the future direction of early childhood education in Hawaii. Later, representatives of Columbia University, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Kindergarten Department of Los Angeles would rate the progressive education offered by the FKCAA as among the best in the country. Indeed, in 1920, John Dewey would visit Hawaii 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.31
Progressive education, as it existed in 1900, possessed an experimental 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 twentieth century, progressive educators in Hawaii optimistically viewed the presets for a new century.32 However, the actual record of accomplishment of progressive education in Hawaii, seen in retrospect, was somewhat less successful than early adherents had hoped. Progressive elementary and kindergarten education never succeeded in its quest to provide educational opportunity for all ethnic and class groups in Hawaii. As Ralph Steuber, historian of educational theory and education in Hawaii, noted in an interview, progressivism also failed to provide the social integration and progress that reformers 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.33
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 and Mead’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 Hawaii. This is particularly true of the unspecialized curriculum of the kindergarten and the elementary school. Moreover, today, as in 1900, the private school often leads the public school in curricular innovation. Brief visits to the public University Lab School and to private schools such as Punahou, Hanahau’oli, and Holy Nativity reveal that basic progressivistic assumptions regarding education are alive and well.
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 can change the world for the better continues to be attractive. The progressive faith Henry Castle and G. H. Mead had in transmuting theological faith into secular engagement with social reform and change left Hawaii an educational legacy we still enjoy today. In 1943, the Territorial Department of Education would adopt a publicly supported full-day kindergarten that drew on the ideas of the Castles, Mead, and Dewey. In the twenty-first century, the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation honors George and Henry with its continuing commitment to universal high-quality early education for three-and four-year-olds.
Alfred L. Castle
Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation
Honolulu, Hawaii
October 2012
NOTES
1. Robert M. Crunden, Ministers of Reform: The Progressives’ Achievement in American Civilization, 1889—1920 (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984). See also Gary A. Cook, George Herbert Mead: The Making of a Social Pragmatist (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993) and Alfred L. Castle, A Century of Philanthropy: A History of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 2004).
2. Luella Cole, A History of Education: Socrates to Montessori (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.
3. Adolph E. Meyer, An Educational History of the Western World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), 377.
4. Annual Report for 1895, FKCAA Archives, Mother Rice Kindergarten, Honolulu.
5. Wist, 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 Association of 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.
9. Henry 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: Progressivism in American Education, l876—1957 (New York: Vintage, 1964), 118.
12. John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: D. Appleton-Century, 1899), 43–44.
13. Ibid., 51.
14. Ibid., 70.
15. Harriet Castle Letters, 1897, FKCAA Archives.
16. J. N. Grouse, Chicago Kindergarten College, letter to Harriet Castle, Castle Correspondence, FKCAA Archives.
17. Dodge, History of the Free Kindergarten, 9.
18. Castle Correspondence, FKCAA Archives.
19. Harriet Castle, Notes, FKCAA Archives.
20. Harriet Castle, The Kindergarten and the Public School, Castle File, FKCAA Archives.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Harriet Castle, “Kindergarten Objectives,” KG Magazine, May 1923.
24. Ibid.
25. Castle File, Notes, FKCAA Archives.
26. Dodge, History of the Free Kindergarten, 5.
27. Ibid., 13.
28. Cremin, Transformation of the School, 125—26.
29. Adeline E. Babbitt, A Program for Children from 18 to 72 Months in the Hawaiian Situation (New York: Columbia University, 1948), 96.
30. Wist, Century of Public Education, 135.
31. Cross, Henry and Dorothy Castle Memorial Kindergarten, 4—6.
32. Herbert Zimiles, “Teachers College Record,” Progressive Education (Winter 1987): 205.
33. Dr. Ralph Steuber, personal interview, 10 May 1988.
Henry Northrup Castle
Letters
