Bluestem's been following the War on All-Day Kindergarten ever since Representative Mary Sawatzky suggested that Senate Minority Leader David Hann "go for it" when she heard that Hann would campaign against kindergarteners.
However, even Hann has his limits in this battle. The wildest rhetoric is being left to shock troops like Swanville's James* Steinle who writes to the ECM papers editorial board in Let parents develop child’s good character:
The most important quality, however, is developing good character. This responsibility is the parents, not the state educational system. Children need time with their mother and father so proper character can be instilled.
Early childhood education as Minnesota has approved – and this Editorial Board promotes – reverses this Godly-ordained role.
History shows this can be dangerous. Hitler once said, “Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state. The state will take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing. Your child belongs to us already.”
He also said, “Give me the youth, and Germany will rule the world.”
Parents need to think through what is really important before they give their children over to early state education.
Well then. "Kindergarten" is a German word, after all--though coined in 1840 by Friedrich Fröbel, and fostered in the United States by 19th Century New England Transcendentalist and Hawthorne in-law Elizabeth Peabody-- who wrote to Congress in 1897:
The advantage to the community in utilizing the age from 4 to 6 in training the hand and eye; in developing the habits of cleanliness, politeness, self-control, urbanity, industry; in training the mind to understand numbers and geometric forms, to invent combinations of figures and shapes, and to represent them with the pencil—these and other valuable lessons… will, I think, ultimately prevail in securing to us the establishment of this beneficent institution in all the city school systems of our country.
Other than that long history in the century before the Nazis emerged and rose to power, Steinle must be totally right that Hitler invented early childhood education and kindergarten.
Photo: Yeah, we're crying too when we find letters like this one.
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