Achievements
Elizabeth Peabody was known for many achievements in her lifetime, but the one that set her apart was opening the first English speaking kindergarten in America. Elizabeth Peabody always had a passion for education as she came from a line of educators and teachers. She opened the kindergarten around 1860 in Boston, where she provided education for kids around 3-7. She also held education for parents and training for future educators as it was very limited back then. 1 She got the philosophy from a German educator named Frederick Froebel as he had a way with teaching young students and she brought it to the US as an English speaking kindergarten.
Another achievement was opening a bookstore in Boston as it included many foreign authors and books around the idea of Transcendentalism. She held many of her meetings for her Transcendentalism club at the bookstore as Margeret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody led those meetings and conversations.2 She was the first woman to ever hold these types of meetings and was advocating for women's rights as well.
Elizabeth Peabody was also known for her published works around education and social reform as well as Transcendentalism works. She was a publisher for The Dial, which was a key literature work for the Transcendentalism movement they were trying to accomplish. She also would translate books from other foreign authors in her library to english. She had many published books around education and kindergarten specifically.2 Some of those books are Moral Culture of Infancy, and Kindergarten Guide , Kindergarten Culture, The Kindergarten in Italy, Letters to Kindergartners, and Lectures in the Training Schools for Kindergartners as all these books are for future educators on how to teach these young students and to achieve success.
Lastly Elizabeth Peabody was a very big activist for things like educational and social reform, abolitionism and women's rights. She used education and her published works to spread her ideology towards these concerns. She knew how wrong slavery was and knew it needed to be abolished. She also knew how important education was for young children and their development for their future and studied on how these kids can develop to their full potential. She held many meetings concerning women's rights at her library with other women leaders around her society.
1 Proper Citation for this URL: https://www-jstor-org.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/stable/42731210?searchText=Elizabeth+Peabody+books&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DElizabeth%2BPeabody%2Bbooks%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A03a57de62273060a65591949fb64c93a&seq=1https://www-jstor-org.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/stable/42731210?searchText=Elizabeth+Peabody+books&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DElizabeth%2BPeabody%2Bbooks%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A03a57de62273060a65591949fb64c93a&seq=1
2 Proper Citation for this URL: https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2012/07/elizabeth-peabody.html
