Eventually rejected as not sufficiently “scientific,” Hall’s informal approaches to child study were replaced by more systematic and “scientific” methods, many based on Edward Thorndike’s ideas on educational measurement. As the notion of “ability” as a measurable characteristic became more widely accepted, the emerging field of child development embraced notions of normative development and soon asserted its scientific status over the field of early childhood education. Child Study and Child Welfare Institutes, among them the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, and university laboratory schools created new settings in which professionals could work with and study young children. Throughout the second quarter of the century, early childhood institutions continued to develop in response to new understandings of child development. In this new century, amidst growing controversy, much of it fueled by Western European scholars and philosophers, child development theory and research remains the primary knowledge base for early childhood education in the United States. New brain research has added to the conviction that there is much to learn about, and much to promote during, the period of early childhood.
Early Childhood as a Time to Intervene
Early educational initiatives have historically been vulnerable to social causes and, in the United States, many have focused on children deemed underprivileged. Decisions about which children needed an out-of-home educational experience were reflected in the charity movement and the day nursery movement ; some of these innovations also reflected the changing work habits of American families. Concerns about child labor and child welfare drew attention to children’s physical and psychological needs—especially those born in poverty or
to uneducated parents. In 1912, the Children’s Bureau was established as a symbol of federal interest in young children as well as the beginnings of a concern with the “at risk” child.
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, early childhood educational services expanded in directions established decades earlier. Wealthy children stayed home or enrolled in play groups or private nursery or preschools. Children of poor families and/or those whose mothers worked enrolled in federally run or privately funded daycare centers, nursery schools, or kindergartens, with family daycare in the homes
of nonfamilial adults the most common. At a time when notions of universal stages of cognitive development were being detailed and the role of constructive play took on a new importance in promoting early intelligence, President Lyndon Johnson launched Head Start as a centerpiece to the War on Poverty.
Begun in 1965 as an eight-week summer program, Head Start soon became a large-scale social welfare program that has varied as a function of politics as well as growing understandings of child development. In 1975, another group of children—those with disabilities—was identified as entitled to publicly funded
early intervention services. Eventually renamed and amended in 1997 to include younger children, The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) effectively changed the landscape and the language of early childhood education, from the classroom to teacher education to a new field of early childhood special education. To date, U.S. policies have continued to prioritize funding for children needing early intervention over the provision of universal early care and educational services.
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