What strategies and recommendations for implementing ideas and activities make the most sense to you?
What important skills do you already have and what do you need to learn?
Benjamin Franklin Elementary School Community Garden
One example of a progressive era shift to practical education is the Benjamin Franklin Community Garden in Cleveland, Ohio. This large community garden was established in 1923, and it continues to flourish today. This excerpt (paraphrased and abridged) from a history of the gardens, written in 1977 by Nicholas Paserk, Melissa Radish, and Kimberly Sante, describes the origins and concept for the gardens:
The gardens were first used to grow plants for the schools in the vicinity. One part of the nursery was used as an outdoor classroom and picnic area. The Brooklyn Garden Club donated a summer house (gazebo). Parts of the nursery were divided into garden plots. This allowed more children to experience gardening under qualified adult supervision. Children from all the surrounding schools were eligible for a garden. Also Carl J. Hopp, the first garden program director, tried gardening in the kindergarten class and the kindergarten teacher supervised. This subject was taught to the various other grade levels as horticulture.
The author’s mother attended Benjamin Franklin Elementary School and vividly remembers the gardens. She says:
My dad paid $1.25 or $1.50 for the seeds. We children did everything but spading. Everything was numbered and we would go to the big barn and get our suppliesa rake, hoe, a water sprinkler and a wheelbarrow. When the seeds came up we thinned the plants. It was a big responsibilityneglect your garden and you were done. I laugh when I remember taking a kohlrabi home and my mother said she had never seen one before!
Today, the gardens continue as an ecofriendly resource involving a number of community partners, including the Ohio State University Extension Program. The five-acre site is divided into 204 plots, some of which are allocated to the schoolchildren. In 2005 the Cleveland Landmarks Commission designated the BFCG a Cleveland Landmark. You can learn more about the gardens at http://benfranklincommunitygarden.org/index.html.
Stop and Reflect
Do you think gardening activities are beneficial as part of an early childhood curriculum? Why or why not? What do you think young children might learn from participating in such a garden?
2.2 “Classic” Curricula (Pre-1960s)
This section describes, for the purposes of this book, “classic” curricula, those that were well established prior to the research efforts of the 1960s and the initiation of Head Start programs. These are the Montessori, Waldorf, Project Approach, Bank Street, and Reggio Emilia curricula. The next section describes “modern” curricula, developed from the 1960s onward. They are presented in chronological order, and Figure 2.4 displays each of the curricula discussed in following sections on a time line. As you read the next two sections, consider how the ideas grounding earlier models or approaches may have influenced those that came later.
Montessori Method
While Maria Montessori is a major historical influence on early childhood education, the methods that today bear her name go beyond the work she accomplished in her lifetime; they represent her ideas in action.
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