





































Patty Smith Hill and Democracy 
in the Kindergarten Curriculum 

Rose A. Rudnitski 

The Kindergarten Curriculum 

The Kindergarten Today 

The house corneri the block area; 
the sand/water table; the game table; 
the easel: these are some of the 
areas of study and learning in the 
kindergarten classroom. The journal 
of a student teaching superv~sor 
provides a look at how some of the 
areas and activities formerly labeled 
as "play" and considered to be less 
significant than "work" have been 
blended to be included as learning 
experiences: 

Circle time is purposeful. The 
children take turns reading the 
daily message. The rule seems 
to be that no one can help the 
child unless the child points to 
the word and looks at them. 
That is the signal that the 
class can help. Children are 
invited to read. If they 
decline, it is all right. 
"Perhaps, next time," Lois [a 
pseudonym] suggests. Lois 
reminds them that the schedule 
is changed and thanks them for 
being patient. One boy is asked 
if he needs to sit alone for 
awhile. He shakes his head. 

Lois then reminds the class of 
the science experiment they are 
doing with their snails. She 
shows the class printed sheets 
with the words light and dark on 
them. The word "light" has a 
red dot sticker by it. The word 
"dark" has a blue dot sticker. 
In rows next to each category 
are several stickers of the 
appropriate color. Lois asks 
the children who completed the 
sheet to come up and tell the 
class how they conducted their 
experiment, what they watched 
for, and what the results were. 
The final question she had for 
each was "which one has more or 
less and how did you figure it 
out?" It fascinates me to hear 
how each child explains it in a 

way. 

The children are not given a 
choice as to where they will 
spend the work time. Lois has 
it planned. These four at the 
housekeeping corner, two more at 
blocks, two at the computer, 

55 

five to the table for the 
science experiments, two more to 
construct homes for their snails 
so that they can do light and 
dark observations, two boys go 
to the library, four children 
play table games and three 
children go to woodworking. 

Lois first dismissed the 
children to the block areas so 
that she could talk about the 
masking tape that she had placed 
on the floor in that area. The 
tape was supposed to represent a 
city and where and what the 
children should be building on 
it. When the students gave 
suggestions on types of city 
buildings that they could build 
during this meeting, Lois took 
notes. (Later she copied the 
sheet over and displayed it in 
the block area for the students 
to refer to when building. 

Kindergarten has not always looked 
this way, of course. There were many 
people involved in the early 
kindergarten movementi kindergartners, 
they were called, who influenced the 
course of the kindergarten curriculum. 
No American, however, was as 
influential as Miss Patty Smith Hill 
of Louisville, Kentucky, a bright, 
energetic young woman who was to 
change the American kindergarten 
curriculum forever f fusing it to the 
elementary school as the essential 
initial experience in public 
education. 

Patty Hill described the 
kindergarten curriculum of her day as 
based on the romantic-idealistic 
movement in Germany, characterized by 
the philosophies of Kant, Fichte, 
Schelling and Krause, and strengthened 
in America by the idealism of the 
Transcendental School in New England 
(Hill, 1909). In practice, teachers 
in American kindergartens 

embraced the pedagogy 
Froebel (1897) f the 

German philosopher who had founded 
many kindergartens in Europe. 
Froebel's methods brought to life the 
belief that humanity was becoming more 
civilized as time progressed, and that 
this process would be enhanced by the 
resolution of the conflict between 
instinct and The goal of public 
education was essentially to help the 
masses to accomplish this resolution 



in their own lives. The beginning of 
the transfer of the derivation of 
motivation, the impulse as it was 
called then, from instinct to duty was 
the training children received in 
Froebelian kindergartens. 

A kindergarten taught by a Miss 
Emma and Miss Julia in the church 
basement of a "prairie town" in the 
United States of the late 19th and 
early twentieth centuries was 
described in this way: 

In those days, one f s chief 
responsibility in kindergarten, 
as in school, was to learn to do 
as one was told. There was a 
white circle painted on the 
floor. There was a locked 
cupboard to which Miss Julia 
kept the key. One sat on the 
white circle while Miss Emma 
told a story embodying some 
spiritual "lesson" and one did 
not squirm or ask questions. 
One sat in a little red chair, 
"hands folded at the edge of the 
table," when Miss Julia unlocked 
the cupboard, placing in front 
of each child The Gift, while 
Miss Emma explained precisely 
what was to be done with it. 
Richard might aspire to a 
pattern of his own design on his 
pegboard. Kathleen might feel 
more like clay modeling than 
paper weaving. Margery might 
prefer cutting paper doll 
dresses from her blue paper to 
folding it into a geometric 
form. But in the kindergarten 
one did as one was told, all 
except David who blew into 
tantrums of outraged dignity and 
thwarted ambition and was 
finally refused as a 
kindergarten pupil by Miss Emma 
(Amidon, 1927, p.506). 

Patty Smith Hill's reaction to a 
similarly critical student during 
circle time was quite different from 
Miss Emma's. As an educator, Miss 
Hill was resolved to listen to her 
students and to learn from them. In a 
1927 interview, she stated, 

When I look back on my long 
experience in teaching, I am 
always grateful for what I have 
learned from the children. If 
one is not 
administering "a 
can learn so much 
room! 

absorbed in 
, one 

a school 

56 

There was little Howard, for 
instance, back in the first 
Louisville kindergarten. Howard 
could always manage to say what 
he meant. Every school room 
ought to have one child who is 
able to express to the teacher 
what others only feel. We were 
sitting in the traditional 
kindergarten circle, the 
children and I. In those days 
it was part of a good 
kindergartner's job to get over 
to the children f the topic of 
the day.' I was earnestly 
holding forth looking to the 
right and left, to the front, 
and to the children on each side 
when Howard lifted his face to 
mine. • Say, Teacher, . he 
demanded, • who are you talking 
to anyhow?' At once I realized 
what artificial nonsense the 
whole performance was. In the 
circle I was not talking to 
anyone. I was just spraying my 
ideas over a group of children, 
who had to listen whether they 
wanted to or not. The circle as 
a I symbol' was disbanded then 
and there. After this I did my 
talking with individual children 
and little groups who came to 
discuss matters of genuine 
interest. As soon as we ceased 
to make a rite of it, it was 
easy to get exchange of ideas 
and vigorous discussion among 
little children. This was an 
enormous gain in reality and 
directness, but given our small, 
spontaneous groups as working 
units, I found myself asking: 
How can we develop social 
consciousness in children of 
this age? (quoted in Amidon, 
1927, p. 508) 

How, indeed, can one develop social 
consciousness in children? 

A Childhood Filled With Commitment 

There is a lot to learn about 
fostering the development of social 
consciousness from the story of Patty 
Smith Hill's childhood. Born in the 
Reconstruction South in 1868, Miss 
Hill was the fourth child in a family 
of six: two boys and four girls of an 
educated, influential, but very non­
traditional family of Louisville, 

The children were 
encouraged to be independent thinkers 
who worked hard for others as well as 
for themselves. It was written many 

that each of the Hill 
, as they matured, nundertook 

some big of work and thirty 



years after the father's death 
Louisville people to say that 
Louisville, like Rome, was built on 
seven Hills" (Chaffee, 1925). 

Patty Smith Hill's father, W. W. 
Hill, who, as a D~och1J'~ minister 
was not el for service in the 
Civil War, a college for the 

the South near 
Kentucky, as his 

contribution to the reconstruction 
years" (Bailey, 1931, p.5). Dr. Hill, 
a of Princeton University, 

that education should 
be available to women as well as to 
men so that they could be prepared to 
live an independent life. Reminiscing 
in 1925 about her childhood, Miss Hill 
related that, though her family was 
financially well-to do, the Hill girls 
were encouraged to pursue a 
profession. "This was a radical thing 
everywhere fifty years ago, 
particularly in the South. My father 
had a horror of girls marrying 'just 
for a home' and he said that the only 
way to avoid this catastrophe was to 
prepare every young woman to 'stand on 
her own feet' economically. For this 
reason from our earliest years sisters 
and brothers alike discussed together 
and with our parents the type of work 
we wished to pursue when we were 
grown" (Amidon, p. 507). 

Patty Hill's mother was, it seems, 
a perfect match for a man who held 
such beliefs. She was a writer for 
the Louisville Courier-Journal who had 
grown up on a pre-Civil War 
plantation. She valued literacy and 
human dignity, and as a young girl had 
taught all the captives who labored on 
her family's plantation to read and 
write. She had attempted to be 
admitted to a nearby college, The 
Center College, but was refused formal 
matriculation because she was a woman. 
She was tutored privately by 
professors from the college, but never 
was allowed to earn a degree. 

Professor Hill's 
that children should 
and follow their own 
as learn the value of 

mother believed 
be free to play 

My mother's of 
one. She said 

have every 
there was not some reason 
should not have--a radical 
view in those Puritanical 

well 

We children each had our own 
small We were also allowed 
to with hammer and nails. We 

to work for 
, and our home was 

57 

open to other people's children. 
My mother used to , she'd rather 
have other at her 
house than children at 
other Then she'd 
always Our 
home was open. 
The cook was was 

for was 
for if 

an 
was necessary. And we 
what it was to sit down 

." (Chaffee, 1925, p. 1-2) 

later attributed 
much and its success 
in classrooms upbringing in a 
home with an atmosphere of freedom 
where was valued as much as work. 
She her parents as role models 
whom she followed in the way which 
suited her most. She recalled that by 
the time she was eight or nine, she 
knew what she wanted to do when she 
grew up, though she had never heard of 
kindergartens. "When I was about 
eleven, someone told me about a 
foundling's asylum, and I decided that 
a whole houseful of babies would be 
the finest thing in the world, and I 
went as far as to ask my mother to 
help me take charge of one when I grew 
up." (Chaffee, 1925) 

Mentors 

There were other people to whom 
Patty Smith Hill attributed her 
success and ability to have such a 
deep impact on education. One was her 
first kindergarten pedagogy teacher, 
Miss Anna E. Bryan, the director of a 
kindergarten training school in 
Louisville. Miss Bryan had studied in 
Chicago and opened up the training 
school the year that Patty Hill turned 
eighteen. She entered as one of Miss 
Bryan's first students. .. I was the 
youngest in the class, but from the 
very beginning, Miss Bryan would say, 
"Do not follow Froebel blindly. I 
want to see what you, yourself will 
do" (Amidon, 1927, p. 507) . The free 

of Froebel's 
of in 
at that 

if Miss Hill 

courageous 

Miss 

, and one 
would have so 
the Froebelian 

if she had not 
of the 

Hill head teacher of the 
Smith 

demonstration 
in her school 

the year that Miss Hill 
Hill was a masterful teacher who 



inspired those around her, especially 
the children, to think creatively and 
independently. She believed that she 
was actually following Froebel's 
teaching, since she interpreted him as 
constantly searching, "sending out 
material to mothers and teachers 
urging them to criticize it after 
experimentation. Those who came after 
him did not have this fresh and 
adventurous spirit. In their hands 
his incomplete experimentation grew 
into a cult. The purpose of the 
kindergarten movement ceased to be a 
progressive scheme of education and 
became a ' system' .. (Amidon, 1927) . 
Many educational leaders of the day 
were emerging as advocates of the 
Froebelian 'system' so decried by 
Patty Smith Hill: Elizabeth Peabody, 
William T. Harris, and Miss Susan 
Blow, a national leader in 
kindergarten and a lecturer at Teacher 
College, who would later become an 
intellectual adversary and close 
personal friend of Miss Hill. 

Miss Bryan and Miss Hill 
experimented with different methods in 
their campus school kindergarten in 
Louisville, deciding that children 
would rather build houses and doll 
beds with Froebel's Gift of 
rectangular blocks, rather than the 
square dictated by the followers of 
his system. The two women travelled 
together to the NEA meeting of 1890, 
where Miss Bryan presented a paper 
titled "The Letter Killeth," a 
critique of the dictation-like, 
systematized method of teaching 
children to draw so commonly practiced 
at that time. Miss Hill illustrated 
the talk with drawings and students' 
original work, revolutionary 
techniques in the kindergarten of the 
19th century. That summer they went 
to study with Francis Parker at the 
Cook County Normal School in Chicago. 
"Whenever there was anyone that either 
Miss Bryan or I could study with, we 
did so" (Chaffee, 1925, p.4). They 
studied with G. Stanley Hall of Clark 
University in 1895, after receiving a 
questionnaire from him which was 
obviously critical of the traditional 
techniques. She later reported, 
"While a large number of 
kindergartners responded to Dr. Hall's 
invitation, at the close of his first 
class only two students remained for 
the exceedingly strenuous summer 
course he proposed - Miss Bryan and 
myself. This gave us a rare 
opportunity, as we had the whole 
summer for uninterrupted study under 
Dr. Hall and Professor Burnham. Here 
we were introduced to the new child 
study movement, to the for 

58 

changing materials, curricula, and 
methods in the light of new knowledge 
about both physical and mental health" 
(Amidon, 1927, p. 508). 

Even as she was spending her 
summers studying with many of the 
leading Progressives of the day, among 
them John Dewey, William James, and 
Dr. Luther Gulick, she was adapting 
the Progressive philosophy to 
kindergarten methods. Miss Hill had 
worked with the poor children of the 
ravaged southern states of the 
Reconstruction era. She was deeply 
moved by the malnutrition, child 
labor, and high death rate among 
children of poverty. She had 
developed a life-long commitment to 
democratic ideals and the importance 
of self-determination in activity, 
especially in childhood, as a means of 
empowering children to overcome social 
and economic disadvantages. As she 
put it, "Even tiny children have a 
right to 'Life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. ' (undated 
interview) 

In 1893, Miss Bryan went to Chicago 
to study with John Dewey, leaving 
Patty Smith Hill as Principal and 
Supervisor of the Louisville 
Kindergarten Training School. That 
year, Miss Hill went to mount an 
exhibit on her new kindergarten 
methods in the Education Building at 
the Chicago World's Fair. By then, 
more than 3000 visitors had signed the 
register as guests who had observed 
her kindergarten in Louisville, among 
them, Colonel Parker, Dr. Jenny B. 
Merrill, Supervisor of the 
kindergartens of the New York City 
Public Schools, Miss Caroline T. Haven 
of the Ethical Culture School, and Mr. 
Milton Bradley, the first manufacturer 
of kindergarten materials (Fine, 
undated) . 

The exhibit at the World's Fair 
drew a great deal of attention to 
Louisville and Patty Hill. She became 
a leader of the kindergarten movement, 
was a prominent lecturer at the 
meetings of the International 
Kindergarten Union, and was appointed 

that organization to head the 
Committee of the Committee of 

Nineteen in 1904. By 1905, when Dean 
James Earl Russell invited her to 

an appointment as lecturer at 
College, she had travelled 

allover the United States, and twice 
to Europe, speaking on her progressive 
ideas and methods for teaching young 
children (Jammer, 1960). 



She had become a strong voice, not 
only for children, but for their 
teachers as well. Her in teacher 
education curriculum at the Louisville 
Training School included many academic 
subjects. She strongly encouraged the 
development of attitudes which would 
promote independence in teachers 
rather than dependence on the methods 
of others. It was only through the 
study of children, she felt, that 
teachers could know how to react to 
them in their classrooms, and it was 
only through independent thought that 
each teacher could develop a program 
suited for her particular children 
(Hill, 1901). Late in her career, she 
summed up her ideas on teachers this 
way: 

There are two great divisions of 
teachers, you know, cookbook 
teachers and checkerboard 
teachers. A cookbook teacher 
sits down every evening, 
measures out so much arithmetic, 
so much spelling, so much music, 
according to a pedagogical 
recipe and next day spoon-feeds 
it into his pupils. He calls 
the process education. But 
suppose he were getting ready 
for a game of chess or checkers. 
Would it do any good to take the 
board the evening before and 
figure out the campaign-first 
this move, then that move? When 
he sat down with his opponents, 
he would find that the vital 
factor had been entirely omitted 
from his calculations: the 
reaction of the other mind. I 
tell my students that that is 
our main concern as teachers -
the reaction of the other mind. 
Of course cook book teaching is 
easier. But the other kind -
well, from the child's point of 
view the other kind offers 
possibilities of real adventure. 
And for the teacher it is a lot 
more fun (Amidon, 1927, p.509). 

It is easy to see why Russell 
persevered in persuading Miss Hill to 
leave Louisville to seek her fortune 
in New York City, though she was very 
reluctant to do so. 

The Teachers College Years 

Of all her mentors, the last was 
one of the and had the most 
profound effect on Patty Smith Hill's 
life and work: James Earl Russell. 
Russell was aware of the two opposing 
views in the movement, 

59 

and already had a major proponent of 
the traditional methods as a lecturer 
at Teachers College, Miss Susan Blow. 
Patty Hill had attended Teachers 
College in the summer of 1905, and 
received an invitation from Dean 
Russell to lecture there that fall. 
She impressed everyone with her open­
mindedness, sincerity, and dedication 
so much that Russell asked her to 
extend the leave she had taken from 
the Louisville kindergarten to a full 
year, offering her an honorarium of 
$20.00 per lecture (Russell, 1937). 
When she demurred at the low pay and 
the prospect of an extended absence 
from her job, Russell replied: 

I have your letter of January 
29, 1905. You perhaps will 
think of the old saying 
concerning the camel, who, if he 
gets his head in, crowds in his 
whole body. Perhaps I did that. 
But you should take it as a 
compliment that we are so 
anxious to extend your period of 
residence, and at the same time 
attribute the scaling of salary 
to our unavoidable poverty. 
Nevertheless, I have telegraphed 
you that, womanlike, you may 
have your own way (February 2, 
1905). 

Thus began a friendship which 
lasted through the rest of Patty Smith 
Hill's career. Russell gave Miss Hill 
the opportunity to experiment with her 
ideas in the kindergartens of the 
Speyer School and the Horace Mann 
Schools. He encouraged her to carry 
on her work, and served as a sounding 
board for her complaints, as well as 
an advisor in her dealings with her 
enemies. She had come to Teachers 
College as a "radical" who was too 
unorthodox for many kindergarten 
educators. Sometimes she did not feel 
up to the task. 

Russell recounted the story of his 
offering Miss Hill a full-time 
appointment in a 1927 letter: 

When it became necessary to 
reorganize our Kindergarten 
Department, I found that there 
was sharp competition between 
two schools of thought. Miss 
Blow and her disciples adhered 
very religiously to the formal 
interpretation of Froebel's 
philosophy and practice. Miss 
Hill was one of the two or three 
prominent leaders of the more 
liberal My plan at first 
was to have sides 
in Teachers Col as it is 



part of my policy to see that no 
one mode of thought is here 
represented to the exclusion of 
the others. Consequently for 
some time, I tried to drive the 
team abreast by making provision 
for both parties to present 
their case. 

This he did first by having the two 
women share a course of lectures which 
were open to the public in January of 
1906. Each lectured her point of view 
every other week, alternating with the 
other (Jammer, 1960). The prospect of 
facing the impressive and powerful 
Miss Blow, who had been the 
Chairperson of the Traditional 
Committee of the Committee of Nineteen 
in 1903, almost caused Miss Hill to 
decline Dean Russell's invitation. 
She had already encountered Miss Blow 
in her activities in the International 
Kindergarten Union. In fact, The 
Committee of Fifteen had become the 
Committee of Nineteen in 1904, when it 
became obvious that there were two 
opposing points of view in the 
kindergarten movement. [The Committee 
later split into three groups, with 
Miss Blow chairing the Conservative 
Committee, Miss Hill, the Liberal, and 
Miss Wheelock, the Liberal­
Conservative, which issued their final 
reports in 1913 (I.K.U., (1913).J 
Dean Russell's reply to Miss Hill 
indicated the intensity of her concern 
at facing the formidable Miss Blow on 
a weekly basis: 

Dear Miss Hill: 
I can hardly believe that your 
present mental condition is other 
than temporary stage fright. 
Otherwise, how can you explain the 
apparent despondency of an able­
bodied young woman at the head of 
the graduate department in her 
subject in the leading Teachers 
College of the world when she 
thinks of the specter of one who is 
a master of the same field but who 
has at best a few months or a few 
years in which to work? . But 
it is still worse than even this. 
The younger woman occupies not only 
the headship of the department but 
has a permanent appointment; the 
specter to which I refer has 
a temporary lectureship 
on gifts received (Jan. 11, 

Miss Hill replied to that letter in 
the affirmative, with a vow to enter 
upon her new work with enthusiasm and 
determination to make it a success if 
the possibil (Jan. 
25, 1906). and Miss lectured 
their views every other week. Miss 

60 

Hill later found it amusing. "The 
same group of students were exposed to 
diametrically opposed points of view 
on different days. It's a wonder the 
class survived!" (Amidon, p. 508) 

From the beginning, Smith 
Hill, with the continuous blessing and 
encouragement of Dean Russell began a 
process of change and experimentation 
which never ceased dur ing her tenure 
at Teachers College. Her first 
students, mostly kindergarten teachers 
and supervisors from the New York 
area, had been staunch advocates of 
traditional ways and the students of 
Miss Blow. Patty Hill's methods were 
sometimes too liberal for the New York 
audience. Dean Russell, seeing this, 
allowed Miss Hill to establish a 
"play" room at Teachers College in 
which Miss Hill, along with Miss 
Luella Palmer, could experiment with 
their new methods with children who 
had not attended traditional 
kindergartens. They recruited 
children from three to seven years of 
age with no previous school experience 
and set to work designing materials 
and a curriculum suited for the 
children they had, and not for an 
ideal of what someone thought children 
should be (Hill, 1906a; Palmer, 1906). 

Miss Hill had studied with Dr. 
Luther Gulick in 1898, in what she 
called the first school of play in 
America. It was there that she had 
started to experiment with different 
size blocks to see if the children, 
like she and her brothers and sisters, 
enjoyed building structures large 
enough for them to play inside. Her 
own childhood had an effect on her 
work long after she left Louisville. 
She recounted: 

I looked back on my own 
childhood when my sisters and I 
tried to make houses big enough 
to get into but the available 
materials were not suited to our 
purposes. We tried placing 
boards on top of barrels but the 
construction was so shaky that 
we were compelled to lie down 
after creeping 'upstairs. · ... We 
worked on this scheme twelve or 
thirteen years before we devised 

set of blocks which 
allover the world are 

(Amidon, 1927, p.509). 

Because the New York crowd was so 
conservative, Miss Hill dared not call 
her first School Room a 

in the beginning. 



Gradually, however, her reputation 
grew, and her ideas gained acceptance. 
She led the move toward abandoning 
Froebelian materials and developing 
materials based on activities relevant 
to the child's experience. She 
maintained, however, that true to her 
interpretation of Froebel's 
experimental attitude toward his 
philosophy, she "kept the Froebelian 
attitude and spirit". She never 
adopted Montessori's methods, feeling 
that they were too rigid and 
artificial for American children 
(Amidon, p. 509). 

One of Miss Hill's ideas which 
revolutionized teaching in the 
kindergarten was the notion that young 
children had minds and personalities 
of their own: that they were unique 
individuals with interests and needs 
which were important enough to be 
heeded. She could not see the 
connection between Froebel's Gifts and 
Occupations and the children's taking 
pride in their work. In her study of 
young children, she saw that children 
of two or three cared little for their 
products, but those who were four, 
five or six, cared a great deal. Why, 
then, should the product be dictated 
to the child, when the child has ideas 
of his/her own? 

Show a boy of five the kite fold 
which, when completed, will form 
one of a series to be pasted in 
the flat in a scrap book; then 
show him the same form made of 
tough paper and sufficiently 
large to experiment with in the 
wind. Ask him which he prefers 
to make, and you will see 
whether products are of 
importance. Also, watch the 
difference between his passivity 
and eagerness in the two cases 
(Hill, 1906b, p. 11). 

Miss Hill was very vocal in her 
belief that young children had 
personalities and that they were 
capable, with the right teaching, of 
being taught to think for themselves. 
A teacher who knew her children, could 
help each child to develop his or her 
own individual She encouraged 
teachers to records of 
children's , even during free 
play so that might know each 
child as a person. She encouraged 
parent interviews as a means of 
getting to know each child's 
personality and so that 
the teacher could know that the 
child has a life outside of school.In 
this way, she could the 

61 

curriculum most suited to each child. 

The Child as a Social Learner 

Patty Hill did not merely 
acknowledge the young child's 
individual needs. Based on years of 
observation, she knew the importance 
of the child's social needs as well. 
In addition to her child study, she 
attributed the philosophical basis for 
her ideas to Froebel, writing in her 
part of the Report of the Committee of 
Nineteen that Froebel believed that 
the organization of the subject 
matter, the curriculum of the 
kindergarten, grew out of the social 
life of the child (I.K.U., 1913). 

She told of how she fostered 
cooperation through the use of large 
blocks too heavy to handle alone, and 
how children worked together to solve 
problems in their play. A true sense 
of purpose, she said, came from the 
child's own life, and not from the 
purposes set out by the teacher in her 
lessons: 

A group of six year olds taught 
me about this many years ago. 
They worked for a week over a 
model of a Fifth Avenue bus 
which they built with blocks. 
They criticized, discussed 
plans, and improved the model 
with undiminished enthusiasm, 
till they were satisfied. We 
had to learn through these 
children what real concentration 
is when a job challenges their 
interest. It is astonishing the 
difference between attention 
which is only a response to the 
teacher;s demand and the 
concentration inspired by 
enthusiasm for a job (Amidon, p. 
509) . 

Miss Hill firmly believed that 
young children could learn democratic 
principles only if they were involved 
in democratic group situations. She 
also believed that these principles 
could not be learned unless they were 
experienced in a meaningful context: 
that of the child's own interests 
(Hill, 1915). She fostered 
independence and leadership in much 
the same manner as it had been for her 
as a child growing up in Louisville, 
and later as a woman apprehensive 
about to Teachers College to 
continue her work. She advocated 
allowing children the freedom to 
choose their own means and ends, yet 
also allowing for aid and 

if they needed it. 

Jack me about this. Jack 
was in Miss Garrison's group, 



here at Teachers college. A 
canary bird had been given to 
the children. When Miss 
Garrison carried the cage into 
the room, they all crowded about 
her, admir ing and asking 
questions. The cage was finally 
placed in the window, and the 
children scattered to their 
various occupations. Presently 
Jack tugged at Miss Garrison f s 
sleeve. "What's the bird's 
name?" he asked. 
"I don't believe he has a name." 
"Then I will name him," said 
Jack. ItI will name him for 
myself: Jack." 
"But Jack, does the bird belong 
to you?" asked Miss Garrison. 
"No, he doesn't." 
"To whom does the bird belong?" 
"I suppose he belongs to all of 
the children in this room." 
"Well, then, who has the right 
to name him?" 
"I suppose all the children 
ought to name him, " Jack 
answered slowly. 
Garrison, please 
children together to name 

call 
"Miss 

the 
the 

bird!" 
Miss Garrison waited a moment 
and then suggested, "But Jack, 
you are the one who wants the 
bird named. Can't you call the 
children together?" 
It was a big undertaking for a 
five-year-old. Jack hesitated, 
uncertain how to organize a 
"town meeting," but convinced of 
the need of one. Finally he 
went from one group of children 
to another saying, "Our bird 
hasn't a name - come on, let's 
name him. You can nail that 
afterward - let's name our bird 
right away." 
Jack persuaded Leland and Margot 
and Sally to help him arrange 
chairs. They placed them in a 
big circle, "so we can all see 
each other," with a seat for 
Miss Garrison. But when all the 
chairs were occupied, it was 
Jack, not the teacher, who began 
to hold forth. The group 
entered into animated 
discussion, Jack insisting that 
Jessie mustn't talk till Emily 
was through and that everyone 
must be quiet when Harold, who 
stuttered, began to talk. At 
last a name was chosen, the big 
circle broke up and the children 
returned to their and 
carpentry and painting. But 
Jack had taught 
about 
that we 

62 

small, spontaneous group is the 
natural unit for work with 
little children. A common 
interest is the only basis for 
calling together a large group. 
Given such an interest, a large 
group can function simply and 
spontaneously, and through it 
the children gain experience as 
parts of a social whole (Amidon, 
508-509). 

Patty Smith Hill held forth with 
her beliefs and wrote, and spoke 
frequently in the two first decades of 
this century on the value of making 
the interests of the child the central 
motivating force in classroom 
activity. She knew that young 
children, in their play, imitated 
adult behaviors and work activities, 
and encouraged them to engage in all 
kinds of occupations in the 
kindergarten classroom: carpentry, 
cooking, gardening, and painting, and 
though the products may not have been 
perfect, she saw social value in their 
exposure to all kinds of labor 
(Jammer, 1960). Respect for all 
occupations would, she asserted, help 
to reduce the divisions between social 
and economic classes. The 
kindergarten, as the first formal 
stage in education, was the first 
place to begin formal lessons in this 
process (Hill, 1912). 

The Importance of Play 

Patty Smith Hill believed that, for 
the child, play was learning. She had 
observed many children, and though she 
made a distinction between free play 
and directed play, realized through 
her observations that, for children, 
all play was valuable. Free play 
developed initiative, self-reliance, 
and freedom, while directed play 
helped the young child, who was rather 
"fragmentary," to grow less impulsive 
and more focused (Hill, 1906b). She 
advocated a balance between the two, 
with free playas a time for the 
teacher to observe children and to 
promote the development of democratic 
ideals. More and more, she departed 
from the blind acceptance of European 
methods and materials, espousing the 
development of a truly American method 
of school young children, using 
American materials and activities as 
the basis for learning (Hill, 1913). 

She was appointed Head of the 
Kindergarten Department at Teachers 
Col in 1910, and moved her play 
room to the Horace Mann School 

Students came from all 
and the world to 



study kindergarten methods and 
supervision with Patty Smith Hill. 
She was able to report, at the time of 
her retirement in 1935, that there was 
kindergartner trained in her methods 
in every state of the Union, and many 
countries around the world (Chaffee, 
1925; Amidon, 1927; Fine, 1936/nd). 
In order to continue the development 
of a truly American kindergarten, she 
advocated that every city maintain at 
least one experimental kindergarten 
for research and development (Hill, 
1915) . 

There was a danger in developing a 
truly American kindergarten, however. 
This country and its schools were 
founded on a Puritan ethic which 
valued work and devalued playas 
idleness. This ethic also implied an 
acceptance of the inherent drudgery in 
work and enjoyment in play. She wrote 

As long as we limit work to ends 
which authority considers 
sufficiently valuable to impose 
upon willing workers, secured 
through processes which are 
unendurable to them, and limit 
play to the pleasant processes 
which result from whim or 
caprice, there will necessarily 
be a battle in adjusting the 
motives of play and work in 
elementary education. Not only 
does such a conception of work 
apply more directly to drudgery, 
but such a conception of play is 
inadequate to explain the 
serious significance of play in 
the period of prolonged infancy. 
So long as we regard work as 
activity leading toward an end 
imposed by authority, and play 
as whimsical indulgence 
inactivities leading toward no 
end of worth to the child or 
society, the battle will wage 
between the kindergartner and 
primary teacher (1906b, p. 4). 

Though Patty Smith Hill and the 
conservative movement in the 
kindergarten avowed a debt to the 
teachings of Froebel, her major points 
of departure in kindergarten 
curriculum and teaching were in the 
value of play, the of the 
child as an autonomous with 
needs and interests and the ability to 
be self-directed, and the belief that 
democratic principles could be modeled 
in the early childhood classroom and 
that they could be learned through the 
experience of the child, rather than 
through the dictates of adult 
authority (Hilll 1907; 1925). She was 
indeed a radical. 

63 

Other Innovations of Patty Smith Hill 

Her years of labor at Teachers 
College were rewarded with honors and 
worldwide acclaim as a leader of the 
Progressive Education movement in 
America. In 1922, the trail-blazing 
Patty Smith Hill was the third woman 
promoted to full professor at Teachers 
College. In 1929 1 she was awarded an 
honorary doctorate from Columbia 
University by Nicholas Murray Butler, 
again, one of the few women to be so 
honored. In his speech, Butler said 
of Miss Hill, "Year in, year out, Dr. 
Hill is answering the age-old question 
of Epictetus, 'What constitutes a 
child?' In the spirit of Froebel, she 
is finding new ways and means to make 
the child the father of the worthwhile 
man" (quoted in Fine, 1936) • She 
continued to write and lecture, and 
students continued to come to New York 
to study with her and her colleagues, 
including the aforementioned Miss 
Garrison, who had been a student in 
the famed Blow - Hill Lecture course 
of 1906 (Jammer, 1960). On her 
retirement, Miss Hill was pleased to 
announce, "We have people in charge of 
kindergarten work in almost every 
teacher-training school in the country 
and the world. In the 47 years that 
I've taught, I've seen the whole thing 
change. I don't believe there' s a 
normal school in this country without 
one of our graduates substituting the 
new ideas for the old" (undated 
interview) • 

With the onset of the Great 
Depression, Patty Smith Hill became an 
even more strident voice in the call 
for universal pre-school education, 
and the coordination of the 
kindergarten curriculum with that of 
the primary grades. She also 
advocated parent education so that 
there could be greater coherence 
between the values of the home and the 
values of the school. With great 
vision, which we can only now 
appreciate, she said, "Never has the 
kindergarten been more needed than in 
modern life, with its limited home 
space for play, its out-family mother 
employed in the mills, the factories, 
and mines, and in other commercial 

These conditions were 
serious enough, but when the wave of 
unemployment the whole country, 
the dangers of neglect were multiplied 
a hundred-fold" (undated interview). 

In her retirement, she opened the 
Hilltop Center in a building 
donated by 
on 123rd St., one block from Teachers 
Col There, doctors by 



the New Deal provided health care for 
the neighborhood children and their 
parents. Teachers, again provided by 
the government, with the help of an 
experimental teacher training program 
at Teachers College administered by 
Miss Hill and Dr. Agnes Snyder, 
provided education on furniture 
donated by the Salvation Army. Miss 
Hill had a vision of the Center being 
the focal point for all positive 
activities in the economically poor 
and ethnically and racially diverse 
neighborhood (Fine, undated). Miss 
Hill stated, "Whether the mother is 
economically employed or in search of 
a job, the New Deal has a grave 
responsibility in setting leaders to 
work to create a new code for the 
protection of young children, a code 
for which we will include in its plans 
proper and increasing care of pre­
school children of all classes of 
society whether they are found in 
large cities, small villages, or rural 
communities" (Fine, undated). 

Patty Smith Hill worked at the 
Hilltop Community Center as a 
volunteer until her death in 1946 at 
the age of 78. Children in 
kindergartens allover the world 
encounter her every day in their 
singing of "Happy Birthday," a song 
she co-authored with her sister, 
Mildred, from a folk melody. This was 
in keeping with her philosophy of 
following the natural rhythms of the 
music of the child's culture and 
language. They also encounter Miss 
Hill when they do large motor movement 
and play in rhythm bands; when they 
paint freely at the easel; when they 
play with large blocks; when they 
choose their own activity centers; 
when they visit the school nurse for a 
school physical; when they drink from 
water fountains or from separate cups; 
when they use paper napkins at snack 
time; and when the custodian come into 
their classroom to wash the floor at 
night (Vitae of Patty Smith Hill). 
Though the memory of Miss Hill does 
not loom large in our minds, it 
certainly has been a large enough part 
of our early childhoods so that we, as 
William F. Russell, the son of James 
Earl Russell, and Dean of Teachers 
College at the time of Smith 
Hill's retirement can also , "Miss 
Hill brought me up!" ( Fine, 
undated) 

64 

References 

References from the James Earl Russell 
Papers and the Patty Smith Hill 
Collection Teachers College, Columbia 
University 

Amidon, B . ( 1927 ) . 
Kindergarten: An 
Patty Smith Hill, 
1(6), 506-509; 523. 

Forty years in 
interview with 

Chaffee by Miss 

Correspondence of Patty Smith Hill and 
James Earl Russell, 1905-1925. 
James Earl Russell Papers, Teachers 
College, Columbia University. 

Fine, B. (1936). Patty Smith Hill: A 
great educator, reprinted from 
American Childhood, May-June. 
Boston: Milton Bradley, Co. 

Fine, B. (No Date). Patty Smith Hill 
and Progressive Education. Patty 
Smith Hill Papers, Teachers 
College, Columbia University. 

Patty Smith Hill: Miscellaneous 
Biographical Data, 1925-1936. Patty 
Smith Hill Papers, Teachers 
College, Columbia University. 

Russell, J. E. (1927). Letter to I1se 
Forest, February 23. 

Works by Miss Hill 

Hill, Patty S. (1901). Simplification 
of Gifts and occupations, 
International Kindergarten Union 
Proceedings, 94-96. Washington, DC: 
IKU. 

Hill, Patty S. (1906a). The Speyer 
school experimental play room, 
Kindergarten Review 17, 137-140, 
Boston: Milton Bradley. 

Hill, S. (1906b). 
of work and play 
education, Address 
I.K.U. Convention, 

The relation 
in modern 

at the 
Milwaukee, 

( 1 ) , 



Hill, Patty S. ( 1907) . Some 
conservative and progressive phases 
of kindergarten education, 
kindergarten and its relation to 
elementary education, National 
Society for the Study of Education 
Yearbook, Part II, 61-85. Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press. 

Hill, Patty S. (1909). The future of 
the kindergarten, Teachers College 
Record 10, 371-398. New York: 
Bureau of Publications, Teachers 
College, Columbia University. 

Hill, Patty S. (1912). Democracy in 
the kindergarten, Kindergarten 
Review 22, 432-33. Boston: Milton 
Bradley. 

Hill, Patty S. (1913). Some hopes and 
fears for the kindergarten of the 
future, Proceedings of the 
International Kindergarten Union, 
89-101. Washington, DC: I.K.U. 

Hill, Patty S. (1915). Experimental 
studies in kindergarten theory and 
practice. New York: Bureau of 
Publications, Teachers College, 
Columbia University. 

Hill, Patty S. 
curricula 
kindergarten 
Education l, 

(1925). Changes in 
and method in 

education, Childhood 
99-106. 

65 

Other Sources 

Bailey, C. S. (1931). Who's who in 
the schools: Patty Smith Hill, 
American Childhood 17(1),5-6;55-56. 

Froebel, F. (1897). 
Trans. by 

York: Appleton. 

International Kindergarten Union. 
(1913). The kinderqarten: Reports 
of the committee of Nineteen on the 
theory and practice of the 
kindergarten. New York: Houghton­
Mifflin. 

Jammer, M. c. (1960). Patty Smith 
Hill and Reform of the American 
Kindergarten. Doctoral 
Dissertation, Teachers College, 
Columbia University. 

Palmer, L. (1906) . Resul ts of 
observations in the Speyer school 
experimental play room, 
Kindergarten Review 12, 140-147. 
Boston: Milton Bradley. 

Russell, J. E. (1937). Founding 
Teachers College. New York: 
Bureau of Publications, Teachers 
College, Columbia University. 


