculation or

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abstract investigation. Thought, she argued with Dewey, begins
with a difficulty, moves through a resolution, and may appropriately end with an abstract speculation or abstraction. In thislast stage, solutions to difficulties or problems may be generalized
to similar difficulties or problems.
Harriet left her most immediate stamp on the training ofteachers and the education of young ones through her choice of
the FKCAA's first permanent supervisor. In 1896, while spending
the summer with the Meads, she devoted her free hours to reviewing applications from aspirants responding to her letters sent toschool district leaders. Harriet's dream of finding an enthusiastic
supporter of Dewey's ideas was fulfilled when she met the brilliant
Chicagoan Frances Lawrence (1876-1935) and hired her awayfrom the Sheboygan, Wisconsin school system on August 1st.
Frances would guide instruction at the FKCAA for the next
39 years.
Chicago-born Frances Lawrence, an 1893 graduate of the
Chicago Kindergarten College, had studied and absorbed thepedagogy of John Dewey. With Harriet's mandate to be daring
in applying Dewey's ideas to kindergarten education in Hawai'i,
Superintendent Lawrence arrived in Hawai'i in 1896 and madesome immediate changes. For example, she abandoned paper
pricking, mat weaving, and the formal use of Froebel's "gifts"
used in the early free kindergartens in favor of free play, rhythms
construction, and creative art on open Idnais (porches or verandas)or outside.27 These child-centered improvements would allow
children to develop their senses, their imagination, and theircapacity to live cooperatively with other children.
Lawrence's reforms also included giving children free access tosuitable art materials so as to encourage drawing, modeling,
painting, and construction. In more traditional education, accessto these materials was limited, and young artists were encouraged
to imitate accepted drawings rather than to experiment. In thesame way, Lawrence felt music and rhythm were important in the
educational process. Her kindergartens avoided the mechanical"lessons" and emphasis on accuracy of tone characteristic offormalist education. Instead, they stressed opportunities for volun-

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tary play, experimentation with sounds, and creative initiative.
Spontaneity of response and freedom for joyous participation,rather than precision of movement and controlled or ordered
action, became the aim of Lawrence's kindergartens. These weretypically taught in situations involving rhythmic play and games,in singing, and in free experimentation with simple musicalinstruments such as the gourd or drum. Marching games andoutdoor experiences in the swing and the seesaw provided
opportunities for rhythmic movement. Lawrence saw the additional
benefit from this expression being the development of selfconfidence and a renewed interest in learning. Her ideal was towork with nature, not against it. Like Dewey, she taught that achild's best chance for happy, useful living is to develop the child's
capacities, not to punish his or her deficiencies.
The same general idea was true of the social arts of drama,
pageantry, story telling, and reading. Unlike traditional kindergartens, which stressed control, memorization, and repetition ofstories read by the teacher, Lawrence's progressive sense was thatchildren's love of acting was natural and should be encouraged.
Children were expected to invent stories and to relate them to theclass. The teacher was more of a facilitator of discussion than an
authoritarian figure requiring "right" answers to questions aboutstandard stories read to a group. Furthermore, Lawrence quickly
saw that Hawai'i presented special opportunities for the exerciseof dramatic talent and story use.
Kamehameha Day, with its opportunities for the children to
prepare their yellow and red cloaks and caps, was one suchopportunity. Another was May Day, with its leis, hula dancing,and merrymaking. Kindergartens kept costume boxes handy fromwhich children could select material. Spectacle and pageantry
provided ample chance for organized play, experimentation,
problem solving, and creativity.28
FIG. 1. "The fact that he is making things gives just the stimulus the child needs
to give him real control of himself in the Process." Caption on undated photoof the Castle Kindergarten, Honolulu. (Castle collection, College of Education,
University of Hawai'i.)

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In her concern to integrate the social arts into the academic
curriculum, then, Lawrence revealed her Deweyite lack of relish
for the historic separation of labor and leisure, man and nature,
thought and action, individuality and association, method andsubject matter, mind and behavior (fig. i). For her, intelligencein the child was, as for Dewey, the purposeful reorganization,
through action, of the material of experience.
During Miss Lawrence's first few years, Queen Emma Hall on
King Street was the Association's headquarters. This two-story
structure was surrounded by verandas on both levels, and there
were outside stairways at the ends. A hall separated each floor into
two large rooms. The "foreign" kindergarten, the training school,
and the Association office occupied the top floor, and the Hawaiian
and Japanese kindergartens the lower one. The grounds were
ample and contained space for a large playground and entry drive.
Miss Lawrence was also in charge of the three auxiliary kindergartens on Fort Street, Miller Street, and the Palama Settlement.
Except for the integrated school at Palama, the early kindergartens
were organized on racial lines for Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian,Portuguese, and "foreign" children.
After 1900, the policy of segregation would gradually be
replaced with complete integration.29 This was partly because of
Hawai'i's ethnic diversity and partly because of the progressive
assumption that democracy would be achieved only as schooling
was popularized in character as well as clientele (fig. 2). Democracy could not flourish, progressives tended to feel, where there
was segregated education. Democracy demanded a universal
education in the problems of living together and of advancing
society's interests. Segregated schools could not reflect reality in
Hawai'i and, therefore, could not be the center of the struggle
for a better life.30
By 1900, the FKCAA had committed itself to desegregatededucation. It also committed itself to admit children of all ethnic
groups in approximately the same ratio found in Honolulu's
FIG. 2. Castle Kindergarten, Honolulu, 1934. (Castle collection, College of
Education, University of Hawai'i.)

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population. Further, since the Castle family had been joined byother generous donors, children could be admitted without
consideration as to their parents' economic or social status. For
placement purposes, applicants were examined for physical size,
mental age, maturation, and evidence that they could profit fromthe education offered. Only children of severe mental incapacity
were excluded. In the 20th century, as the application lists grew
longer, the demand for more schools increased.31
Although the private sector provided the major initiative, theTerritorial government entered the field in 1919. In a tentative
fashion, funds were provided for kindergartens at Waialua on
O'ahu, Kahului on Maui, and Hilo on the Big Island. In Juneof 1921, enrollment reached 587, but fell to 52 a year later. Becauseof discontinued funding, and perhaps because the private sector
dominated the field at no cost to the public, public kindergartens
disappeared until 1943.32
In addition to her guidance of the kindergarten curriculum
along progressive lines, Miss Lawrence continued the training ofteachers, most of whom were high school graduates, in Dewey's
ideas. In 1894, the training school represented Harriet Castle's
goal of training Hawaiian and "foreign" girls for community
service and "happy motherhood." Many of the early trainees
came from the Kawaiahao Seminary, which later merged with
Mill's Institute to become today's Mid-Pacific Institute. Others
later came from the Kohala and Maunaolu Seminaries. During
Frances Lawrence's 39-year tenure, 59 young women received
training in Dewey's methods and took teaching positions inkindergartens. Gradually, however, the growing task of training
teachers was absorbed by the Honolulu Normal School, createdin 1896 and, after 1931, by the University of Hawai'i.33
By 1900, Harriet's dream of a comprehensive progressive
education for Hawai'i was still to be realized. Nonetheless, as she
reviewed the changes in the first five years of the FKCAA, she
saw a continuing role for women such as Miss Lawrence to guidethe future direction of early childhood education in Hawai'i.
Later, representatives of Columbia University, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Kindergarten Department of Los

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Angeles would rate the progressive education offered by the
FKCAA as among the best in the country. Indeed, in 1920, John
Dewey would visit Hawai'i en route to Japan and China and would
himself comment on the excellence of progressive kindergarten
instruction then available through the FKCAA. His belief that the
FKCAA and the Castle Kindergarten had bridged the gap
between theory and practice gave, perhaps, the ultimate stamp of
approval on years of hard work.34
In 1900, and at a time when Dewey's ideas were just beginningto have an impact on the education of the nation as much as they
already had in Hawai'i, Harriet Castle continued to believe that
progressive education provided the best opportunity for providing
life long learning skills to young people facing the challenges of achanging environment. As she put it:
The time must come when we will be willing to begin a workwhose full harvest cannot be reaped until generations after we aregone. We must begin sometime to put our very best and strongest
effort upon the children of today who are in the coming tomorrow
to be the mothers and grandmothers of successive generations fromwhence this abundant harvest will be reaped—reaped from theseed sowing of today if it be well done. What matters it if we are
not here to see !35
Progressive education, as it existed in 1900, possessed anexperimental curriculum directed toward the challenges of the
future. With full faith in rational exploration, the unlimited
potential of intellect to solve problems, and the sense that education held the key to social improvement in the 20th century,
progressive educators in Hawai'i optimistically viewed the prospects for a new century.36 However, the actual record ofaccomplishment of progressive education in Hawai'i, seen in
retrospect, was somewhat less than Harriet Castle and other earlyadherents hoped. Progressive elementary and kindergarten education never succeeded in its quest to provide educational opportunity
for all ethnic and class groups in Hawai'i. As Dr. Ralph Steuber,
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THE HAWAIIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY

Hawai'i noted in an interview, progressivism also failed to provide
the social integration and progress that Harriet and others had
hoped. This failure, however, may have been due to the inability
to apply progressive theory to actual teaching practice, rather
than to the shortcomings of Dewey's ideas.37
Despite a continuing debate about the role formal pedagogic
structure should play in the curriculum, today progressivism is a
generally accepted element in elementary and secondary education. Dewey's central assumptions that the school is a community
builder and that self and knowledge are both social constructs are
given assumptions of teacher training in contemporary Hawai'i.
This is particularly true of the unspecialized curriculum of thekindergarten and the elementary school. Moreover, today, as in
1900, the private school often leads the public school in curricularinnovation. Brief visits to the public University Lab School andto private schools such as Punahou, Hanahau'oli, and HolyNativity, reveal that basic progressivistic assumptions regarding
education are alive and well.
In the 1980s, Dr. Steuber notes, elementary school progressive
theory faces challenges from the more individualistic and spiritualpedagogy of Montessori schools. In addition, the contemporary
concern that ethnic pluralism be respected by educators militatesagainst the progressive tendency to homogenize diverse ethnic
traditions. Harriet Castle's original progressive sense, that schools
should serve as "incubators of a new world" while Americanizing
students from diverse backgrounds, is challenged repeatedly
today.38
Despite the practical difficulty of translating progressive theory
into reality, the early efforts of Harriet Castle and the FKCAA
established an educational framework that endures. The basic
optimistic and secular faith that trained human intelligence canchange the world for the better continues to be attractive. Most
importantly, the fact that the central assumptions of progressivism
are often held unconsciously today reveals the importance of thepioneering work of the FKCAA in the 1890s.

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NOTES
1

Luella Cole, A History of Education (New York: Rinehart, 1950) 525. See also
Benjamin O. Wist, A Century of Public Education in Hawaii (Honolulu: Hawaii
Educational Review Press, 1940) 134-35.
2Adolphe E. Meyer, An Educational History of the Western World (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1972) 377.
3
Robert C. Schmitt and Ronn Ronck, Hawaii's Firsts (Honolulu: U of Hawai'iP, forthcoming).
4 Annual Report for 1895, FKCAA Archives, Mother Rice Kindergarten,
Honolulu.
5
Wist, A Century of Public Education 135.
6 Charter of the Free Kindergarten and Children's Aid Association of the
Hawaiian Islands, FKCAA Archives.
7
Charlotte Dodge, A History of the Free Kindergarten and Children's Aid Associationof the Hawaiian Islands, 1895-1945 ([Honolulu]: [FKCAA] n.d.), FKCAA
Archives.
8
Ermine Cross, The Story of the Henry and Dorothy Castle Memorial Kindergarten(Honolulu: Paradise Engraving and Printing, 1923) 3.
9Henry Castle, letter to Sister Carrie, March 1882, Henry Castle Letters(London: Sands and Company, 1902) 106.
10
Henry Castle, letter to Mary Castle, June 1885, Henry Castle Letters 201.
11
Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School (New York: Vintage
Books, 1964) 118.
12
John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: D. Appleton-Century, 1899)
43-4.
13
Dewey, The School and Society 51.
14
Dewey, The School and Society 70.
15
Harriet Castle Letters, 1897, FKCAA Archives.
16
J . N. Crouse, Chicago Kindergarten College, letter to Harriet Castle, Castle
Correspondence, FKCAA Archives.
17
Dodge, A History of the Free Kindergarten 10.
18
Dodge, A History of the Free Kindergarten 9.
19
Castle Correspondence, FKCAA Archives.
20
Harriet Castle, Notes, FKCAA Archives.
21
Harriet Castle, The Kindergarten and the Public School, Castle File,
FKCAA Archives.
22
Harriet Castle, The Kindergarten and the Public School, FKCAA Archives.
23
Harriet Castle, The Kindergarten and the Public School, FKCAA Archives.
24
Harriet Castle, "Kindergarten Objectives," KG Magazine, May 1923.
25 Harriet Castle, "Kindergarten Objectives," KG Magazine, May 1923.
26
Castle File, Notes, FKCAA Archives.
27
Dodge, A History of the Free Kindergarten 5.

136
28

THE HAWAIIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY

Adeline E. Babbitt, A Programfor Children From 18 to 72 Months in the Hawaiian
Situation (New York: Columbia U, 1948) 79-88.
29 D o d g e , A History of the Free Kindergarten 13.
30
C r e m i n , The Transformation of the School 1 2 5 - 2 6 .
31
B a b b i t t , A Program for Children 9 6 .
32
Schmitt and Ronck, Hawaii's Firsts.
33
W i s t , A Century of Public Education in Hawaii 135.
34
Cross, The Story of the Henry and Dorothy Castle Memorial Kindergarden 4 - 6 .
35
Harriet Castle, Is the Kindergarten an Especial Opportunity for Hawaiian
Girls?, 1900, Castle File, FKCAA Archives.
36
H e r b e r t Zimiles, " T e a c h e r s College R e c o r d , " Progressive Education ( W i n t e r1987): 205.
37
Dr. Ralph Steuber, personal interview, 10 May 1988.
38
Steuber, personal interview.