ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 is an intellectual history of the WPA nursery school program and lays the foundation for the argument that the program was an important New Deal achievement. It demonstrates that WPA nursery school leaders were influential progressive educators, intent on expanding educational opportunity. Program administrators became pioneers in the scientific study of young children. They helped create two new interdisciplinary disciplines: child development and home economics. They ushered in the field of parent education and offered education to all children, no matter what their background. The chapter examines how program leaders developed their reform impulse within the context of the interwar progressive education movement and the ways they worked to make WPA nursery schools a permanent part of public schools. It concludes by exploring their belief that early childhood education strengthened democracy. Without calling for revolution, WPA nursery school leaders created a daring group care ideology that hoped to create a new social order.
