of teacher training in contemporary Hawaii. This is particularly true of the unspecialized curriculum of the kindergarten and the elementary school. Moreover, today, as in 1900, the private school often leads the public school in curricular innovation. Brief visits to the public University Lab School and to private schools such as Punahou, Hanahau’oli, and Holy Nativity reveal that basic progressivistic assumptions regarding education are alive and well.
Despite the practical difficulty of translating progressive theory into reality, the early efforts of Harriet Castle and the FKCAA established an educational framework that endures. The basic optimistic and secular faith that trained human intelligence can change the world for the better continues to be attractive. The progressive faith Henry Castle and G. H. Mead had in transmuting theological faith into secular engagement with social reform and change left Hawaii an educational legacy we still enjoy today. In 1943, the Territorial Department of Education would adopt a publicly supported full-day kindergarten that drew on the ideas of the Castles, Mead, and Dewey. In the twenty-first century, the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation honors George and Henry with its continuing commitment to universal high-quality early education for three-and four-year-olds.
Alfred L. Castle
Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation
Honolulu, Hawaii
October 2012
NOTES
1. Robert M. Crunden, Ministers of Reform: The Progressives’ Achievement in American Civilization, 1889—1920 (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984). See also Gary A. Cook, George Herbert Mead: The Making of a Social Pragmatist (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993) and Alfred L. Castle, A Century of Philanthropy: A History of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 2004).
2. Luella Cole, A History of Education: Socrates to Montessori (New York: Rinehart, 1950), 525. See also Benjamin O. Wist, A Century of Public Education in Hawaii (Honolulu: Hawaii Educational Review Press, 1940), 134—35.
3. Adolph E. Meyer, An Educational History of the Western World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), 377.
4. Annual Report for 1895, FKCAA Archives, Mother Rice Kindergarten, Honolulu.
5. Wist, Century of Public Education, 135.
6. Charter of the Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Association of the Hawaiian Islands, FKCAA Archives.
7. Charlotte Dodge, A History of the Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Association of the Hawaiian Islands, 1895—1945 ([Honolulu]: [FKCAA], n.d.), FKCAA Archives.
8. Ermine Cross, The Story of the Henry and Dorothy Castle Memorial Kindergarten (Honolulu: Paradise Engraving and Printing, 1923), 3.
9. Henry Castle, letter to Sister Carrie, March 1882, Henry Castle Letters (London: Sands and Company, 1902), 106.
10. Henry Castle, letter to Mary Castle, June 1885, Henry Castle Letters, 201.
11. Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, l876—1957 (New York: Vintage, 1964), 118.
12. John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: D. Appleton-Century, 1899), 43–44.
13. Ibid., 51.
14. Ibid., 70.
15. Harriet Castle Letters, 1897, FKCAA Archives.
16. J. N. Grouse, Chicago Kindergarten College, letter to Harriet Castle, Castle Correspondence, FKCAA Archives.
17. Dodge, History of the Free Kindergarten, 9.
18. Castle Correspondence, FKCAA Archives.
19. Harriet Castle, Notes, FKCAA Archives.
20. Harriet Castle, The Kindergarten and the Public School, Castle File, FKCAA Archives.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Harriet Castle, “Kindergarten Objectives,” KG Magazine, May 1923.
24. Ibid.
25. Castle File, Notes, FKCAA Archives.
26. Dodge, History of the Free Kindergarten, 5.
27. Ibid., 13.
28. Cremin, Transformation of the School, 125—26.
29. Adeline E. Babbitt, A Program for Children from 18 to 72 Months in the Hawaiian Situation (New York: Columbia University, 1948), 96.
30. Wist, Century of Public Education, 135.
31. Cross, Henry and Dorothy Castle Memorial Kindergarten, 4—6.
32. Herbert Zimiles, “Teachers College Record,” Progressive Education (Winter 1987): 205.
33. Dr. Ralph Steuber, personal interview, 10 May 1988.
Henry Northrup Castle
Letters
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MARY CASTLE
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Her Children
A FEW RECOLLECTIONS OF HENRY’S CHILDHOOD.
My first distinct recollection of Henry is in connection with a visit to Molokai, where Edward and Mary Hitchcock were living with their young family of growing children. Mother took the three youngest children, Carrie, Henry, and myself. Henry must have been about two years old, perhaps more, but I am uncertain as to dates. In comparing reminiscences with Henry a few years ago, I found he had preserved from the Molokai visit one vivid picture of a vast shining sheet of water, but everything else was blurred and dim. The shining water was no doubt a great fishpond, perhaps a royal preserve; at all events this fishpond played the largest part in our memories of the Island. It was the earliest scene of aquatic sports that I remember, the terrific excitement attendant upon Edward’s efforts to teach us to swim being quite unforgettable. I seem to have no more distinct recollection of Henry in connection with our Molokai visit, although I believe he may have had some dim memories. Carrie and I slept together, in a little room off from the lanai, and when I was not occupied in teasing poor patient Carrie, we were both absolutely absorbed in terror of an old Catholic priest, who, in his long black robes, paced up and down in the grounds of the little Catholic Mission adjoining the Hitchcocks’ place. The explanation of our terror probably lay in the unaccustomed character of his dress, as children appear to have a certain fear of anything out of the usual course. There was a little schoolhouse on a hill, at the back of the Hitchcock home, which was presided over by the sweet spirit of Miss Mary Paris, who was always kind to children, who had beautiful hair, and who long remained my ideal of feminine charm. That small hill was, however, a sort of Golgotha, for it was thickly covered with a detestable little thorn called tutu, which got into our clothes and pricked our little bare legs, so that a journey to the schoolhouse was like some sweet martyrdom.
When Henry was six years old, and I eight, Mother