Education in The Home: The Kindergarten and The Primary School

Education in the Home, the Kindergarten, and the Primary School is a classic early childhood education text by Elizabeth P. Peabody. AMONG those who in the last twenty years have helped to spread a knowledge of the educational principles of Froebel beyond the limits of his native country and childhood education in general, Miss Elizabeth Peabody's name deserves to be specially remembered. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was a central and formidable figure in the American Romantic and Transcendental literary movements. Peabody opened and operated a bookstore, Peabody's West Street Bookstore and a printing press at her home in Boston. Peabody's bookstore specialized in foreign language books, Women's History, Transcendental tracts, and popular Sermons. Peabody hosted feminist pioneer, Margaret Fuller at the her bookshop. Fuller held "conversations" strictly for women covering such topics as History, Literature, Nature, and Women's Rights. Peabody worked as a teacher's assistant to Amos Bronson Alcott at his experimental Temple School. She championed the writings of and assisted in publishing her contemporaries, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing, and Nathaniel Hawthorne (who married Elizabeth's younger sister, Sophia.) Peabody also served as the business manager for the Transcendentalist publication, The Dial. Peabody was also an innovative educator who championed early childhood education and argued that creative play was important to a child's well being and development. Peabody is often credited with bring the concept of kindergarten to American public education.