Perhaps the advent of the kindergarten best underlines the changes that had taken place in the rearing and education of children in the nineteenth century. By the end of the century, it was felt that all children would go to school. The family was no longer considered an adequate total environment for the growing child. Ideally, the family would teach the child many of the habits and values that were considered necessary for the times, but nobody expected that the family could do this alone. Indeed, many families were considered by educators to be quite inadequate to the task. Increasingly, many of the tasks of child rearing and education were turned over to - or taken over by - the schools. But the schools too were imperfect. At first they seemed too small and disorderly, their teachers too transient and insufficiently trained for the job. But as children attended in larger and larger numbers and for longer periods of time, there were other problems. The schools were too rigid and the training too intellectual. But, above all, it was clear that the new larger schools were very ill-adapted to the younger child. The kindergarten was to be the solution to these problems. Originally, it was meant to promote spontaneous, organic learning through song and play. But increasingly it was also seen as a transitional environment, designed to bridge the gap between the home and the school. Thus, as this photograph illustrates, kindergarten play was often more orderly than spontaneous, for one of its major purposes was to accustom the child to the routines of school life. As the idea of the kindergarten began to spread, it is interesting to find that mothers were urged to become "kindergarteners" in their own homes. Many nineteenth-century educational institutions had tried to model themselves after the home, or the ideal family. Now the home itself was urged to imitate the school.
