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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations
The Graduate School
2005
A Critical Examination of Milton Bradley's
Contributions to Kindergarten and Art
Eduction in the Context of His Time
Jennifer Lee Snyder
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS AND DANCE
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF
MILTON BRADLEY’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO
KINDERGARTEN AND ART EDUCTION IN THE
CONTEXT OF HIS TIME
By
JENNIFER L. SNYDER
A Dissertation submitted to the
Department of Art Education
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education
Degree Awarded:
Summer Semester, 2005
The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Jennifer L. Snyder defended
on June 27, 2005.
________________________
Tom Anderson
Professor Directing Dissertation
________________________
Jeffrey Milligan
Outside Committee Member
________________________
Pat Villeneuve
Committee Member
________________________
Penny Orr
Committee Member
Approved:
____________________________________________________
Marcia Rosal, Head, Department of Art Education
____________________________________________________
Sally McRorie, Dean, School of Visual Arts and Dance
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee
member.
ii
For my parents…
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank everyone who has supported me in this endeavor over the
past three years. I am especially thankful for the support of my mother and father, Diane
and Bob Snyder, who were both so enthusiastic about me continuing my education.
Although my father was not able to finish the journey with me, I know he would be so
proud of my accomplishment. To Carolyn Brown Treadon, I extend my deepest
appreciation for the help and feedback you provided throughout the dissertation process.
To the rest of my family and friends, I express my sincere gratitude.
I am also extremely thankful for the help and support of my committee. I would
especially like to thank Dr. Tom Anderson for guiding me through the dissertation
process. His help has been invaluable to me and he was always very giving of his time
and knowledge. Dr. Victoria Maria MacDonald, Dr. Pat Villenueve and Dr. Penny Orr
all provided me with valuable insight and helped me focus my vision. I am also indebted
to Dr. Jeffrey Milligan who graciously stepped in as my outside committee member when
I was already three quarters of the way through the process. Thank you all.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
ix
ABSTRACT
xi
1. INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY
Focus of the Study
1
Guiding Questions
2
Supporting Questions
3
Rationale for the Study
3
Research Methodology
4
The Importance of a Question or Theme: Thin Spots or
Anomalies
Primary and Secondary Sources
Using Primary Sources
External and Internal Criticism
Researcher Bias
6
6
7
7
8
9
Format of the Study
Processes and Segments of the Study
Obtaining Sources
Researcher Bias, Scope and Limitations of the Study
10
11
14
14
Definition of Terms
2.
1
SETTING THE CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW OF THE
CULTURAL CONTEXT OF MILTON BRADLEY’S LIFE
16
16
The Victorian Era
Migration and Immigration
Standard Time
v
16
17
Mass Production
Housing
U.S. Postal Service and Mail Order Catalogs
Advertising and Consumerism
17
18
18
19
The Middle Class
20
Education
22
Growth of Interest in Schooling
Common School Reforms
Moral Education
Inside the Classroom
Schooling at the End of the Century
Progressive Education
Manual Training Schools
Kindergarten
Early Leaders of Progressive Education
Francis Wayland Parker
John Dewey
22
22
23
25
25
26
26
27
27
27
28
29
Art Education
Influential Early Drawing Advocates
Massachusetts Free Instruction Drawing Act of 1870
Industrial Drawing
Picture Study
Art Texts and Instructional Manuals
30
30
31
32
32
33
Leisure
Boardgames
34
3. MILTON BRADLEY’S LIFE AND WORK
35
Educational Beginnings
35
Birth of a Business
37
Introduction to the Kindergarten
39
Elizabeth Peabody and the kindergarten movement
Froebel and the kindergarten movement
vi
40
42
Production of Kindergarten Supplies and Materials
Progressive Era Changes in Kindergarten
Color Theory and its Place in the Classroom
The Standard Colors
The Colored Papers
The Watercolors
43
46
46
47
48
49
Promotion and Advertisement
50
End of an Era
53
4. INTRODUCTION, THEMES AND CONCLUSIONS, AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Interpretation of Chapters 2 and 3
Bradley in Relation to the Victorian Era
Immigration and migration
The middle class
55
55
55
55
56
Bradley in Relation to Common Schools
57
Bradley in Relation to Moral Education
58
Bradley in Relation to Progressive Education
59
Bradley in Relation to Kindergarten
60
Progressive changes in kindergarten
62
Bradley in Relation to Art Education
63
Kindergarten and art education
Color theory
64
65
Bradley in Relation to Business
66
Themes and Conclusions
68
vii
68
69
70
Bradley’s Social Circumstances
Influences on Bradley’s Educational Philosophy
Bradley’s Connection to Kindergarten and Art
Education
Bradley’s Influence on Art Education and Color
Theory
Color theory
72
Conclusions
73
Areas for Further Study
Letters Pertaining to Obtaining Information for this Study
75
78
APPENDIX B:
Milton Bradley’s Educational Records from the Lowell
Historical Society and Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard
University
86
APPENDIX C:
Color Definitions and Classifications based on Milton
Bradley’s Color Theory System
109
APPENDIX A:
71
113
118
References
Biographical Sketch
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Milton Bradley. Shea, J.J. (1973). The Milton Bradley story. New York: The
Newcomen Society.
xii.
Figure 2. Sketch of Viceroy’s Railroad Car. Shea, J.J. (1960). Its all in the game.
New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
38.
Figure 3. Bradley’s Lincoln Print. Shea, J.J. (1973). The Milton Bradley story.
New York: The Newcomen Society.
38.
Figure 4. The Checkered Game of Life. Shea, J.J. (1960). Its all in the game.
New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
39.
Figure 5. Paradise of Childhood. Collection of the author.
40.
Figure 6. Elizabeth Peabody. Shea, J.J. (1960). Its all in the game. New York:
G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
40.
Figure 7. Second Gift. Milton Bradley catalog, 1913. 42.
Figure 8/9. Milton Bradley Company Paper Cutters. Milton Bradley Company (Ed.).
(1917). The Little Acorn and the Great Oak. Springfield, MA: Milton
Bradley Company.
44.
Figure 10. Bradley Color Wheel. Shea, J.J. (1960). Its all in the game. New York:
G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
47.
Figure 11. Milton Bradley Company Crayons. Collection of the author.
49.
Figure 12. Bradley Watercolor Set. Milton Bradley catalog, 1910.
49.
Figure 13. Milton Bradley Catalog, 1910. Collection of the author.
50.
Figure 14. Milton Bradley Company Ads. Shea, J.J. (1960). Its all in the game.
New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
51.
ix
Figure 15. Milton Bradley Company Ad. Shea, J.J. (1960). Its all in the game.
New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
51.
Figure 16. Big Ben Puzzle, Milton Bradley Company. Shea, J.J. (1973). The Milton
Bradley story. New York: The Newcomen Society.
53.
Figure 17. Milton Bradley Company facilities, East Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
Shea, J.J. (1973). The Milton Bradley story. New York: The Newcomen
Society.
54.
Figure 18. Milton Bradley Company Educational Games. Shea, J.J. (1973).
The Milton Bradley story. New York: The Newcomen Society.
54.
x
ABSTRACT
This historical study examines the life of Milton Bradley in the context of his
time. The primary question being asked in this study is: What contributions did Milton
Bradley make to education during his lifetime, what, if any, affect did that have on art
education, and how was that influenced by the circumstances of his life? Factors that
influenced Milton Bradley include: the Victorian era, common schooling, moral
education, progressive education, kindergarten, art education and business. Bradley’s
connection to both kindergarten and art education are explored in depth, and his
contributions to both are examined.
The information in this study is presented using the contextual approach to art
history advocated by Tom Anderson and Melody Milbrandt (2005). Anderson and
Milbrandt’s contextual approach incorporates the use of social setting, mood, economic
conditions, and other circumstances to interpret and evaluate the work in question. For
the purposes of this study, Anderson and Milbrandt’s contextual approach has been
adapted to historical inquiry.
Milton Bradley straddled the Victorian and Progressive era and was a product of
his times. Findings indicate that while Milton Bradley held an important role in the
kindergarten movement, his role in the field of art education is of a secondary nature.
Milton Bradley helped facilitate the entrance of art education into the public schools with
his production of art supplies and materials intended for the kindergarten classroom.
Bradley’s materials were designed for kindergarten first, and art education second, so
ultimately, his contributions to art education were secondary in nature to his interest in
the kindergarten
xi
Figure 1. Milton Bradley, The Milton Bradley Story,
James J. Shea, 1973
xii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY
In Meditation XVII, John Donne states, “No man is an Island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.” His point, that no one exists in
a vacuum, is an important one. The people, places and experiences we encounter help
shape us, making us who we are. We are, in many ways, products of our time. We are
influenced by the people around us, our educational experiences, the places and
communities in which we live, the circumstances in which we find ourselves. When you
meet a person who embodies a particular set of moral values and who seems
representative of a particular time and place you remember them, sometimes for years
afterward. If you are studying a person who lived in the past, who embodies the ideals of
their age, you wonder what experiences they had that caused them to behave in a certain
way. My interest in Milton Bradley stems from that curiosity.
Focus of the Study
The focus of this study is the role Milton Bradley played in general education and
in art education in the schools of his time and beyond, examined in the context of his time
and place in society. The contextualist strategy employed here may provide new insights
into the role Bradley played in education and art education. This study also uses a social
constructivist theory as its theoretical foundation. Milbrandt (2004) observed that
constructivist learning theory places an emphasis on the active social participation of the
learner with the environment and that constructivists view knowledge as constructed by
the learner in a particular context, not as pre-existent or given from an expert or authority.
Constructivist theory is based on the ideas of Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, Bruner and
others who believe that meaning is constructed by humans and organized within a
particular context.
Dewey (1938) believed in immersing students in real-world experiences to
stimulate learning and establish a connection between the students and the world around
them. Dewey termed these students active learners and based his work at the Laboratory
School at the University of Chicago on his ideas. Bigge and Shermis (1999) observed
that for Piaget, the key processes in his developmental theory are assimilation and
accommodation. Assimilation occurs when a child filters or modifies the input he or she
is receiving from the environment. Accomodation consists of the modification or change
in a child’s understanding in order to accommodate new data or information. Piaget’s
1
theories stem from the idea that children’s cognition is always adjusting to receive new
information and learning to deal with relations among classes of things.
Milbrandt (2004) noted that Vygotsky thought that learning and truth were
socially constructed rather than objectively observed, so that the point of view of the
group involved could change the learning experience of that group. Vygotsky’s key idea
hinges on his idea of the Zone of Proximal Development. The Zone of Proximal
Development, according to Vygotsky (1934) is the discrepancy between a child’s actual
mental age and the level a that child may reach, with assistance, in solving problems.
Imel (2000) wrote that since constructivist learning theory maintains that learning
is a process of constructing meaning from experience, contextual learning is then rooted
in a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. Imel observed that the meaning of
what individuals learn is coupled with their life experiences and contexts. This involves
the idea of social cognition or the idea that learning involves interactions with others in
the learners environment and that those interactions play a major role in influencing what
is learned.
For the purpose of this study, a social constructivist approach is paired with a
contextual focus. Milton Bradley is examined in the context of his time and elements of
his life that influenced his decisions are the focus of this paper. The idea that learning is
anchored in the context of real-life situations and problems is evident in the choices
Bradley made concerning his personal business decisions and his interest in kindergarten
and art education. The people and situations that impacted Bradley form the cornerstone
of his personal philosophy; as such he is an example of the key idea of social
constructivist theory, that people learn from their experiences and interactions with
others.
With that thought in mind the main question of this study then becomes: what
motivated Bradley to produce supplies and materials for general education, kindergarten,
and art? The context of Bradley’s life will be set by examining the social and educational
factors that affected him. The proposition here is that Milton Bradley was a man of his
time, that time being the Victorian Era. The role of increased industrialization, a new
focus on public schooling and an increase in leisure time all played a part in defining who
Milton Bradley was. In that context, what effect, if any, did those times, and Bradley, in
particular, have on the budding field of art education? How these factors determined the
course of Bradley’s life, and the decisions he made regarding his business and
educational goals, are the ultimate focus of this study.
Guiding Question
The primary question to be asked in this study is:
What contributions did Milton Bradley make to education and to art
education, and how was that influenced by the circumstances of his life?
2
Supporting Questions
The component parts or subordinate problems that relate to the primary question
are:
1. How did his social circumstances influence Milton Bradley’s point of
view?
2. What educational theories were prevalent at the turn of the 20th century
and how did they influence Milton Bradley?
3. Who, in particular, was influential in Milton Bradley’s shaping of his
educational philosophy?
4. How did Milton Bradley become interested in kindergarten? How did
that interest affect both general and art education?
5. What were Milton Bradley’s theories on education and color theory, and
have they had a lasting influence on art education?
Rationale for the Study
Milton Bradley exists today primarily as a trademark on board games; the man
who originally created those games has been virtually forgotten. Bradley’s interest in
early childhood education is not widely known; it comes as a surprise to many people. It
came as a surprise to me. The inspiration for this study was a beginning historiography
class taken at the start of my doctoral program. This course provided the initial interest
in conducting a study of Milton Bradley. The professor teaching the course was
describing her research interest area, early female kindergarten pioneers, and was
showing some slides of different materials used in their classrooms. During the
presentation, one slide in particular caught my attention. The slide showed the second of
Fröebel’s gifts and occupations; a small wooden box which contained a wooden sphere,
cube and cylinder. Stamped on the end of the box was the name Milton Bradley
Company. The stamp proved intriguing and I began to investigate. I wondered how a
company noted for its production of board games came to be involved in the production
of kindergarten teaching aids.
The answers I found led to further research about the company and in turn, its
founder, Milton Bradley. Why was a game maker producing art supplies and educational
materials? Under what circumstances did the production of such supplies begin? It
became clear as the research was conducted that while Milton Bradley’s contributions to
the entertainment industry and general education were well documented, his contribution
to art education was not. This lack of documentation has led me to believe that I had
found what Stankiewicz (1997) calls a “thin spot” in the history of art education.
When Milton Bradley died in 1911, he was remembered fondly by A. L. Webber
(1911) at the annual National Education Association conference in San Francisco,
California. Webber (1911) observed that:
The measure of a man is his achievements. What he has tried and what he has
done, are the blocks with which his monument is builded in the field of posterity.
To think, to plan, to accomplish things that are great and good—not for his own
3
reward, but that some part of humanity may find life better and sweeter—these
are the qualities that mark man’s greatness, that make his name honored and his
memory cherished. Qualities such as these characterized the whole career of
Milton Bradley, whose death, Memorial Day of this year, removed a revered and
widely known member of this association. (p. 488)
Bradley’s obituaries spoke glowingly of the man who helped pioneer the modern
board game, helped supply early kindergarten classrooms and teachers, and gave of his
time, money and energy to his adopted hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts.
Bradley’s acclaim as in inventor, particularly in the area of kindergarten materials, earned
him the nickname “Edison of the Kindergarten” (Springfield Homestead, May 31,1911).
His generosity helped build a new high school building in Springfield, furnished all the
supplies to the kindergartens in town, and helped fund the local art society.
Well known in his day, today, Milton Bradley is primarily a footnote in
educational history. Most educational textbooks do not make mention of Bradley at all;
if they do mention him, it is usually as a supporter of the kindergarten movement. As an
inventor and provider of kindergarten supplies and materials for teachers, Bradley’s role
in art education has been largely overlooked. The supplies and materials Bradley
provided allowed art teachers for the first time to supply materials to their classrooms that
they had not made themselves.
How that support influenced other areas of education has not been widely
discussed in educational literature. Although Bradley’s personal thoughts and
motivations are not accessible to researchers today, through a thorough survey of his
writings and his personal and his business decisions, an overall impression of the man
emerges. By expanding the research to include the greater context: what was going on in
Bradley’s community, society, business, and education, an even clearer picture of Milton
Bradley becomes known. The idea that Milton Bradley was a man of his time will be
borne out by the choices he made given the context of that time.
Art education history is a work-in-progress. The role of those figures, such as
Bradley, who have expanded the field of art education while not being active participants,
has long been overlooked. This contextual narrative of game maker Milton Bradley,
whose personal, lifelong interest in art and education had an impact on the teachers of his
time, may serve to fill one of those gaps, and serve to help us understand in some way
where we are now. Conversely, whether or not Milton Bradley had a lasting influence on
art education may be at issue here. A way to determine his significance to education and
in particular, to art education, may be to re-examine his contributions in the context of his
life as a man of his times.
Research Methodology
This is an historical study. But what is historical inquiry? Stankiewicz (1997)
observed that:
4
Sound historical inquiry requires thorough, painstaking, compilation of facts,
critical reading of both primary and secondary sources, careful note taking, and
establishment of chronologies documenting who did what where and when. Wellwritten historical accounts also require attention to why, development of a
narrative interpretation of facts that makes them meaningful and explains their
significance to readers who are distant from the events recorded. (p. 56)
Korzenik (1986) wrote that the reason for historical inquiry should guide and
inform our choice. In her words, “the motives need to be conscious and explicit before
we start” (p. 37). Once the question has been formed, then the work of research must be
undertaken. This undertaking often involves the use of a particular research
methodology. When the question the researcher is trying to answer involves events that
occurred in the past, then the methodology used would be one of historical
investigation/inquiry.
Anderson and Milbrandt (2005) have observed that the separation of art history
from art criticism is often impossible in real life situations. The reason for this difficulty,
according to the authors, stems from the overlapping qualities of both history and
criticism. The social context in which a piece of artwork is made is often a critically
important aspect of criticism, as it is in history. The contextual approach advocated by
Anderson and Milbrandt (2005) advocates a “critical investigation of social setting,
mood, economic conditions, and other circumstances in which the work was produced in
order to interpret and evaluate the work” (p. 120). Such an investigation often entails the
use of more than just an art education historical perspective, drawing on other disciplines
such as sociology, anthropology and economics. Such interests also drive this historical
study. The following sections will outline the information that guides the methodology
of this study and will show how historical research will be used in light of the driving
research interest.
Erikson (1984) noted that in her observation of the field of history there have
emerged four distinct styles of historical investigation: realistic, formal, expressive and
pragmatic. This study uses the realistic approach to present as fully as possible, given the
information gathered, an accurate picture of Milton Bradley’s life. Erickson observed
that the realistic historian uses methods that are suggested as the facts are uncovered,
often acting as a historical detective discovering clues that suggest the way an event
actually occurred. She observed, “The realistic historian perceives circumstances of the
past, for the most part, as particular events, unique, unlike any other,” (p. 121). Realistic
history, in Erikson’s opinion, can be judged on the basis of how well it brings the subject
to life. Realistic history, with its emphasis on discovering facts that can be documented
lends itself well to a contextual approach, as the context in which a person lived can have
a dramatic effect on the decisions they make. For the purpose of this study, I am using a
realistic approach to history, with an emphasis on the discovery of previous and new
sources of information, to reinterpret the information currently available about Milton
Bradley to present the most accurate interpretation of his life to date. This study does not
attempt to filter that information through any particular lens, such as Neo-Marxist or
Feminist theory, although the possibilities for reinterpretation of the materials through
those lens could prove important for areas of further research.
5
The Importance of a Question or Theme: Thin Spots or Anomalies
The nuts and bolts of historical inquiry according to Fraenkel and Wallen (2002)
involve defining the problem to be investigated, locating sources relevant to the inquiry,
summarizing the information obtained from historical sources, evaluating that
information and interpreting the results. Each aspect involved in historical research is
dependent on the others. In order to make historical inquiry relevant to the field of study
there has to be a “so-what?” question. Why is this particular question worth
investigating? What aspect of this inquiry will make it worth doing? Researchers have at
various times described this process as “filling an empty spot” in art education’s past
(Korzenik, 1984), “looking for thin places in the written history of art education and odd
pieces that do not fit” (Stankiewicz, 1997), or working “from a perceived anomaly”
(Efland, 1995).
Primary and Secondary Sources
Once these “thin spots” have been identified, the researcher must then begin to
locate the sources he or she will need to proceed with the historical inquiry. These
sources are categorized as primary and secondary sources. Primary sources come in a
variety of forms that were intended to serve a variety of functions at the time of their
creation. Furay and Salevouris (2000) observed that primary sources are the “records of
contemporaries who participated in, witnessed, or commented on the events you are
studying” (p. 144). Brundage (2002) divides these sources into two categories: 1)
manuscript materials such as letters, diaries, and memoranda, usually intended as private,
internal documents; and 2) materials intended from their creation to be made public—
newspaper articles, congressional debates, autobiographies, reports of the United States
Census (p. 17).
While primary sources are generally considered to be more reliable than
secondary sources it is still important to realize that actual people created these
documents, and as such they are open to interpretation. Brundage (2002) notes:
A skeptical approach is also in order when considering materials like the
published letters and diaries of public figures. …We must consider the author’s
motives, ignorance, or capacity for self-deception. Moreover, published source
materials are frequently only a selection, and sometimes quite a small one, of the
total body of the person’s writings. We must therefore take into account the builtin bias of the selecting or editing process. (p. 18)
Furay and Salevouris (2000) call this bias the “teasing gap,” a reference to the gap
that separates a lived event from its subsequent narration.
In the area of published accounts such as newspapers, journal articles or
conference proceedings it is important to remember that the authors of these works were
trying to put forth their own opinions about their subject and as such should not be
accepted blindly by the researcher as ‘truth’. Furay and Salevouris (2000) note that
newspapers are considered primary sources for the period in which they were published,
but that they share some of the characteristics of secondary sources because they were
often written by people who did not participate in the actual events. The authors of such
documents often observed the events in question, allowing them to write their articles
6
from the viewpoint of a participant. It is in these circumstances that questions of internal
and external validity become important.
Secondary sources are classified by Stankiewicz (1997) as those sources written
about an historical event after the fact. She identifies four ways to use secondary sources
in historical research: “1) they may provide contextual information on the place or period
so that each historian does not have to start from a blank canvas; 2) they are mines of
information for other sources, both secondary and primary; 3) they may be used to
suggest hypotheses or potential interpretations; and 4) sometimes a secondary source will
include a direct quotation from an original source that cannot be found” (p. 65).
Secondary sources are often used as a beginning point for researchers who want a general
source of background knowledge and are often used in conjunction with primary sources
to produce a well-rounded discussion of a particular research problem.
Using Primary Sources
McDowell (2002) states that the choice of a research topic can present the
researcher with the prospect of either an abundance of source material or the task of
compensating for fragmentary evidence. If the evidence is fragmentary, as is the case
with this study, McDowell (2002) notes that careful judgment must guide any inferences
based on limited historical evidence, particularly when the information cannot be easily
corroborated. The information that would be most helpful to the researcher, the details of
everyday life, is often that which is left out of historical documents. Often only a small
part of the existing evidence will be relevant to a particular investigation. Furay and
Salevouris (2000) call this process of detection “separating the wheat from the chaff” (p.
105).
For the purpose of this study, an in-depth look at Milton Bradley, the behaviors
and ideals he exhibited will be examined in light of his time and place in society. How
did Bradley’s educational experiences, family, religion and community shape him? How
did those influences affect his company and business decisions? Did the expanding role
of industrialization, the increase in leisure time and activities, and the Victorian Age in
New England contribute to his choices concerning business and education and if so, how?
The information used in this study comes from a variety of sources. Primary
sources include: newspaper clippings, journals and writings made by Milton Bradley.
The context in which Milton Bradley lived will be described in chapter two and consists
primarily of secondary sources. Secondary sources include: journal articles and books.
Chapter 3 looks at Milton Bradley’s life, his routines, his business, and his interests,
relying primarily on Milton Bradley’s writings. Chapter 4 makes use of both primary and
secondary sources. My construction of those sources into a meaningful narrative using
the information provided in chapters two and three will be used to develop an
interpretation which attempts to answer the driving question of this research. Together,
these chapters will form a picture of Milton Bradley, set in the context of his time.
External and Internal Criticism
When using primary source material it is vitally important to verify the truth of
the information obtained. Furay and Salevouris (2000) write that the historian always has
7
two goals for any primary source material: (1) to establish if the sources are authentic and
(2) to establish their meaning and believability. The first goal is accomplished through
external criticism, the second through internal criticism. External criticism is used to
identify the authenticity of sources and requires examining whether a primary source is
the kind of document it appears to be, that is, is the document genuine? Authenticity is
established by researching the context in which the document was produced. Does the
information contained in a particular document agree with other published accounts?
Knowledge of the period in question is necessary to establish if the material fits with
other published accounts of the event in question.
Tied closely to the subject of external criticism is the idea of provenance.
Brunton and Robinson (1987) define the principle of provenance as the place of origin of
the records: i.e. the organization, office or person that created, received or accumulated
and used the records in the conduct of business or personal life. If the intent is to prove
the provenance of a piece of artwork, then the ownership of that artwork must be
determined from the current owner to the original painter. If there are gaps in the
ownership details, then the provenance cannot be fully established, leading to speculation
about the authenticity of the work. Provenance is important because it provides the
researcher with a further means to assess the genuineness of a particular document or
artifact.
Internal criticism, or credibility, is defined by Stankiewicz (1997) as the
“believability of a source, the author’s meaning, the truthfulness of the testimony and the
competence of the witness” (p. 66). Internal criticism is only determined once the
researcher has determined the external validity. From there, the accuracy of the contents
of the document can be established. Furay and Salevouris (2000) state that the most
important skill needed to establish internal criticism is a healthy skepticism. They note:
We have an innate tendency to believe anything if it is written down, and the
older the document or more ornate the script, the more we tend to believe it.
Therefore, it is important to remind ourselves that our venerable ancestors could
lie, shade the truth, or make a mistake, just as we can. (p. 147)
Anderson and Milbrandt (2005) concur, stating, “In the end, though, the most
important tools of the art historian are his or her own intuition, sensibility, ability to nose
out the truth, and integrity and skill in reporting, analyzing and interpreting feelings” (p.
121). To help determine the authenticity of a document Furay and Salevouris (2000)
have established a number of questions designed to guide the researcher in establishing
internal validity. They include: 1) What exactly does the document mean; 2) How well
situated was the author to observe or record the events in question; 3) When, how and to
whom was the report made; 4) Is there a bias that must be accounted for; 5) What
specialized information is needed to interpret the source; 6) Do the reported actions seem
probable in the light of informed common sense; and 7) Is there corroborating testimony
(Foray and Salevouris, 2000, pp. 147). Answering questions such as these should help
the researcher determine the genuineness and reliability of the material.
Researcher Bias
One of the potential threats to credibility in historical research is called researcher
bias. Researcher bias, as noted by Johnson (1997), tends to result from selective
8
observation and selective recording of information, and also from allowing one’s
personal views and perspectives to affect how data are interpreted and how the research is
conducted. To help reduce researcher bias, it is necessary for the researcher to engage in
some critical self-reflection about his or her potential biases and predispositions. This
reflection is necessary if the researcher hopes to control their biases. Anderson and
Milbrandt (2005) note, “Because art historians develop meanings based on intellectual
speculation about historical evidence, any claim to scientific neutrality is questionable.
So that they will not be claiming omniscience, many art historians announce their point
of view, assumptions, and agenda” (p. 122). The form this takes for many qualitative
researchers is a section in their research papers entitled Researcher Bias. In that section,
they include personal background, how that background may affect their research and
how they, as the researcher, will attempt to address the potential problems. I include such
a section in this study.
Format of the Study
Using the methods for determining genuineness and authenticity of sources
already discussed as a starting point for conducting this research, the basic format of the
study will be adapted from Anderson’s contextual/historical art criticism method
(Anderson, 1993, Anderson, 1997, Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005), which divides the
inquiry process into four distinct parts: observation and initial response, description,
interpretation, and evaluation. Anderson (1997) described the four processes as “1) an
initial, intuitive reaction; 2) description, of obvious thematic and formal qualities, the
relationships between forms and figures, intended emotional impact, and the contextual
qualities outside the work itself which affect its meaning; 3) interpretation of meaning;
and 4) evaluation, or making a final interpretation and judgment of the work based on all
that has come before” (p.21).
In order for Anderson’s art criticism process to be used for this study, the process
must be adapted. Anderson (1997) noted that description, the second step in the process,
includes examining the work, beginning with the obvious and proceeding to the subtle.
Part of this beginning description is the description of those contextual qualities of the
work that help make it meaningful and expressive. The contextual focus centers on the
circumstances, intentions and functions of the work.
For the purposes of this study, the basic elements of description remain the same.
Focusing on Milton Bradley and his life, the description portion of this study will discuss
Bradley’s place in society, his work and its functions and for what purpose he made the
decisions which affected his life. The description portion of the study will also set the
greater social context in which Milton Bradley operated. The Victorian era, the rise of a
leisure class, industrialization, educational and religious themes prevalent during
Bradley’s life will be explored. This social context, along with the description of
Bradley’s life will allow for the interpretation and eventual evaluation of the facts to help
determine if Milton Bradley’s contributions to art education lasted beyond his lifetime.
This historical examination of Milton Bradley will take the form of an act of
criticism. As such, I will gather information about the topic in question based on my
9
initial understanding of that topic. In this case, the kindergarten materials manufactured
by the Milton Bradley Company that I saw during a presentation on kindergarten. My
initial response was that this area of art education history as a “thin spot” (Korzenik,
1984) that needed further exploration. Based on the information gathered during the
subsequent investigation, I will interpret and evaluate the information found for relevance
to the driving question, namely, did Milton Bradley make a lasting contribution to art
education.
To accomplish the above task, I must take the role of the critic. Eisner (1998)
defined the task of the critic as transforming the qualities of a painting, play, novel,
poem, class or school, or act of teaching into a form that illuminates, interprets, and
appraises the qualities that have been experienced.
Eisner (1998) goes on to say:
since there is no literal linguistic equivalent for qualities per se, the task cannot be
simple translation. …Every act of criticism is a reconstruction. The
reconstruction takes the form of an argued narrative, supported by evidence that is
never incontestable; there will always be alternative interpretations of the “same”
play, as the history of criticism so eloquently attests. Further, even the qualities
described in any critical account are not necessarily either all that could have been
described or those that other critics might have described. …Selection is always
at work in both the perception and critical portrayal of what has been seen. (p.
86)
As a critic, I must interpret the information from the description stage of the study
to determine its meaning. Eisner (1998) observed that:
educational critics are interested not only in making vivid what they have
experienced, but in explaining its meaning; this goal frequently requires putting
what has been described in a context in which its antecedent factor can be
identified. It also means illuminating the potential consequences of practices
observed and providing reasons that account for what has been seen. (p. 95)
Anderson (1997) noted, “interpretation is our best guess at what the work is all about,
based on the evidence collected. That evidence should include forms and composition,
technique, aesthetic/emotional impact and contextual information” (p. 22). The process
of interpretation detailed in Chapter 4 will be a natural development of the detailed
description provided in Chapters 2 and 3 and will lend itself handily to the evaluation
process. In order to assure that the interpretation made is a correct one it is important to
gather as much evidence as possible. The credibility of the interpretation will be
dependent on whether or not it can be justified in light of the evidence presented. That
interpretation will form the heart of this study and will provide the basis for the
evaluation of the validity of the guiding question.
Processes and Segments of the Study
Chapter 1 will include the introduction to the study, the guiding and supporting
questions and the format of the study. The methodology and a discussion of historical
inquiry will be included in the format of the study. Chapter 2 will provide a contextual
background against which the events of Milton Bradley’s life will be assessed. In this
chapter, I include sections on the Victorian Era, industrialization, schooling, art education
10
and leisure. Chapter 3 will provide information about Milton Bradley and his
achievements in the areas of business and education. This chapter takes the form of a
biographical sketch of Milton Bradley, detailing the major events of his life. Chapter 4,
the final chapter of this study, will provide an arena in which to analyze and evaluate the
information presented in Chapters 2 and 3. This evaluation of Milton Bradley, in light of
this contextual information in Chapter 2, will provide the means to make an assessment
as to whether Bradley’s contribution to art education was a lasting one or not. The study
will conclude with areas for further study and research.
Obtaining Sources
An initial search through art education literature was conducted to determine what
information was available concerning Milton Bradley. The result was a very limited
amount of information. Most educational textbooks do not make mention of Bradley at
all; if they do mention him, it is usually as a supporter of the kindergarten movement. In
most art education texts his name does not appear, unlike his contemporary and business
rival, Louis Prang. Unlike Prang, who made his name in art education through the
publication of art education textbooks, Milton Bradley made his name through games and
educational supplies, but both were interested in education and its practical business
applications. Bradley’s educational supplies are usually mentioned as an addendum in
books and articles concerning kindergarten. More often, Bradley is mentioned as being
the publisher of the first kindergarten manual published in the United States, The
Paradise of Childhood, by Edward Wiebe, 1868.
Since there is a general lack of information available about Milton Bradley in
traditional art education and general education texts, the researcher had to find alternate
ways to obtain the needed information. A Google search (http://www.google.com) of the
name Milton Bradley yielded a number of websites dedicated to the baseball player and a
few dedicated to the game maker. One source, in particular, proved interesting. The
website (http://www.prbm.com) for the Philadelphia Rare Books and Manuscripts
Company listed a Milton Bradley Company catalog from 1913. This original catalog,
which I purchased, has proved extremely helpful in determining exactly what types of
kindergarten supplies and materials were produced by the Milton Bradley Company. A
general search of the materials offered by the Strozier Library did not yield any results, so
the search was widened to include other major national libraries. This search eventually
led to the Library of Congress catalog. The search of the Library of Congress catalog
revealed five books written by Bradley himself, on the subject of color theory. These
books, which I obtained through Interlibrary Loan, provided a fascinating look at both
Bradley’s writing style, as well as his educational interests.
A search of the website Dissertation Abstracts,
(http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/gateway), revealed a dissertation written in 1975 by
Clifton R. Oakes entitled Milton Bradley: An Historical Study of His Educational
Endeavors in the Context of the Kindergarten Movement in America. This dissertation
proved to be a wonderful resource for discovering primary sources related to Milton
Bradley. Citations concerning Bradley’s obituaries, newspaper articles about Bradley
and his company and period texts about Springfield and its prominent citizens proved
helpful in establishing Bradley’s lifelong commitment to his community, the arts and
11
education. I performed a Google search (http://www.google.com) for Mr. Oakes and
found him living in California. I called Mr. Oakes and we spoke at length about his
dissertation and the information he obtained from Milton Bradley’s granddaughter.
Unfortunately, when Mr. Oakes retired from his position at Sacramento State University
three years ago he disposed of all his dissertation materials, so I was unable to see in
person the materials and sources he had gathered during his research.
Two sources noted in the dissertation, however, have proved to be the most
intriguing, both helpful and frustrating. The first is a book written about Milton Bradley
called Its All in the Game, written by James J. Shea (1960), a former president of the
Milton Bradley Company. This book is a nonfiction account of Milton Bradley and his
life. A copy of this book, which has been out-of-print since the early 1970’s, was
obtained through a rare book dealer. The primary source of information in this book
seems to be a series of diaries collected by Mr. Shea and written by Bradley himself.
This correlates to an appendix found in the dissertation by Oakes, which includes
excerpts from one of Bradley’s diaries from 1901.
Oakes listed the address of a Mrs. John Walker, Milton Bradley’s granddaughter,
who was at that time residing in Somer, Connecticut, as being the person in possession of
the diaries. A Google search of Mrs. John Walker revealed the same address listed in the
dissertation so I drafted a letter requesting information about the 1901 diary and any other
diaries possibly owned by Mrs. Walker. Two written requests went unanswered and a
phone inquiry is currently pending.
Because Shea’s (1960) book indicated the author owned a vast collection of
Bradley memorabilia, a search for Mr. Shea was begun. It was relatively simple to
establish that Mr. Shea died in the early 1970’s. Although an obituary was not located,
Mr. Shea’s book indicated his son James J. Shea Jr. was also a former president of the
Milton Bradley Company. A Google search for James J. Shea Jr. indicated he was a
board member of an organization called the Braille Institute in Santa Barbara, California.
A phone call to the Braille Institute resulted in a letter being forwarded to Mr. Shea at his
home address. The letter asked for any information regarding the status of his father’s
collection. I received a reply from Mr. Shea indicating that all materials pertaining to Mr.
Bradley had been turned over to the Milton Bradley Company at the time of his father’s
death. Mr. Shea also recommended I contact Mr. Wilson, general manager of the Milton
Bradley Company, concerning the diaries.
Contacting Mr. Wilson resulted in a dead-end. The email sent to Mr. Wilson was
very promptly replied to by his assistant, Mark Morris. Unfortunately, Mr. Morris
indicated that what little information that remained in the Milton Bradley Company
Archives about Milton Bradley, personally, was in a section of the company which was
not open to the public. Therefore, the search continues for the elusive Mrs. John Walker
or one of her descendents. Currently I am continuing the search for Bradley’s
descendants using the most recent census released, and websites such as Ancestry.com.1
Another strategy, a visit to the Connecticut Valley Historical Society and
subsequent phone calls to Fran Gagnon, a board member for the historical society
indicated that the policies of the Hasbro Corporation, parent company of the Milton
Bradley Company, had long been an irritation to the Historical Society. When the Milton
1
Appendix A contains all of the correspondence I have sent and received concerning the search for
information pertaining to Milton Bradley.
12
Bradley Company was purchased by the Hasbro Corporation in 1984, the historical
society had apparently tried to obtain the Bradley’s personal papers and were met with
the same response as I received, which was a very polite, but firm, no.
The Historical Society did yield a number of sources that have proved helpful in
this investigation, however. Artifacts such as catalogs, newsletters, dance invitations and
memos helped clarify some of the day-to-day operations of the Bradley company, as well
as providing some valuable insight into the company and the community at the beginning
of the twentieth century. Other than photocopies of Bradley’s obituaries, books
published by the Milton Bradley Company, and some contemporary newspaper articles
about Bradley, the most intriguing find at the historical society was a small book
published by the Milton Bradley Company (1910) for their fiftieth anniversary entitled
Milton Bradley: A Successful Man. The book has proved to be an invaluable source of
information concerning the attitudes of Bradley’s contemporaries both toward him and
his contributions to education. The book also includes several chapters written by
Bradley himself, detailing his recollections about his role in the field of education and
about his personal educational experiences.
The information provided in that book led to further questions concerning
Bradley’s educational background. Shea’s (1960) book indicated that Bradley attended
both Lowell High School, in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the Lawrence Scientific School,
now a part of Harvard University. Surviving records located in the Harvard University
Archives corroborate the information about the Lawrence Scientific School, as well as
providing some additional information about Bradley’s schooling. The School Board of
Lowell, Massachusetts, has records of their students from the 1840’s onward, available
through the Lowell Historical Society, in the form of school reports. A trip to the Lowell
Historical Society in March 2005 yielded School Reports from 1847,1848, and 1849.
These reports offered a fascinating look into the goals of the school board and the
problems they faced through lack of funding and space issues. In addition, the reports
indicated the courses taught at Lowell High School and in some cases the teachers who
taught each course. The numbers of students attending each school, the number of days
of attendance per student and the overall graduation rates were also in the school reports.
Artifacts, including copies of Milton Bradley’s books Color in the Schoolroom
(1890), Color in the Kindergarten (1893), Elementary Color (1895), and Water Colors in
the Schoolroom (1900), and Milton Bradley Company catalogs from 1910 and 1913 have
also helped define the role Bradley and his company played in education. These sources
have provided a one-of-a-kind glimpse into the advertising used to sell their products, as
well as revealing what products the company thought were important for the classroom
teacher at that time. The copies of Bradley’s books on color theory were made from the
originals housed in the Library of Congress, and the catalogs were obtained from a rare
book dealer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one in Wisconsin.
Additional contextual information about a wide range of topics including the
Victorian era, industrialization, education, leisure and play was obtained using resources
in the Florida State University’s Strozier Library and the internet.
13
Researcher Bias, Scope, and Limitations of the Study
In this section, I will include information about my personal background, how that
background may affect my research and how I, as the researcher, will attempt to address
the potential problems. My personal background is that of student, teacher and graduate
student. As a student, I am interested in history, as a teacher, I am interested in art
education and as a graduate student in how the two tie together. I approach this study
primarily from the perspective of an art educator. I found my topic early in my doctoral
program and have stuck with it for over two years. As my own interest in the Milton
Bradley has remained firmly intact, I would hope that others will find the topic as
interesting as I have. This study does not attempt to delve too deeply into Bradley’s
contemporaries or business rivals except as they relate directly to Bradley, since the study
is primarily a biographical narrative of the man in the context of his own life. The
information presented in this study is what I have managed to gather over two years of
research. I am quite positive that there are sources I have not found, but the information I
have been able to gather has lead me to draw some conclusions about Milton Bradley, his
company and their contributions to art education. The conclusions and evaluations made
in Chapter 4 are mine, couched in the information presented in Chapters 1, 2, and 3.
Because I am working within the confines of the information I have gathered, the
conclusions made are not as strong as they would be given more information. I have no
doubt that continued research made by myself and hopefully others will lead to new
conclusions beyond the scope of this study, but at this time, the information presented
here is the most well-rounded and in-depth picture of Milton Bradley I can make in
relation to the questions I am asking.
Definition of Terms
Art Education—In the context of the Victorian era, this is a catchphrase for a variety of
art systems being taught in the nineteenth century. These systems included
industrial drawing, manual training, and picture study.
Industrial Drawing— A system of drawing that utilized lines, shapes and geometric
forms, historic ornament and botanical forms. Perspective, light and shade were
introduced in high school and color was used sparingly. Students were expected
to follow the instructor’s step-by-step instructions. The emphasis of any
industrial drawing program was the training of students in the fundamentals of
industrial design (Wygant, 1993).
Industrial Revolution—the rapid industrial growth that began in England during the
middle of the eighteenth century and then spread over the next 50 years to many
other countries, including the United States. The revolution depended on devices
such as the steam engine which were invented at a rapidly increasing rate during
the period. The Industrial Revolution brought on a rapid concentration of people
14
in cities and changed the nature of work for many people (The New Dictionary of
Cultural Literacy, 2002).
Kindergartener—Early kindergarten teachers were often referred to as kindergarteners, in
reference to their interest in the theories and practices of Fröebel. These
teachers were often young women who attended the first kindergarten training
programs run by Elizabeth Peabody.
Manual Training—a form of vocational training intended to prepare workers for mills
and factories. The original intent of manual training was to develop hand-eye
coordination, but the scope soon narrowed. Manual training is closely related to
industrial/vocational education (Amburgy, 1990).
Picture Study—Picture study, according to Wygant (1993), was closely aligned with the
development of aesthetic education. Aesthetic education included the study of art
history, with an emphasis on the Greeks. Aesthetic education stressed the
moralistic aspects of art through the study of photographic reproductions. This
study of art through pictures became known as picture study.
Progressive Education- Cremin (1964) noted that the progressive education movement
had four broad goals: to broaden the program and function of the school to
include concern for health, vocation and the quality of family and community life;
to apply in the classroom the pedagogical principles derived from new scientific
research in psychology and the social sciences; to tailor instruction to different
kinds and classes of children; and to foster the idea that culture could be
democratized without being vulgarized, and that everyone could share in the
benefits of the new sciences and in the pursuit of the arts (p. 19).
Victorian Era—The time period in American history beginning with the end of the Civil
War in 1876 and ending with the beginning of World War I in 1915. This period
was marked by rapid social change in the areas of technology, social institutions,
immigration, migration, and leisure. Additionally, the role of industrialization,
the increased role of consumerism/materialism and the rise of the middle class
marked the Victorian Era in America (Schlereth, 1991).
15
CHAPTER 2: SETTING THE CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW OF THE
CULTURAL CONTEXT OF MILTON BRADLEY’S LIFE
This chapter is devoted to developing the context in which Milton Bradley grew
up and prospered as a businessman and entrepreneur. The environment in which Bradley
was raised and the vast changes that occurred during his lifetime were to have long
lasting effects on both Bradley and his business. Topics relevant to Bradley’s life, in
relation to the question being asked in this study, will be discussed in this chapter. Those
topics include the Victorian Era, transportation, standardization of time, mail-order
catalogs, the middle class, education, religion, leisure and play. Each topic in some way
influenced Milton Bradley and helped shape his ideas concerning life and business.
The Victorian Era
Schlereth (1991), in his book Victorian America, provides an overview of the
Victorian Era. The Victorian Era, the author noted, which lasted roughly from the end of
the Civil War to the beginning of the First World War in the United States, was a period
marked by rapid changes in almost every aspect of daily life. Migration and immigration
were two areas of everyday life that changed drastically during the Victorian era. Other
areas of change included transportation, housing, rapid industrialization, the invention of
the telegraph, phonograph and telephone, the creation of a new middle class, the rise of
non-manual labor jobs in industry and the ways in which people entertained themselves.
Objects of everyday life taken for granted in today’s society, objects such as indoor
plumbing, electric lights, grocery stores, the modern post office, and standard time did
not exist prior to the Victorian era. These inventions were often a result of changing and
expanding technology. The Industrial Revolution turned the United States from a
primarily agrarian society into a modern industrial nation. Modern society as we know it
was largely formed during these years.
Migration and Immigration
The population of the United States during this period was marked by massive
upheaval. People from the east moved west, from the south moved north, they moved
from rural settings to urban settings, and then from urban to suburban. Schlereth (1991)
noted that the one of the main reasons for this shift in population was increased
16
urbanization and work opportunities in larger cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and
New York.
Immigration also increased during the nineteenth-century. Schlereth (1991) wrote
that at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition the U.S. Department of Labor showed a
diagram which noted the arrival of immigrants from just before the Civil War until 1907.
The chart showed that prior to the Civil War the largest number of immigrants (427,833)
arrived in 1854. In 1882 the number of new immigrants increased to 788,992 and by
1907 the number reached 1,285,349 new immigrants. Many of these new immigrants
were from eastern and southern Europe, mainly Italy, Greece, Slovakia, Poland, Russia,
Austria, Hungary, China, Japan, and the Philippines. Milton Bradley and his family were
representative of the families migrating throughout the United States; Bradley’s father
moved the family several times during Milton’s childhood to secure better jobs and
thereby more money for his family (Shea, 1960).
Standard Time
Schlereth (1991) noted that prior to the Industrial Revolution the creation of a
standard time was unnecessary. People measured time by the rising and setting of the
sun, in the harvesting of crops and the pages of the almanac. Most towns used the sun at
noon to set their town clock and often these clocks varied from town to town. Town
halls, churches and factory whistles were all popular means of setting the time, even if
they were often at odds with one another. This popular, if incorrect, ritual ended with the
introduction of Standard Railway Time.
Schlereth (1991) noted that on Sunday, November 18, 1883, at noon, Standard
Railway Time went into effect with the drop of the Western Union’s New York time ball.
Standard Railway Time replaced local time with five time zones: Intercolonial, Eastern,
Central, Mountain, and Pacific. Each zone had the same time within its borders, thereby
standardizing time across the country. While not everyone liked the new time zones, and
in fact Standard Railway Time was challenged before state Supreme Courts at least
fifteen times, Standard Railway Time become federal law with the passing of the
Standard Time Act of 1918.
Standard time signaled the larger changes going on in the United States as
increased industrialization largely replaced agrarian concerns. Cross (1990) noted that
the standardization of time allowed employers to precisely measure time and to intensify
the pace of work. The clock set the standard for when work began and ended.
Mass Production
Mass production of materials allowed industry to flourish in the nineteenth
century. Prior to Henry Ford’s creation of the assembly line in 1913 there were several
advances in mass production technology. Schlereth (1991) wrote about advances in the
manufacture of firearms (interchangeability of parts), in tool-and-die companies
(precision jigs and gauges), in grain milling and iron foundrying (handling of materials
by conveyor belts), in can making (special or single-purpose machinery), in steel
production (time-and-motion efficiency studies), in meat packing (slaughterhouse
disassembly lines) and in bicycle manufacturing (sheet-metal stamping and electric-
17
resistance welding) as precursors to Ford’s chain-driven assembly line. All of these
advances paved the way for modern industry. Saving time on each step allowed goods to
be produced at lower cost and with more efficiency while increasing the intensity of the
work (Cross, 1990). The Milton Bradley Company would take advantage of these
innovations in mass production with the manufacture of the art supplies and materials
they marketed to consumers (Shea, 1960).
Housing
Housing changed as well during the Victorian era. Martin (1993) noted that many
Americans changed the way they lived during the second half of the nineteenth-century.
Three new types of homes appeared during this era: the apartment, the sod house and the
bungalow. The apartment house, often termed tenements in large cities, housed multiple
families. Streetcars and commuter railroads helped to spur this expansion in housing as
people moved further from the city center to the suburban areas around major cities.
Larkin (1989) noted that housing was less equally distributed than it is today, the
majority of household changes occurring among the middle and upper classes.
Schlereth (1991) observed that indoor plumbing was introduced several years
before there was any means to remove the waste. Most cities implemented their first
sewer systems in the 1880’s. With the introduction of indoor plumbing, the workload for
the women and children of the era decreased, as did the number of diseases prevalent in
the cities.
Another area in housing that changed during this period, according to Schlereth
(1991) was in the area of cooking with the introduction of stoves and kitchen ranges in
the 1840’s. Central heating did not become available to most homeowners until the
1890’s with the invention of the cast iron radiator. Around this same time, homeowners
began experimenting with new fuel and electric sources of light. Gas, petroleum,
kerosene and electric power offered homeowners a variety of options for lighting their
homes. While gas proved a cleaner option than kerosene, ultimately most homeowners
chose electric light options. One reason for that was the development by Thomas Edison
of the incandescent bulb and the creation of his delivery system (generators, fixtures,
lamp sockets, wiring and meters). By 1920, over thirty four percent of homes across the
nation were wired for electricity.
U.S. Postal Service and Mail Order Catalogs
One of the biggest factors in the phenomenal success of mail order catalogs was
the United States Post Office. Schlereth (1991) and Gustaitis (1993) both noted that
several initiatives made by the post office during the late 1800’s including bulk mail
rates, postal money orders, rural free delivery (RFD), and parcel post, helped companies
such as Sears and Montgomery Ward mail their goods quickly and easily. Of these
initiatives, Schlereth (1991), observed that the most significant was the introduction of
the RFD system in 1896 by Postmaster General John A. Wanamaker. Rural delivery
made it easy for consumers to purchase mail order items. The consumer merely noted
their rural route number on the mail order envelope and their mail carrier purchased the
money order for them and mailed the completed order to the store. Parcel post,
18
introduced by the post office in 1913, made it possible for almost any rural American to
order goods from a mail order catalog.
Gustaitis (1993) noted that the majority of the nation was still rural at the end of
the nineteenth century, and that the majority of these people had to rely on the general
store and the country peddler to purchase goods and services. Martin (1993) saw the rise
of mail-order catalogs and the addition of national brands to country stores as a way for
rural households to join what she calls the “consumer revolution” (p. 150). Gustaitis
(1993) observed that mail order catalogs, first introduced by Richard Sears, offered
consumers the opportunity to purchase goods and services they might never have had
access to otherwise. Sears, Roebuck and Company, Richard Sears’ company, and
Montgomery Ward were two of the first stores to offer their goods through a catalog.
Schlereth (1991) observed that by 1910 approximately ten million Americans
shopped by mail. Gustaitis (1993) noted, “at its zenith, the book [Sears Big Book]
contained fifteen hundred pages, weighed six pounds and reached twenty million people”
(p.37). Sears catalogs offered over ten thousand items during their heyday. Illustrations
and descriptions of all the products in the catalogs helped consumers who could not
inspect the goods in person. Satisfaction in the products was of the utmost importance,
so both Sears and Ward offered immediate cash refunds if the goods ordered were not
what the consumer wanted. The Sears policy stated, “We guarantee that any article
purchased from us will satisfy you perfectly...that it represents full value for the price you
pay. If for any reason whatever you are dissatisfied with any article…we expect you to
return it to us at our expense” (p. 38).
Gustaitis (1993) observed that Sears himself noted, “The Big Catalog is your right
arm to reach out and touch the whole world. Workmen, designers, and inventors of all
nations may be summoned to your service. In this Book you have a modern convenience
to be classed with electric power, the telephone and the telegraph” (p. 37). The
popularity and prosperity of businesses that used mail-order catalogs paved the way for
other business, including the Milton Bradley Company, to copy their methods for
reaching consumers.
Advertising and Consumerism
Advertising, like most fields during the Victorian Era, underwent major changes
throughout the nineteenth century. Schlereth (1991) noted that early advertising agents,
called brokers, sold space in newspapers to individual businesses. These early
advertisements were like the classified sections of the modern newspaper, often small
type with no pictures. That practice changed with the advent of large advertising
agencies such as N.W. Ayer and Son and Lord & Thomas.
No longer the boring advertisements they began as, Schlereth (1991) noted that
typical ads of the nineteenth century took two forms: the plain talk ad and the jingles and
trade character ad style. The plain talk ad stressed direct and factual copy and the
importance of content in selling. The jingles and trade character style ad attempted to
raise the consumer’s curiosity and appealed to the average consumer’s short attention
span. Additional forms of advertisements common at the end of the nineteenth century
included the reason why advertisement and what was called impressionistic copy and
atmosphere advertising.
19
The large increase in the numbers of ads seen by the typical consumer correlates
to the vast expansion in the number of newspapers and other print mediums at the end of
the nineteenth century. Horowitz (1985) observed that advertising became the key to the
movement of mass produced goods throughout the population. The increase in
advertisements changed the way consumers purchased and used goods. Schlereth (1991)
noted that:
In less than half a century, corporate giants like Gold Medal and Pillsbury flour
virtually eliminated small-town flour mills. National-brand advertising altered
country-store merchandising, promoting greater price competition. Along with
other new innovations in corporate advertising, it inverted traditional methods of
selling goods. Instead of going first to a wholesaler who then conveyed his goods
to the retailer, many manufacturers of national brands now increasingly appealed
directly to consumers, relying upon advertising to create a demand for their
products. (p. 162)
As a result of this increase in advertising, according to Schlereth (1991),
American consumer habits changed during the period of 1876-1915. Middle class and
working class families had more money and more time to purchase goods. Additionally,
goods being mass-produced during this period were increasingly less expensive. As the
average earnings per week rose during this period, prices for goods and services
decreased. The result of this was the wide consumption of goods by consumers. Martin
(1993) noted that as more and more people began making use of the manufactured
household goods being produced during this time, the demand for such products
increased. One of the earliest products that entered the home, actually becoming popular
in the pre-Industrial period, was equipment for dining. These new dining objects,
including cutlery and napkins, required new furniture such as dining tables and chairs.
Increased interest in entertainment in the home, such as cards, Martin (1993)
noted, also led to consumer interest in specialized furniture such as card tables and
nighttime lighting. Along with an interest in entertainment came a new attention to
personal appearance, leading to a proliferation of new products for the hair and body and
furniture to facilitate these new grooming ideals. Additional new products introduced
during this period including plastics such as celluloid, bakelite and cellophane helped
reduce the cost of everyday products. New forms of entertainment such as the
amusement park, vaudeville and spectator sports helped foster the idea that fun and
function could be purchased. The Milton Bradley Company would tap into this increased
interest in entertainment when it began producing games and amusements for home use.
The advertising used in the marketing of their products would help the company sell the
products they produced more efficiently.
The Middle Class
Archer and Blau (1993) observed that the formation of the middle class was
largely dependent on the transformation of class and occupational structure that came
from rapid changes in industrial-capitalism, urbanization, immigration and geographic
mobility. The composition of the middle class, according to the authors, appears to
20
depend on the historical period under consideration. The beginning of the nineteenth
century found that the middle class was comprised primarily of artisans as the switch
from manual to non-manual labor began. The mid-nineteenth century, or early industrial
period found the middle class to be peopled mostly with small capitalists. The latter
decades of the nineteenth century, with its emphasis on industrialization and large
corporations, found the middle class made up mostly of white-collar employees.
Archer and Blau (1993) noted that historical evidence suggested that although
artisans were instrumental in the development of the technology needed for mass
production, job opportunities for artisans dwindled throughout the nineteenth century.
Small capitalists, on the other hand, tended to expand their businesses during this period
and therefore ascended into middle class standing. Industrialization expanded
opportunities for ownership of retail shops and businesses which increased the rate of
upward mobility, thereby helping to create a middle class social network within
commercial districts. Archer and Blau (1993) observed that “entrepreneurship also
emerged in the late nineteenth century as the central theme of middle-class ideology of
success” (p. 10). The biggest and most visible change in the occupations of the middle
class during this period was the shift from manual to non-manual labor. Clerical and
managerial work became staple middle class occupations that signaled a definite
disassociation from the working class. Schlereth (1991) wrote about the growth of the
middle class as based on the federal census statistics from 1870 to 1920. He noted that in
1860 the Bureau of the Census found about 750,000 people were engaged in what was
termed “professional service” and other “commercial” positions. By 1890 the number of
people employed in similar positions had risen to 2,160,000, by 1910 that number was
4,420,000. The people employed in these positions, in addition to farmers and small
entrepreneurs, included salaried professionals, managers, sales people, and office
workers. Most of these new middle class additions lived in the cities.
Archer and Blau (1993) noted that the formation of the middle class had less to do
with economic conditions and more to do with lifestyle choices. They note, “the
emergence of the middle class was rooted in the transformation of work under industrialcapitalism and shifts in occupational composition over the course of the nineteenth
century. Middle class identity was formed through related processes of institution
building, the development of an increasingly homogeneous middle-class culture, and the
wide diffusion of middle-class lifestyles and cultural codes in cities” (p. 7). Middle class
families in the nineteenth century, they argue, focused on values, domestic ideology, and
gender roles.
One of the reasons for the dissemination of middle class values and cultural codes
was the greater geographic mobility among middle class families versus working class
families. Another reason was the relative geographic and residential stability of the
middle class. The result of this stability was the idea among working class families that
the attainment of middle class status would increase their own stability. The expectation
of mobility by members of the working class, the authors note, if not for themselves then
for their children, was in fact somewhat realistic during the latter portion of the
nineteenth century. Kasson (1990) noted that many working class members of society
gained acceptance in the middle class through the practice of correct manners, the control
of emotions and the rituals of polite behavior. The attainment of that middle class veneer
allowed many rural families and immigrants to become members in good standing.
21
Education was another contributing factor in the explosive growth of the middle class
during the nineteenth century. Milton Bradley is a prime example of a man who rose
above his humble beginnings to become a solid middle class citizen (Shea, 1960).
Education
The nineteenth century saw the beginning of the public or common school system
that continues to this day. Kaestle (1983) described education in the early 1800’s as one
of custom, stating, “America had schools, but, except in large cities, America did not
have school systems” (p.62). Most communities had some sort of elementary level
schooling by the 1830’s, although legislation requiring such schooling was not in place at
that time. Uniformity, according to Kaestle (1983) was provided by the strong Protestant
content of the curriculum, by the popularity of certain textbooks and by the traditions
prevalent in the communities themselves. Educators during this period stressed three
goals that what would become the hallmark of public schooling: intelligent citizenship,
industrious habits and upright behavior. Moral education, steeped heavily in the
Protestant tradition, would develop directly from these goals. Milton Bradley, who
attended school during the late 1840’s and early 1850’s, would have been a product of
this system (Lowell Historical Society).
Growth of Interest in Schooling
Kaestle (1983) credits the growth of the capitalist economy of the United States as
being a major spur to the education system. Trade and finance expanded the use of longdistance communication, which precipitated an increased use and reliance on money and
credit. This reliance created centers of enterprise, which in turn served as centers of
learning. Increased commerce also created a greater need for knowledge of the written
word and basic arithmetic. The more widespread the printed word became, through the
publication of greater and greater numbers of books, newspapers and periodicals, the
greater became the need for schooling. This phenomenon was especially prevalent in the
Northeast, where commerce and the economy were rapidly expanding during this period.
Common School Reforms
The common school reform movement stemmed from a desire among educational
advocates the increase the amount of schooling every child received, to increase state
involvement in education, to increase uniformity between schools, and to present a more
public purpose for schooling (Kaestle, 1983). There was great concern among educators
about student attendance in the public schools. Kaestle (1983) notes that by the midnineteenth century about half of all children under twenty attended school at least halftime in Massachusetts and New York. The portion of students that did not attend school
were often the urban poor; immigrant children who had to work to help support their
families. Kaestle (1984) observed that by the 1840’s both religious and ethnic diversity
had greatly increased, especially in the big cities. Immigration and the increased amount
22
of religious division among the people of the United States helped the common school
movement gain acceptance. Kaestle (1984) stated, “Expansive capitalism and
accompanying urbanization carried the threat of disruption and social problems. Many
reformers saw common schooling as a source of both discipline and opportunity, a way to
enhance stability and fairness simultaneously” (p. 102).
Kaestle (1983) noted another area in which school reformers were active was in
discouraging parents from sending their very young children to school. The idea of
infant schools was not new, but in the mid-nineteenth century it came to be enforced
more readily. Small children were not seen to benefit from public schooling; in fact, it
was seen to be detrimental. Small children were sent home to their mothers, clearing the
way for the more curricular-driven school. The beginning of the kindergarten movement
would bring small children back to public school, but three and four year olds were
thereafter sent to infant or nursery schools.
While increasing attendance was an important goal of educational reformers, so
was an increased state presence in public schooling. This increased presence was
implemented in many ways. Kaestle (1983) noted that school systems were created at
this time, state supervision regulations were put into place, and the change from private to
public control of the schools was implemented. The first superintendents of schools were
appointed and legislation was introduced to explain and define their roles within the new
school systems. The goals of these superintendents were basically the same in every
state, to act as a cheerleader for the public school system and to advocate the enrollment
of all children in public schooling versus private schooling. The goals of the common
school system: moral training, discipline, patriotism, mutual understanding, formal
equality, and cultural assimilation were presented to the public (Kaestle, 1983).
The result of these educational reformers was lasting. Increased legislation
regarding schools and the creation of state-wide school systems helped to create a more
uniform educational system. High schools were introduced in the mid-nineteenth century
in the north and the number of children attending these schools increased every year.
Increased spending and school taxes helped update existing facilities and school supplies.
The form and function of public schooling was now in place (Kaestle, 1983), and would
affect Milton Bradley’s life and business as new and innovative teaching strategies and
materials were introduced into classrooms around the country.
Moral Education
One of the most important reasons for the necessity of moral education in the
public school system was the changing role of school and home life. Home life,
McClellan (1999) observed, changed dramatically during the nineteenth century.
Children no longer stayed in the parental home until adulthood. Many young adults
ventured out into the world at a much earlier age, making moral training, once a task that
extended into early adulthood, limited to childhood itself. McClellan (1999) noted that,
“nineteenth-century Americans made moral education the special responsibility of two
institutions especially adaptable to the task of offering intensive training to the very
young—the family and the school” (p. 18). The 22nd Annual Report of the School
Committee of the City of Lowell, MA (1847) observed:
23
If they could be successfully appealed to only through the instrumentality of the
rod, it would then be the teacher’s disgrace, and his alone. If, on the other hand,
they could be controlled by those high moral considerations which should
influence rational human beings, it would redound to the teacher’s honor. But the
influence of parents upon their children, begins earlier, reaches deeper, and
extends farther, than the teacher’s can. (p. 31)
With the rise of a public school system, the idea of moral education came to the
forefront of educational debate. Schools, both Sunday and daily, according to McClellan
(1999), were expected to extend and reinforce the moral education taught in the home.
Moral education was seen as a way to preserve harmony among the many different
segments of society. Kaestle (1984) made a similar observation when he noted that the
increase of immigration and diversified religious practice led educators to support the
idea of a pan-Protestant approach to moral education in the public schools. Horace
Mann, a leading education advocate of the day, was a leading advocate of this approach,
which was soon widely accepted among educators. Mann (1848) said, “the naked
capacity to read and write is not more education than a tool is a workman…Moral
education is a primal necessity” (Cremin, 1983).
Moral education was taught in a variety of ways, not always religious. Kaestle
(1984) noted that religious, political and economic ideas during the nineteenth-century
were overlapping and mutually reinforcing. Each area, Kaestle observed, provided
maxims used in common school textbooks, sermons, domestic manuals and other forms
of social commentary. Each area generated a variety of social beliefs, which in turn
generated various ethical lessons about human nature and social relations. Kaestle (1983)
noted that moral education was intended primarily to produce obedient children, reduce
crime and discourage vice. This was achieved through a curriculum that placed a strong
emphasis on character, discipline, virtue and good habits.
The general common school curriculum placed as high a value on moral
education as on reading, writing, and arithmetic. McClellan (1999) noted that moral
lessons suffused nineteenth-century textbooks. Stories in readers, spellers and arithmetic
books helped to promote the types of behavior that nineteenth-century children were
expected to emulate. Textbooks, according to Stearns (1885), taught “love of country,
love of God, duty to parents, the necessity to develop habits of thrift, honesty, and hard
work in order to accumulate property, the certainty of progress and the perfection of the
United States” (p. 89). The most commonly used textbooks during this period were the
McGuffey Readers and the Webster Spellers.
McClellan (1999) noted that the moral themes and values prevalent in the
textbooks of the nineteenth-century had been familiar for generations and were not new
ideas. The focus changed during this time, however, as more and more children received
a majority of their moral education in the public schools. Americans of the day,
according to McClellan (1999), believed that “the key to the good of society lay less in
the structures of government or in political beliefs than in the morality of common
citizens” (p. 27). It was in such an atmosphere that Milton Bradley received his early
moral training and education. He grew up with these values, and advocated and fostered
them as an adult.
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Inside the Classroom
The role of the student and the teacher was well defined in most public school
classrooms during the nineteenth century. Finkelstein (1989) asserted that what teachers
did most often in classrooms of this period was talk. Students listened to their teachers,
recited passages from textbooks, and worked with classmates and at their desks on
assignments. Teachers expected students to be quiet and well behaved. Uniformity
among students and classroom assignments was encouraged. Memorization, instruction,
drill and recitation were the most common learning tools used by students and teachers
during this the early to mid-nineteenth century.
Schooling at the End of the Century
Kliebard (1995) observed that education was in a state of flux throughout the
nineteenth century. The monitorial or Lancaster system, with its rigid adherence to a call
and response from the students and strict discipline, which was so popular in the early
1800’s was losing popularity. Kliebard (1995) described the changing conditions in
education as a decline in the reliance of the face-to-face community and increasing social
awareness. Schools were no longer the logical link in a unified community; rather they
were what Kliebard calls a “mediating institution between the family and the social order,
the family and the community, and the family and industrial society” (p. 1). By the late
1800’s, schooling was still in a state of flux, but it was clear that schooling had replaced
some part of what was the family’s role concerning initiation into society. The most
obvious change that occurred during this time was the shift from a teacher-driven school
to a curriculum-driven school.
Cuban (1984) noted that by the 1890’s, more than half a century had passed since
the beginning of the common school movement and the look of classrooms had also
changed. Schools were separated into grade levels and were in session for nine months
per year. Rows of desks were bolted to the floor; students faced the teacher’s desk and
the blackboard. Courses of study were in place for each grade; homework and report
cards were commonly seen in the schools. Each teacher had his or her own room.
Teachers, themselves, were expected to have higher training than high school. The look
and feel of the classroom by the 1890’s was very similar to today’s classrooms.
Finklestein (1989) observed:
By the end of the nineteenth century, schools were no longer dots on the
landscape of education or childhood. They had become shelters, formidable
structures of persuasions through which every child passed on the road to
adulthood. Not total institutions like families…schools became mediating
structures: way stations between the small world of family, church and
neighborhood, and the large world of government, nation, and marketplace.
(p. 24)
25
Progressive Education
Progressive education first entered the common school system in the late 1800’s.
Cremin (1964) observed that by the 1890’s educational reformers had identified many
areas in which public or common schooling could be improved. These problems, for the
first time, were seen as being truly national in scope. Progressive reformers hoped to
make public schooling more universal with a broader appeal to the general public.
Cremin (1964) noted that the progressive education movement had four broad goals: “to
broaden the program and function of the school to include concern for health, vocation
and the quality of family and community life; to apply in the classroom the pedagogical
principles derived from new scientific research in psychology and the social sciences; to
tailor instruction to different kinds and classes of children; and to foster the idea that
culture could be democratized without being vulgarized, and that everyone could share in
the benefits of the new sciences and in the pursuit of the arts,” (p. 19).
Manual training schools
Manual training schools were seen as a solution to the problem of how to
introduce meaningful shop training into technical education. Efland (1990) noted that
manual training was first proposed in the 1870’s, making it part of the early progressive
movement. Manual training, according to Efland, emphasized the virtues of
craftsmanship and shared many of the goals of art educators. Cremin (1964) observed
that Victor Della Vos, director of the Moscow Imperial Technical School, was one of the
first educators to align the work of mathematics, physics, and engineering with on-the-job
training through the use of school workshops built for that purpose. In Della Vos’s
opinion, mechanical arts were on par with the fine arts, both needing practical training to
achieve competency. This idea, when introduced in the United States, translated into the
first technical training school affiliated with universities and the beginnings of industrial
education in the public schools.
Geiger (2000) noted that by the 1850’s three different types of scientific/technical
education had emerged from the idea of manual training: “schools of science” attached
to some of the foremost colleges and universities; colleges of agriculture; and
“polytechnics” devoted to engineering and the mechanic arts (p. 155). Scientific schools
such as the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University organized distinct two-year
courses in chemistry and engineering and prepared students for postgraduate study in
languages, philosophy, and science. Agricultural colleges, often called land grant
colleges, were begun during this period and often taught courses in agricultural chemistry
and offered a combination of academic courses and manual labor training for the farm.
Polytechnics such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to Geiger
26
(2000), represented the first true engineering schools. Founded in 1861 by William
Barton Rogers, MIT was conceived as way to bring science to the industrial classes
through the use of a museum, instructions for regular students, and a night school for
workers.
Manual training, with its emphasis on practical application of scientific method
would enter the public school system primarily through manual training courses in the
high schools. Schools, according to Cremin (1961) were assuming the classical functions
of the apprenticeship. Manual training was well on its way to becoming industrial
education. The passage of the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, which provided federal aid for
vocational secondary education was in many ways the culmination of the work that began
in the late nineteenth century with the beginnings of the progressive education
movement. Milton Bradley, who attended the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard
University, would be among the many to benefit from the practical training in mechanical
arts.
Kindergarten
The kindergarten movement, with its emphasis of a “child-centered” approach,
was part of the larger Progressive Education movement. Frederic Fröebel, founder of the
kindergarten, was an important influence on many progressive educators. Chung and
Walsh (2000) observed that Fröebel was one of the first educators to suggest that young
children required special schooling to match their developmental level. The first English
speaking kindergarten, was founded by Elizabeth Peabody in 1860. Peabody was
influenced by the transcendental philosophy of her mentor Bronson Alcott. Chung and
Walsh (2000) noted that Peabody viewed children’s nature as perfect and innocent and
saw moral education in the kindergarten classroom as a way to protect that innocence.
Kindergarten expanded its influence in the public school system throughout the
1880’s. Chung and Walsh (2000) noted that kindergarten teachers were pressed to
conform to the curriculum of the primary grades. By the early 1900’s, kindergarten had
undergone a revolution of sorts. The kindergarten of Fröebel introduced by Elizabeth
Peabody had changed to a more Americanized version that was based on the scientific
ideas of Hall, Dewey and Thorndike. The kindergarten curriculum now centered on the
scientific knowledge of children’s natural development. Kindergarten and progressive
education complemented each other in their mutual focus on the child as the center of the
curriculum.
During the late 1800’s, kindergartens were often introduced to the general public
through the settlement houses of the period. These settlement houses were common in
poor, urban areas. One of the most famous settlement houses, Hull House in Chicago,
founded by Jane Addams in 1889, offered both a kindergarten and a nursery school for its
residents and the larger neighborhood (Cremin, 1964).
Early leaders of progressive education: Francis Wayland Parker and John Dewey
Francis Wayland Parker. Francis Wayland Parker was the influential educator
and child-study advocate John Dewey referred to as the “father of progressive education”
(Cremin, 1964). Cremin (1964) noted that Parker was an educator in Manchester, New
27
Hampshire, principal of the Dayton, Ohio Normal School, school superintendent of the
Quincy, Massachusetts school system, supervisor of the Boston school system and
principal of the Cook County Normal School in Chicago, Illinois. Parker spent two years
studying the schools of Prussia, Switzerland, and Holland, where he learned about
Pestalozzi and Fröebel, both of whom emphasized sensory, material-based learning.
Korzenik (1984) noted that Parker’s educational philosophy centered around the
idea that children only learn what is meaningful to them in their daily lives and that
meaning is rooted in experience. Parker’s method stressed attention to the objects of
childhood and the expression of understanding that can come from that attention. A large
portion of Parker’s teaching method used what he termed “modes of expression.” Those
modes of expression were gesture, voice, speech, music, making, modeling, painting,
drawing and writing. This focus on the arts was later a central theme of progressive
education.
John Dewey. Efland (1990) noted that the philosophy of John Dewey had a
revolutionary and lasting impact on art education. Dewey had an early and lasting role in
progressive education through his publications, his laboratory school and his work at
Teachers College, Columbia. Chung and Walsh (2000) observed that Dewey’s assertion
that children should be able to help determine their training to some extent was indicative
of the child-centered progressive education movement. The result of Dewey’s reflections
on education and the role of the child resulted in his idea of the project or activity
centered curriculum. This curriculum idea was based on children’s life experiences
according to their interests or needs. The project-centered curriculum was a hallmark of
progressive education and was really developed in Dewey’s Laboratory School, opened
in January 1896 (Cremin, 1964).
Cremin (1964) noted that Dewey’s stated purpose for the Laboratory School was,
“to discover in administration, selection of subject-matter, methods of learning, teaching,
and discipline, how a school could become a cooperative community while developing in
individuals their own capacities and satisfying their own needs” (p. 136). The focus of
the Laboratory School was to encourage purposeful activity, that is, learning through
doing. This idea is a cornerstone of the progressive education movement. Cremin (1964)
wrote that learning occurred through the use of themed activities, languages,
mathematics, fine and industrial arts, science, history, music, and geography. All the
subjects studied at the Laboratory School progressed with the idea that learning has a
social context which cannot be ignored.
Efland (1990) noted that neither Parker nor Dewey believed that subjects should
not be taught in isolation. Activities taking place in the classroom were grounded in the
realities of children’s lives, with a premium placed on real world experiences and
learning experiences. Art and music were seen as a way to make the experiences in the
classroom more worthwhile. The progressive education movement would build on the
ideas of these early reformers and refine them throughout the early twentieth century.
The effect that the progressive movement would have on education in general and
kindergarten in particular can be seen in the increased amount of work done in the fine
and industrial art areas and in the positioning of the child at the center of the curriculum.
28
Art Education
Art education entered the public schools for purely practical reasons. Efland
(1990) noted that vocal music and drawing were seen as a way to elevate moral
standards. Horace Mann (1841) noted, “Drawing may well go hand in hand with music;
so may the cultivation of libraries and the cultivation of a taste for reading, etc. Every
pure taste implanted in the youthful mind becomes a barrier to resist the allurements of
sensuality” (p. 186). Drawing instruction became the first type of art education to enter
the schools and was approached by many educators in a purely academic manner.
Wygant (1993) has written that during this period, drawing was seen as a representational
skill developed through the practice of exercises. Two of the earliest art educators were
William Bentley Fowle and Rembrant Peale.
Fowle is generally credited with introducing art education into the public schools
(Wygant, 1993). Ironically, Fowle conducted a monitorial school in Boston in 1821 and
was not a drawing instructor. Fowle based his teaching methods on those of Pestalozzi.
The Pestalozzi method used exercises in drawings, the division of straight lines,
construction of two and three-dimensional forms, classical architecture, arithmetic and
geometry. The Pestalozzi method used exercises in drawings, the division of straight
lines, construction of two and three-dimensional forms, classical architecture, arithmetic
and geometry. Efland (1990) described the principles of Pestalozzi’s system of drawing
as: “1. To bring all things essentially related to each other together, 2. To subordinate all
unessential things, 3. To arrange all objects according to their likenesses, 4. To
strengthen sense impressions of important objects by allowing them to be experienced
through different senses, 5. To arrange knowledge in graduated steps so that differences
in new ideas shall be small and almost imperceptible, and 6. To make the simple perfect
before going on to the complex” (p. 78). In How Gertrude Teaches Her Children,
Pestalozzi (1801/1898) observed that:
The usual course of our art education is to begin with inaccurate observation and
crooked structures; them to pull down and build up again crookedly ten times
over, until at last and late, the feeling of proportion has matured. Then we come,
at last, to that with which we should have begun, measurement. (p. 186)
Peale, on the other hand, was a trained artist (Wygant, 1993). He wrote a drawing
text in 1834 that was widely used in the public schools. The type of drawing advocated
by the Peale method was representational drawing. Representational drawing, as used in
the Peale text, began with the drawing of horizontal and vertical lines and continued
through diagonal and then curved lines. The Peale text differed from Fowle’s lessons in
that Peale progressed then onto simple forms, geometric shapes and landscapes. Between
1840 and 1844, Peale taught in the Philadelphia public schools system as a volunteer.
Efland (1990) noted that drawing instruction during this period was limited to
outline drawing. Exercises involving shading were not generally taught; the focus of
student work was accuracy and neatness. There was little to no emphasis on personal
creativity or original creativity in these systems. Art instruction was seen as a way of
developing the minds of children and was not considered for its own sake.
29
Influential Early Drawing Advocates
Wygant (1993) outlined the profound influence two other educators had on the
beginnings of art education. Both were early superintendents of schools and as such had
great effect on their state’s curriculum. The first, Horace Mann, was the superintendent
of the Massachusetts’s school system. The second, Henry Barnard, was the
superintendent of the Rhode Island schools.
Mann traveled to Prussia to observe educational methods in their public school
system (Efland, 1990). While in Prussia, Mann was impressed with the way educators
there used drawing as a type of language, as an aid to teaching writing and as a means of
appreciating beauty. Upon his return to Massachusetts, Mann implemented drawing
lessons at the state’s normal schools. Saunders (1961) observed that Horace Mann was
the first person to make any real attempt to incorporate art into the school curriculum via
his publication of Peter Schmid’s system of drawing instruction in 1844 and 1845.
Efland (1990) noted that Mann was a strong advocate for drawing instruction in
the schools. Barnard advocated a similar stance on drawing instruction in both
Connecticut and Rhode Island. As editors for educational journals in their respective
states, both of these men had a positive influence on the beginnings of art education in
their states.
Massachusetts Free Instruction in Drawing Act of 1870
The Massachusetts Free Instruction in Drawing Act of 1870 is often cited,
according to Smith (1996), as the official start of art education in the American school
system. The act was a direct result of a petition signed by some of Boston’s most
influential business leaders. The petition was quoted in an article by Bolin (1986) as
follows:
To the Honorable General Court of the State of Massachusetts,
Your petitioners respectfully represent that every branch of manufacturers
in which the citizens of Massachusetts are engaged, requires in the details of the
process connected with it, some knowledge of drawing and other arts of design on
the part of skilled workmen engaged.
At the present time no wide provision is made for instruction in drawing in
the public schools.
Our manufacturers therefore compete under disadvantages with the
manufacturers of Europe; for in all the manufacturing countries of Europe free
provision is made for instructing workmen of all classes in drawing. At this time,
almost all the best draughtsmen in our shops are thus trained abroad.
In England, within the last ten years, very large additions have been made
to the provisions, which were before very generous, for free public instruction of
workmen in drawing. Your petitioners are assured that boys and girls, by the time
they are sixteen years of age, acquire great proficiency in mechanical drawing and
in other arts of design.
We are also assured that men and women who have been long engaged in
the processes of manufacture, learn readily and with pleasure, enough of the arts
of design to assist them materially in their work.
30
For such reasons we ask that the Board of Education may be directed to
report, in detail, to the next general court, some definite plan for introducing
schools for drawing, or instruction in drawing, free to all men, women and
children, in all towns of the Commonwealth of more than five thousand
inhabitants.
And your petitioners will ever pray.
Jacob Bigelow
John Amory Lowell
J. Thos. Stevenson E.B. Bigelow
William A. Burke
Francis C. Lowell
James Lawrence
John H. Clifford
Edw. E. Hale
Wm. Gray
Theodore Lyman
F.H. Peabody
Jordan, Marsh & Co. A.A. Lawrence & Co.
(p. 74)
The result of the petition was the passing of the act requiring towns of more than
5000 to have a drawing program in the public schools. This was to have a great affect on
Milton Bradley’s company through the marketing of art supplies and materials for the
classroom.
Industrial Drawing
The industrial revolution changed the way art instruction took place in schools.
American manufactures, attempting to compete with European counterparts, pressed
educators for a more comprehensive drawing curriculum geared to the needs of business.
Efland (1990) observed that, “ the introduction of drawing was an attempt to enable the
populace to capitalize upon the advantages of the Industrial Revolution, much as Europe
had done generations before” (p. 93). Wygant (1993) noted that industrial drawing was
sharply delineated from fine art drawing.
Walter Smith, State Instructor of Drawing for Massachusetts, discussed his
definition of industrial drawing in a series of lectures he gave at the Lowell Institute in
1872. Smith described industrial drawing as an “important element in the trades and
manufactures” and distanced industrial drawing from “the more ornamental or
professional branches of art” (Efland, 1990, p. 101). Pictorial drawing, in the industrial
drawing curriculum, was completely eliminated. Children learning under the industrial
drawing system were exposed to lines, shapes and geometric forms in the elementary
grade. Students were expected to follow the instructors’ step-by-step instructions.
Children in the upper grades progressed from simple shapes to historic ornament and
botanical forms. Perspective, light and shade were introduced in high school and color
was used sparingly. The emphasis of any industrial drawing program was the training of
students in the fundamentals of industrial design. Industrial drawing was taught
primarily to working class children as a prelude to work. Classroom teachers were
trained to teach the fundamentals of industrial drawing to their students starting in the
1870’s.
31
Picture Study
Although industrial drawing was highly touted at the Philadelphia Exposition of
1876, its influence on the public school curriculum waned throughout the 1880’s. A new
drawing curriculum, called picture study, was taking the place of industrial drawing in
many public schools. Efland (1990) noted that the movement was started as a way to
decorate schoolrooms with reproductions of artworks and as a way to promote artistic
culture. Picture study, according to Wygant (1993), was closely aligned with the
development of aesthetic education. William T. Harris, the U.S. commissioner of
education, was a strong supporter of aesthetic education. Aesthetic education included
the study of art history, with an emphasis on the Greeks. It stressed the moralistic aspects
of art through the study of photographic reproductions. This study of art through pictures
became known as picture study.
Picture study changed the way art was taught in the public schools. While
industrial drawing emphasized the learning of a set of skills, picture study allowed
students to represent objects in a more individualized way. Children were encouraged to
express themselves more in picture study than at any other time in school art history.
Amburgy (1990) observed “like others who promoted schoolroom decoration and picture
study around the turn of the century, they [educators] believed the value of art lay in its
moral influence on people’s lives” (p. 105). Efland (1990) also noted that, “American art
educators of that period were anxious to connect art study with the acquisition of
American virtues, especially for the children of immigrants” (p. 146).
Picture study also encouraged the use of different media. The Fröebelian system
used in kindergarten classrooms was especially suited to this type of study. Early school
supply businesses such as those run by Milton Bradley and Louis Prang, brought the
supplies and materials needed to stock this new study available to educators across the
country.
Art Texts and Instruction Manuals
As more and more states added drawing instructors the need for drawing
instruction materials became more evident. Stankiewicz (1986) wrote that the drawing
manuals printed between 1820 and 1860 were written by American artists and featured
primarily landscapes. These manuals were intended for home use and were geared
toward artists and offered simple rules of drawing. Texts intended for use in public
schools included William N. Bartholomew’s series, which was required in the Boston
grammar schools in 1870 and the drawing texts of Walter Smith. Smith’s American
Textbooks of Art Education featured drawing instruction more akin to industrial drawing
than to the traditional art texts written by artists. Additional texts were written by the
Prang Educational Company.
Wygant (1993) noted that school drawing usually began with lines and then
progressed to geometrical shapes, common objects and basic geometric forms. Some
workbooks had children copy sketches of landscapes and the use of “historic ornament”
(architectural forms) was prevalent after the mid-1800’s. Drawings during this period
were often flat, shading was not encouraged and color was nonexistent. Color would not
32
be introduced into the drawing curriculum until after the Civil War. The Milton Bradley
Company published a large number of books by educators on a wide variety of subjects
including: clay modeling, knife work, paper and scissors, mother stories, raffia and reed
weaving, and color (Milton Bradley Company advertisement).
Leisure
Advances in technology and industry also affected the way in which people used
their leisure time. Cross (1990) noted that the emerging middle class tended to view
work as a barrier against sloth and indulgence. This view incorporated the prevailing
Puritan ideal of leisure with an instructional quality. Daniels (1995) noted that, “Puritans
believed that the ideal leisure activity was both productive and pleasurable,”
(p. xiv). Most Puritan families banned dice, cards and smoking as time wasters.
Leisure, according to most Puritans included moderate exercise and singing. The rise of
choral singing groups in the nineteenth century was due in part to that Puritan tradition.
The traditions of the Puritan family were still felt heavily in early nineteenth century New
England. Paradoxically, Cross (1990) noted, middle class entrepreneurs during the
nineteenth century produced more new forms of leisure than any previous century.
Industrialization changed the way in which leisure was measured. The time clock
and the factory helped enforce the separation between work-time and family-time (Cross,
1990). Family-time became more associated with leisure and separated from the work
environment. This division of work and family-time also influenced the role of women
in the home. Cross (1990) noted that, “women became the focal point for new domestic
leisure built around “togetherness” and gentility rather than the traditional and often
rough community pleasures of peasant society,” (p. 63). Family leisure became in many
ways the dominion of women.
Many women attempted to shape their children’s playtime through the use of
educational toys and games during this period. Cross (1990) noted that games like
checkers and chess were advocated for their ability to engage the mind. Children played
games that reinforced Protestant moral themes, such as Pilgrim’s Progress and The
Mansion of Happiness. Books read by children during this time also reinforced the moral
themes of the time. Publishers capitalized on this trend by publishing books and
magazines specifically for children.
Adults of the period showed an increased interest in recreational activities such as
music, vaudeville, theatre and dance in the latter portions of the nineteenth century
(Kraus, 1984). Commercial amusements including dance halls, bowling alleys and
amusement parks offered a diversion from work for the average person. Cross (1990)
noted that as wealth and technology increased, so did a taste for novelty. New games and
amusements became popular as the century wore on and businessmen such as Milton
Bradley, George Parker and the McLoughlin brothers capitalized on that interest.
33
Boardgames
Andrews (1972) observed that, “the board game, which means exactly what it
says, as game played on a board, while a peculiarly American pastime, is as old as the
written history of man” (p. 64). Among the first boardgames discovered were
backgammon and chess, but boardgames are present in almost every country throughout
the centuries. In the nineteenth century, the boardgames created reflected the larger
society and as Andrews (1972) noted, both their hopes and prejudices. The morality of
the times dictated the tenor and scope of boardgames; most often boardgames were
expected to have some instructional value. Ball (1976) noted that instructional games
usually educate and entertain. The purposes, he notes, are not mutually exclusive. Most
games offer a combination of both instruction and entertainment.
Games such as The Mansion of Happiness, the first boardgame created in the
United States by Anne Abbot in 1843, and The Checkered Game of Life, created by
Milton Bradley in 1860 emphasized a strongly moral theme. Both games used an eightsided wooden top called a teetotum instead of dice; dice being strongly associated with
cards, and thereby, sin (Andrews, 1972, “Games New Yorkers Play,”1985). Andrews
(1972) explained, “games for the whole family were acceptable as long as they taught
moral or ethical lessons…family play became almost an extension of the children’s
Biblical instruction—for an aversion to what seemed like mindless fun persisted” (p. 66).
As the nineteenth century ended, however, there was a change in the boardgames
being produced and marketed in the United States. Many American gamemakers were
creating games that reflected the more relaxed, carefree society of the 1890’s.
Boardgames celebrating banking, automobiles, sports and national celebrities were all
created in the late 1800’s and were wildly popular. Daniels (1995) concurred, noting that
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, games emphasizing money were
popular. New games, such as Mah Jongg, became instant fads throughout the country
(“Games New Yorkers Play,” 1985). Manufacturers, noted Andrews (1972), such as
George Parker, sold thousands of Mah Jongg sets before the craze wound down.
Boardgames were and still are the backbone of the game industry. The Milton
Bradley Company, like many other game manufacturers of the day, made several fortunes
marketing boardgames to the general public. New editions of older games such as The
Game of Life and Monopoly still exist today and are enjoyed by a new generation of
players.
34
CHAPTER 3: MILTON BRADLEY’S LIFE AND WORK
This chapter explores the life and work of Milton Bradley. Beginning with his
education, including his public school and college experiences and continuing through
the end of his professional life, this chapter details the professional and personal business
decisions of the entrepreneur. Included in this chapter are sections dealing with the birth
of his business, his introduction to the kindergarten, his meeting with Elizabeth Peabody,
the beginning of his trade in kindergarten supplies and materials, and his interest in color
theory. The sum of these sections is a representation of Milton Bradley in the context of
his life and times.
Educational Beginnings
Milton Bradley’s early educational experiences were heavily influenced by his
parents, Lewis and Fannie. Shea (1960) recounted one of Bradley’s earliest experiences:
He [Milton] was six years old and writhing over the meaningless abstraction of
first grade numerals one evening when Lewis Bradley came from the kitchen with
six red apples which he placed on the table in front of Milton. Count them, he
told his son. Milton could count to six all right; what puzzled him was why four
and two should make six, as his teacher had stated. Lewis Bradley removed two
apples from the table and told Milton to count the remainder. Then he put back
the two apples and told him to count again. Suddenly the abstract mystery was
solved for him. A numeral was merely a symbol for things. (p. 27)
While the use of manipulatives is nothing new in today’s math lessons, their
effect on six-year old Milton Bradley was unforgettable. Shea (1960) noted that the
association between the use of manipulatives and learning was to form the cornerstone of
Bradley’s educational philosophy. This association would have greater importance when
Bradley was introduced to the gifts and occupations of the German educator Frederic
Fröebel in the 1860’s.
Shea (1960) wrote that the idea that pleasure should accompany learning was also
fostered in the Bradley household. Milton and his father played both chess and checkers;
games which were based on mental skill, rather than playing cards which required only
chance. The unique combination of play and learning would be a recurring theme in the
products and materials later produced by the Milton Bradley Company.
The Springfield Homestead (1911) noted that Milton Bradley’s family moved
often when he was a child. Lewis Bradley, Milton Bradley’s father, moved the family to
Mercer, Maine, when Bradley was two and a few years later to Wilton, New Hampshire,
where the elder Bradley opened a potato starch mill. When his crops were ruined by
35
potato rot in 1845, Lewis Bradley moved the family to Mt. Vernon, Maine, then on to
Smithfield, Maine, in 1846 and finally to Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1847. In Lowell,
Lewis Bradley secured work in the textile mills. Milton Bradley was at this time eleven
years old (“Milton Bradley Dies,” 1911).
Milton Bradley entered the Lowell Public School System in 1847 and graduated
from Lowell High School when he was fifteen years old (“Death of Milton Bradley,”
1911). Reports from the time note that during his time at Lowell High School Bradley
was interested in mathematics, particularly geometry. Bradley also became interested in
freehand drawing and general art studies but such instruction was not available at the
school (“Milton Bradley Dies,” 1911).
The 23rd Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lowell,
Massachusetts (1848) indicated that the courses Bradley would have taken at Lowell
High School included Greek and Latin, reading, spelling, geography, English grammar
and parsing, natural philosophy, astronomy, physiology (physical education), useful arts
(manual training) and history. 1848, Bradley’s second year in the high school, saw the
addition of vocal music. The 23rd Annual Report (1848) noted that “The committee
believe that, in general, the knowledge of music which has been acquired and that the
improvement in singing which has been made in our Schools, are quite as great as the
amount of instruction would lead us to expect” (p. 11). Students took two, half-hour
lessons in music per week, with instructor I.N. Metcalf. Drawing was not included as
part of the general high school curriculum during the time Milton Bradley attended
Lowell High School.
Following his graduation from Lowell High School, Bradley took a job at the
office of Oliver Cushing, a local mechanical engineer and patent agent. During his time
in Mr. Cushing’s office, Bradley learned the elements of drafting. Bradley’s quick
progress in the area of drafting encouraged him to further his education in that area. He
decided to enroll in the two-year course in engineering at the Lawrence Scientific School,
now part of Harvard University (“Death of Milton Bradley,” 1911).
In order to pay for the two-year course Bradley sold stationary supplies to the
girls in the mills. Bradley (1910) writes of this period:
I established a stationary trade by peddling paper, envelopes, pens, ink, wafers,
etc. through the boardinghouses of the corporations. As a certain portion of the
corporations paid off each week, I always selected the days when the girls were
‘flush.’ All the mill girls at that time were intelligent Americans, and in some of
the larger houses there were 50 girls in a tenement. Usually I would find from 10
to 25 assembled around the dining table, sewing or reading or writing letters. I, in
fact, had an established trade which competitors who learned my methods tried in
vain to take from me, as the girls would wait for me. (p. 6)
Bradley’s stationary business allowed him to raise the funds to enroll in the
Lawrence Scientific School in the fall of 1854. In order to save money Bradley roomed
at home and traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, daily to attend school. To earn
additional money, Bradley taught lessons to mechanics working for the Merrimac
Corporation (“Milton Bradley Dies,” 1911). The Catalog of the Officers and Students of
Harvard University for the Academical Year 1854-1855 lists Bradley, Milton, as studying
engineering, and residing in Lowell, Massachusetts. The Catalog of the Officers and
Students for the Academical Year 1855-1856 also lists Milton Bradley as attending the
36
school, studying engineering and geology and residing in Lowell. Additionally, the
Harvard University List of Students of the Lawrence Scientific School 1847-1894 lists
Milton Bradley as a publisher and manufacturer who attended the Lawrence Scientific
School from 1854-1856.
During his tenure at the Lawrence Scientific School Bradley was enrolled in the
engineering program. The course of study, as listed in the 1854 and 1855 catalog,
included:
Surveying, with the use of instruments, and actual operations in the field;
Drawing in all its branches; topographical, outline, shaded, and tinted, including
isometric projections; Analytical geometry and differential and integral calculus;
The principles of Mechanics, and their application to Machinery and Engineering;
Descriptive geometry; the theory of shades, shadows, and perspective; The
application of Descriptive Geometry to masonry and stone-cutting, in the
construction of groined and cloistered arches, domes, & c; [and] The nature and
properties of building materials, and their application to the construction of
railroads, canals, bridges etc. (p. 70)
The catalog also notes that instruction will be given through lectures and blackboard
work, and that a knowledge of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry is required for
admission.2
The skills Bradley acquired at the Scientific School would form the basis of his
future business. Not unusually for the time, Bradley never finished his course in
engineering. Geiger (2000) observed that less than 1% of the male workforce before the
Civil War were college graduates, and that students seeking practical instruction, such as
Milton Bradley, attended irregularly and rarely completed degrees. One and a half years
into his studies in engineering, in the spring of 1856, Bradley’s parents decided to move
to Hartford, Connecticut. Unable to pay for both his studies and his board Milton
Bradley accompanied his parents to Hartford (“Milton Bradley Dies,” 1911).
Birth of a Business
When Bradley arrived in Hartford with his family, he quickly discovered there
were no jobs available in town for a young man with his skills. In June of 1856, he went
to Springfield, Massachusetts in search of work as a draftsman (Springfield Homestead,
May 31, 1911).
Bradley (1910) recounted his arrival in Springfield:
One morning in June I decided I would strike out in search of a job, as I was tired
loafing, and could find nothing that suited me in Hartford; so I took the train for
Springfield… Seeing the smokestack of the old locomotive works and Wason
Car Works on Lyman Street, I followed down that street and entered the
locomotive shop. After some search I found Mr. C. W. Kimball, the
superintendent…. He looked at me inquiringly and asked my business. “Have
you a draftsman?” I asked. “No,” he replied. “Do you want one?” “Yes” “Well,
I’m looking for a job.” He scrutinized me sharply, and inquired: “Are you a
2
Copies of Milton Bradley’s records from the Lawrence Scientific School are located in Appendix B.
37
draftsman?” “I am,” I answered. “Can you draw a locomotive?” “I never have,
but I think I could.” So we went into the drawing room—the worst-looking
drawing room I ever saw!… The looks of things made me homesick, but I was
bound to have a job…. Mr. Kimball engaged me to come to work the next day at
the munificent price of $1.25 per day. (p. 10)
Bradley’s job at Bemis & Co. lasted for two years, until the company was sold to the
Western railroad (“Death of Milton Bradley,” 1911).
The closing of Bemis & Co. in 1858 afforded Bradley the opportunity to open a
business doing mechanical drawing and securing patents, the first such office opened in
Springfield. The office, located on Main Street, was the first site of the Milton Bradley
Company (Milton Bradley Company,
1917). Steck (1992) noted that business
was light, but relief came in the form of
the Viceroy of Egypt. Bradley was
engaged by the Wason Car Works to
render a mechanical drawing of a
railroad car for the Viceroy and to
supervise its construction, reviving both
the Car Works and his own little
business. Upon completion of the
project, Bradley was presented with a
framed lithograph of the railroad car.
Figure 2. Sketch of Viceroy’s Railroad Car, Its
This gift inspired Milton Bradley to
All in the Game, James J. Shea, 1960
learn the skill of lithography and
purchase a printing press, the first press
of its type in western Massachusetts.
Lithography, a process that uses a special crayon to draw on a limestone surface,
which is then inked and printed, would move the Milton Bradley Company away from
patents and toward the world of entertainment (Steck, 1992). Bradley (1910) recounted
his first experience with lithography:
I went to Providence, where George W. Tapley was engaged in the bookbinding
trade and roomed with him where he was boarding. Here I stayed two weeks and
served an apprenticeship in the lithographic business
under an old Scotchman, by permission of his
employers, who wished to sell me a press, and also
through the influence of a ten-dollar bill, which I gave
to the old man personally. I remember just what I paid
him to a dollar. On January 31, 1860, the press was
brought to Springfield and set up in the drawing room
of the car company. (p. 12)
Gagnon (1992) noted that Bradley’s first big project
was a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, made from a photograph
taken by Samuel Bowles following his nomination for
president in 1860. Unfortunately, Lincoln decided to grow a
38
Figure 3. Bradley’s Lincoln
Print, The Milton Bradley Story,
James J. Shea, 1973
beard halfway through his election bid.
Bradley was unable to sell the portraits of
Lincoln without his beard.
While the loss of thousands of
Lincoln lithographs almost forced Bradley
to close his business, he soon rebounded
with an idea for a revolutionary parlor
game called the Checkered Game of Life
Figure 4. The Checkered Game of Life, Its (Milton Bradley Company, 1917). Steck
All in the Game, James J. Shea,
(1992) described the Checkered Game of
1960
Life as a lithographed game board with a
grid of red and white squares. Wooden
counters were moved from one space to another, the moves governed by throwing dice.
The red squares were neutral. The white squares carried clear references to good and
evil, with labels like truth and honor, or disgrace and crime. The object of the game was
to be the first player to reach Happy Old Age and avoid Ruin. This game, the first of
many the Milton Bradley Company would produce, reflected Bradley’s own moral and
religious beliefs. Shea (1960) noted that by 1861 Milton Bradley had sold more than
45,000 copies of his game.
The success Bradley enjoyed with the Checkered Game of Life allowed him to
develop additional games for both entertainment and education. One of the first,
according to Gagnon (1992) was marketed for Civil War soldiers. Games of Soldiers
consisted of miniature versions of several popular games packaged in a small container
designed to fit in a knapsack. Additional patriotic games followed including the Civil
War Panorama and Patriotic Heroes, or Who’s Traitor? With each success the Milton
Bradley Company grew, the result of which was the expansion of the company in 1864.
Rechristened Milton Bradley & Company, Bradley, along with two silent partners J.F.
Tapley and Clark W. Bryan, continued to produce games which profited the company.
This situation would remain unchanged for almost fifteen years. In 1878, J.F. Tapley and
Clark Bryan sold their shares to Bradley and his longtime friend George W. Tapley. In
1884 the company was reorganized, the name was changed to Milton Bradley Company,
with George Tapley as President and Milton Bradley, Treasurer. The company did not
experience another major change until Milton Bradley retired in 1907 (Milton Bradley
Company, 1917).
Introduction to the Kindergarten
While sales of the Checkered Game of Life and other games he produced were
brisk, Milton Bradley simultaneously began to develop his idea of using toys and games
to help children learn (Steck, 1992). Shea (1960) observed that Bradley was always
interested in education and that he often promoted his games as both educational and
entertaining. Bradley (1910) himself noted that “in the games which we introduced we
aimed higher than mere amusement, and very often there were in them elements of
39
instruction which made them of considerable educational value
in a family of children” (p. 28).
Shea (1960) noted that this interest was to be awakened
in earnest through Milton Bradley’s acquaintance with his
neighbor Edward Wiebe. Wiebe, a German immigrant and
music teacher, came to Springfield in 1868. Shortly thereafter,
he began his crusade to have Milton Bradley (1868) publish his
manuscript on kindergarten, entitled The Paradise of
Childhood: A Practical Guide to Kindergarteners. Bradley,
however, claimed that he was not a publisher and at first was
unwilling to undertake the publication of the book.
Figure 5. Paradise of Childhood.
Collection of the Author
Bradley (1910) wrote:
…This neighbor was a German music teacher, named Edward Wiebe. He was a
man of intelligence and he had brought with him from his native land, besides his
musical education, a voluminous manuscript, which he said was a guide to the
kindergarten. He was exceedingly anxious that our firm should publish this book,
and take the responsibility of finding a market for it…. But I resisted the
professor’s persuasions, and refused to be enthused, believing that the institution
would never amount to enough in this country to provide a market for so
expensive a publication. (p. 29)
That sentiment changed when Bradley met Elizabeth Peabody (Shea, 1961).
Elizabeth Peabody and the Kindergarten movement
Peabody, a kindergarten advocate from Boston,
was in Springfield to give one of her kindergarten
lectures, which Bradley attended with his father. Bradley
(1894) said, “Soon after her return from Germany, where
she has spent fifteen months studying kindergarten
methods, it was announced that Miss Peabody would
speak on the subject of the kindergarten…and I, with
many others, went to hear her,
out of curiosity to learn just what this new educational
word really meant” (p. 39). Bradley (1910) also said of
that first introduction:
I cannot recall what it was that brought us the
Figure 6. Elizabeth Peabody,
favor of her visit…. At any rate she was
Its All in the Game,
announced to speak on a certain evening at the
James J. Shea, 1960
Elm Street school house, quite near where I was then
living, and I was there, being accompanied by my
father, who was associated with me in my business; and to that evening’s
awakening I attribute all that I have done for the kindergarten, and all that the
kindergarten has ever done for me. As we walked out from the lecture, my father
said: “Well, Milton, what do you think of it?” “Why,” I replied “it seems to me
that that’s just the way you have brought me up, father.” … Miss Peabody’s talk
40
carried conviction to my mind and heart, because there was something within me
which sprang out to give her words welcome. The fact is, the teaching was not
new. Fröebel’s doctrine is as old as the world. It is something innate in us all, but
Fröebel gave it a name, and he is justly called a philosopher. (p. 30)
Ronda (1999) noted that in Elizabeth Peabody, Milton Bradley found an educator
whose ideas on education, and the value of play, matched his own. Elizabeth Peabody
spent her life advocating causes she felt would improve the human condition. Over the
course of her lifetime, she was at various times an educator, publisher, bookstore owner,
Unitarian, Transcendentalist, and ultimately the champion of the kindergarten.
Ronda (1999) observed that Elizabeth Peabody was introduced to the ideas of
Fröebel and his kindergarten by her friend Margaret Schurz. Remarking on Schurz’s
well-behaved daughter, Peabody was told that she had attended a kindergarten. Peabody
was so intrigued by the idea of the kindergarten she opened the first English-speaking
kindergarten in Boston in 1860. In 1862, she published Report and New Prospectus,
which outlined the day’s activities in a kindergarten. In this booklet, Peabody outlined
her belief that the goal of kindergarten should be “organized play” (p. 9).
Ronda (1999) noted that Peabody was concerned that the system of kindergarten
she and her sister were advocating was not true to Fröebel’s beliefs, so she traveled
abroad in 1867 to learn more about the kindergarten system. While in Germany, Peabody
made the acquaintance of the Baroness Berth von Marnholtz-Bulow, Fröebel’s patron.
She encouraged Peabody to continue her work implementing kindergarten in the United
States using Fröebel’s system.
Upon her return to Boston in December of 1868, Peabody began advocating what
she called the “true kindergarten” which was different from the school she and her sister
Mary had been running. While she still believed that organized play was the fundamental
purpose of the kindergarten, Peabody reduced the academic content of her kindergarten
to one less rigorous. In 1869 she published Plea for Fröebel’s Kindergarten as the First
Grade of Primary Art Education, in which she states that Fröebel’s genius was in
allowing play as the principle means of education. Peabody (1869) asserted:
Fröebel’s Kindergarten is a primary art-school; for it employs the prodigious but
originally blind activity and easily trained hand of childhood, from the age of
three years, in intelligent production of things within the childish sphere of
affection and fancy; giving thereby a harmonious play of heart and mind in
actively educating—without straining the brain—even to the point of developing
invention, while it keeps the temper sweet and joyous with the pleasure of
success… the children produce things and play with each other, from selfforgetful motives of gratitude to parents and affection for their companions, or a
gentle sympathy for the unfortunate. (p. 674)
Lascarides and Hinitz (2000) noted that to help spread the information she had
learned about the kindergarten in Germany, Peabody undertook the publication of the
Kindergarten Messenger, wrote and edited books and articles about the kindergarten,
toured the country and gave speeches on the education of young children, lectured to
kindergarteners in training, corresponded with many leading teachers and tried to get the
city of Boston to add kindergarten to its public school system. It was shortly after
Peabody returned to Boston in 1868, that she began to deliver a series of lectures about
41
the kindergarten to educators around the country and traveled to Springfield to give the
talk on the kindergarten Milton Bradley and his father attended.
Fröebel and the Kindergarten movement
The kindergarten, or ‘child’s garden’, was the creation of Frederic Fröebel, who
in 1837 established the first kindergarten in Blankenburg, Germany (Woodard, 1979).
Fröebel’s system advocated the value of play, self-activity, and social interaction. In The
Education of Man (1826), Fröebel encouraged mothers to “cultivate and foster it [play],”
and fathers to “protect and guard it” because through play a child reveals the future of his
mind (p. 56). Fröebel felt that play was “the highest level of child development.” (p. 83)
Lascarides and Hinitz (2000) noted that Fröebel believed that play helped to develop the
child’s mind and connected the child to the world. They stressed that Fröebel felt that the
whole human being needed to be developed and that that
development must come from activities of the individual.
That activity needed to be in harmony with the child’s nature.
Fröebel termed this activity “self-activity” (p. 96).
Fröebel also advocated the use of concrete materials in the
teaching of basic concepts for children. Woodard (1979)
noted that these materials were divided into three basic
categories: gifts, occupations, and mother plays. Gifts were
materials designed to be
manipulated by the children and included block sets, tablets,
crocheted balls, wooden splints, rings, beans, pebbles and
Figure 7. Second Gift,
shells. Occupations were activities designed to be performed
Milton Bradley
by the children. These activities included embroidery,
catalog, 1913.
drawing, paper folding, cutting, interlacing and working with
clay. Mother plays were a series of songs, stories and games originally designed for
home use, but soon adapted to the kindergarten classroom.
Fröebel designed the gifts so the children could create what he termed “forms of
life,” “forms of beauty,” and “forms of knowledge.” Woodard (1979) explained that
“forms of life” were constructions of various everyday objects, “forms of beauty” were
artistic symmetrical designs, and “forms of knowledge” were activities performed to
demonstrate mathematical properties. Each gift had a series of suggested forms or
patterns, some of the child’s own invention, some on preprinted cards that were separated
into the three different categories. Older children in the classroom often helped the
younger children create the forms. The occupations were designed to help children
express the idea they had explored by using the gifts.
Fröebel’s central theme for the kindergarten used play as a means of instruction
(Woodard, 1979). Fröebel (1826) said about the kindergarten, “It will be an institution
where children instruct and educate themselves and where they develop and integrate all
their abilities through play, which is creative self-activity and spontaneous selfinstruction” (p. 128). The gifts and occupations Fröebel created formed the basis of his
kindergarten instruction.
42
When Elizabeth Peabody came to Springfield to lecture on the kindergarten, she
noted the importance of the gifts and occupations as integral to Fröebel’s method.
Because the gifts were handcrafted and had to be imported from Germany, they were
quite expensive. Following Milton Bradley’s (1868) publication of the Paradise of
Childhood, there was a growing interest in the use of the gifts in the classroom. The
Milton Bradley Company was in an ideal position to produce the gifts and occupations
because of the personal relationships Milton Bradley had with both Elizabeth Peabody
and Edward Wiebe.
Production of Kindergarten Supplies and Materials
The Paradise of Childhood, written by Edward Wiebe and published by the
Milton Bradley Company in 1868, received honorable mention at the Philadelphia
Exposition of 1876, as the first illustrated guide to the kindergarten ever published in the
English language (Milton Bradley, preface to the Paradise of Childhood, 2nd edition).
That fact, coupled with Elizabeth Peabody’s unceasing enthusiasm for the kindergarten,
helped Milton Bradley make the decision to start production of kindergarten supplies and
materials. Bradley (1910) said:
The appearance of this book [Paradise of Childhood] and the work of Miss
Peabody soon began to create a limited demand for the kindergarten gifts and
other material, and probably there was no place in the country better fitted to
begin the manufacturing of such goods than our Springfield factory. Miss
Peabody and Professor Wiebe gave their advice freely, and we had the advantage,
also, of the models which they had brought from Germany. My own training in
mathematics and in mechanical and civil engineering enabled me the more easily
to adapt machinery and develop processes of manufacture. Any new tools and
machines had to be invented specially for the work, for the articles to be turned
out were of such a character that the like of them had never before been seen in an
American workshop. (p. 32)
Bradley (1894) also said of this period:
…Miss Peabody was my faithful guide and critic in every move made in the
preparation of the material, and in many subsequent talks she gave me great
encouragement to persevere, when there was little or no demand for the material,
always assuring me that the good time could not be much longer delayed when
the kindergarten would be generally accepted and adopted here in America…. I
am very thankful that before her spirit took its flight…she had the joy of realizing
that her labor of love had already yielded abundant fruit, with the promise of rapid
increase in the future, although this fruition came many years later than she
anticipated in the days of which I speak. (p. 40)
The expansion of the company into the realm of kindergarten teaching aids
proved expensive for the company, since the design of many new machines was
necessary for production to begin. A small booklet, The Little Acorn and the Great Oak,
published by the Milton Bradley Company in 1917, stated that “as there was no source
43
from which the materials demanded by this book [The Paradise of Childhood] could be
obtained, Milton Bradley & Company decided to make them. Owing to the limited
demand and high manufacturing cost, this part of the business was carried on a financial
loss for several years” (p. 4). Bradley (1894) said, “she [Miss Peabody] insisted that in
the preparation of the material, everything should be carefully and accurately made,
because nothing could be too good for the kindergarten” (p. 40). Patty Smith Hill, an
important kindergartener of the day explained, “He [Milton Bradley] was interested in the
idealistic philosophy underlying the kindergarten in the early days, and when he went
into the manufacture of materials he did so knowing that financially there would be no
returns for a long time. In other words, his motives were not in any sense commercial;
they were educational” (Bailey, 1932, p. 44).
Shea (1960) explained further:
I would like to stress that under this method supplementary education material
was made available for pupils’ use for the first time. Milton Bradley agreed to
manufacture these products in spite of the fact that for years they proved to be a
non-profitable part of his business. But because of his great belief in the need for
such aids, Mr. Bradley continued to manufacture these items. (p. 11)
Hewes (1990) delineated the various supplies produced by the Milton Bradley
Company including colored papers, crayons, watercolor paints, sewing and parquetry
supplies, tablets, and paper cutters. Paper cutters were, at that time, a new invention.
The Milton Bradley Company (1917) noted that, “in 1881 Milton Bradley manufactured,
to order, for a New Haven printer, a device for cutting single sheets of paper or
cardboard. This proved so popular that other sizes and styles were added, and from these
beginnings a valuable and profitable line of card and paper cutters has been developed”
(p. 18). By the time the 1913 catalog was published, the company was producing five
different paper cutters: the imperial cutter, the crown cutter, the popular, the monarch and
the studio cutter. The imperial
cutter was advertised as “a new instrument with 18-inch knife, ruled table, and self-lifting
spring attachment that keeps the handle at any desired height, ready to use, and prevents
accidental falling” (Milton Bradley Company catalog, 1913, p. 80).
The Milton Bradley Company, in fact,
manufactured everything one would need to stock
a kindergarten classroom, right down to the
furniture. They also
made an effort to
eliminate the more
poisonous ingredients
in their art supplies, a
precursor to the nontoxic supplies we use
today. Bradley’s
Figures 8/9. Milton Bradley Company Paper Cutters, The Little
support of both
Acorn and the Great Oak, Milton Bradley Company,
kindergarten and safe
1917
materials for the
teaching of art to students helped the kindergarten movement gain acceptance in general
society.
44
Henry Turner Bailey (1910), State Supervisor of Drawing for Massachusetts in
the late 1800’s, recalled his first meeting with Milton Bradley in 1887, in which he said,
I found Milton Bradley so rich in practical knowledge that in my diary I wrote
him down as a Solon. I found in him such a fire of enthusiasm that my own
seemed cold beside it…. To Milton Bradley more than to any other man is due
the success of the kindergarten in the United States, for he spent a fortune in
perfecting and distributing the materials required, before the existence of any
widespread demand for them. By the excellence of his work and his enthusiasm
he helped create the demand. (p. 43)
Emilie Poulsson (1911), a kindergartener and editor of Kindergarten Review,
observed that:
He [Milton Bradley] could speak and write for the cause, but his best expression
of his understanding and faith was through his careful manufacture of the
Fröebelian playthings. Kindergarteners who had dealings with Mr. Bradley not
only found business relations with him pleasant but held him in friendly esteem
on account of his kind, genial ways, his originality and humor, and his real belief
in the kindergarten. (p. 64)
In addition to the kindergarten supplies and materials the company provided, the
company began publishing a series of books designed to help the kindergartener teach the
various aspects of Fröebel’s vision following the publication of Paradise of Childhood
(1868). Between 1860 and 1910, the Milton Bradley Company published over forty-four
books concerning different aspects of the kindergarten curriculum (Oakes, 1975). A
review of these books, written mostly by kindergarteners themselves, would reveal titles
such as Memoir of Friedrich August Fröebel by Henry Barnard (1870), Kindergarten
Papers by Angeline Brooks (1894), In the Child’s World by Emilie Poulsson (1897), and
Hand Work for Kindergartens and Primary Schools by Jane L. Hoxie (1911). Books
such as these helped the kindergarten movement spread throughout the country and
represented the same strong moral and philosophical background espoused by Milton
Bradley himself. Ella Elder (1911), a kindergartener, has said of her experiences with
Milton Bradley:
For several years it was my custom to go two or three times a year to the factory
of the Milton Bradley Co., either to order supplies or to learn what was new in
kindergarten material and literature. On those occasions, if Mr. Bradley was in
his office, it was often my good fortune to have a little conversation with him.
Always genial, always ready to communicate of his best, I owe to him many
illuminating and helpful suggestions. (p. 64)
Bradley also purchased, in 1888, a small magazine based in Buffalo, New York,
called the Kindergarten News, which was then edited by William Blake, head of Milton
Bradley’s publications department (Shea, 1960). The name of the magazine was later
changed to Kindergarten Review. Emilie and Laura Poulsson, sisters, authors, and
kindergarten teachers, edited the magazine. The magazine was “devoted to educational
literature and kindergarten news” (Kindergarten Review, 1905). A partial list of contents
from the May 1905, issue shows topics such as: Universal Education in Japan, Work in a
Japanese Kindergarten at Hiroshima, and A Kindergarten Creed. These publications,
and many more like them, show Bradley’s dedication to both the kindergarten movement
and its teachers.
45
Progressive era changes in Kindergarten
Cuban (1992) observed that the Fröebelian kindergarten curriculum had a heavy
emphasis on teacher direction, a prescribed order of introduction balls and blocks,
colored papers and scissors, songs and games, the occupations of drawing, weaving and
pea work changed throughout the latter portions of the nineteenth century as school
systems placed more and more pressure on kindergarten teachers to align their curriculum
with the primary grades. Cuban (1992) noted, “the press toward institutionalization and
increased professional status through more training from those who themselves
questioned the Fröebelian orthodoxy probably encouraged many teachers to depart from
published manuals” (p. 184).
The result of these pressures was a realignment of the traditional Fröebelian
materials and concepts with the pragmatic and behavioristic approaches recommended by
educators and psychologists such as Hall, Thorndike and Dewey. Traditional or
conservative kindergarteners, such as Elizabeth Peabody and Susan Blow, who wanted to
maintain the original Fröebel curriculum were soon replaced with more progressive or
liberal kindergarteners, such as Patty Smith Hill, was saw the merit of using the
Fröebelian materials and processes but who wished to adapt those processes to the
American setting and the emerging research on child development (Cuban, 1992).
Milton Bradley, who was trained by Elizabeth Peabody in the traditional manor,
nonetheless, both dealt with and supported the efforts of more liberal kindergarteners
through the production of materials designed to fit into with the new curricular changes.
Color Theory and its Place in the Classroom
Since many of the kindergarten occupations called for the use of colored paper,
Milton Bradley decided to develop a standard set of colors from which colored paper,
watercolors and crayons could be produced. Bradley (1893) observed that:
As soon as he began to manufacture kindergarten material, nearly twenty-five
years ago, the writer [Bradley] faced the difficulties in the way of clear
understanding of color and any attempt to teach the essential facts about it. He
found it impossible in buying colored papers from the paper mills or warehouses
to match the lots previously purchased with any degree of satisfaction or to insure
his customers that any color he furnished them could be duplicated. There were
no generally accepted standards of color and every man set up standards to suit
himself, if it ever occurred to him that any were necessary. (p. 4)
Bradley (1893) observed that in order to both expedite the production of colored
paper and create an easily reproducible system of color, he undertook a series of
experiments designed to create a set of six standard colors. Bradley decided that his
system of color should be based on the color spectrum as discovered by Sir Isaac
Newton. Newton designated the spectrum as having seven colors: red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo and violet. Bradley felt that indigo was so similar to blue it was not
recognized by a majority of people, therefore it should be excluded from his standard
colors, leaving the six standard colors seen today.
46
The Standard Colors
By setting the six standards as red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, Bradley
was distancing himself from the prevailing theory of the day. Sir David Brewster’s color
theory stemmed from the belief that the spectrum was made of three overlapping colors:
red, yellow and blue (Bradley, 1893). Bradley (1893) himself described the Brewster
system by saying, “the whole of this theory is practically embraced in the statement that
there are three primary colors, red, yellow and blue; that by the mixtures of these three
primaries the secondary colors, orange, green and violet, may be produced, and then
again the secondaries may be combined in pairs to form the tertiaries, citrine, russet and
olive” (p. 6).
Bradley (1893) experimented with Brewster’s theory, commenting, “It is true that
in pigments a dull green can be made form the standard blue and yellow, and from a
greenish blue, as Prussian blue, and from a greenish yellow a very fair green can be
secured, but in neither case does the result approach the standard green, which has been
adopted as the best imitation of the spectrum green” (p. 13). Bradley (1893) based his
belief that there should be six standard colors, instead of Brewster’s three primary colors
and three secondary colors, on the fact that each color has a distinct wavelength, red
having the longest wavelength, violet the shortest.
Bradley (1910) observed that:
With the aid of a small company of scientists and teachers, six definite locations
in the solar spectrum have been selected, and unalterably fixed by their
wavelength, locations which give the best expression of red, orange, yellow,
green, blue and violet. These are called standards, and colored papers are made to
imitate them and their hues, tints and shades. By the use of the Maxwell rotating
disks every color and combination can be exactly named and recorded in
arithmetical terms, and reproduced at pleasure. (p. 33)
J. Clerk Maxwell created the Maxwell rotating disk system, used by Milton
Bradley to recreate the colors he saw in the spectrum in the late 1800’s (Bradley, 1893).
The machine consisted of a rectangular body, attachable to a table, on which was
mounted a round disk. A turn crank on the back of the
machine could rotate the disk. Bradley (1890) stated, “It is
based on the persistence of vision as familiarly seen in the
rapid revolving of the lighted end of a stick forming a
complete circle of light” (p. 52).
Maxwell improved on his basic machine by cutting a slit from
the circumference to the center of the disk, thereby allowing
two or more disks of different colors to be seen at one time.
From this simple machine and a heliostat, an instrument that
contained a mirror and clockwork which would throw a beam
of light into a darkened room creating a spectrum, Milton
Bradley and his
assistants, all local art teachers, noted, and reproduced a wide
range of colors beyond his six standard colors.
Figure 10. Bradley Color Wheel,
Its All in the Game,
James J. Shea, 1960
47
The Colored Papers
Identifying which color wavelengths to select as the most ‘true’ color was part of
turning the six standard colors into colored papers. Bradley (1910) stated:
Having secured the spectrum, the task we have in hand is the comparison of a line
of colored papers to see how they will match the spectrum. For example, having
a number of red papers, we must determine which of them is the nearest match to
the reddest red in the spectrum…. In the case of the red, having first decided by
the mutual consent of a large number of competent judges precisely in which part
of the spectrum the purest or reddest red is located, we must determine whether
any piece of red paper that may enter into the comparison is a more orange red or
a more violet red than the spectrum standard. (p. 48)
Bradley (1893) also noted the desires of his customers to have brightly colored
construction papers when he said:
As much dissatisfaction had been expressed with the paper provided for the
kindergarten, this scheme of color was first applied to the production of a
systematic line of such papers. First the six standards and black and white were
made and then two spectrum colors between each two standards, so as to provide
eighteen spectrum colors, which are considered sufficient for types of all the pure
colors in nature. Lastly two tints and two shades of each were made. (p. 19)
An example of the spectrum colors noted by Bradley in the above passage would
be red-orange and orange-red between standard colors red and orange.3 Additionally,
Bradley produced a line of papers in what he termed the “broken colors” and another in
shades and tints of gray.
Bradley (1893) defined a broken color as “a standard color mixed with black and
white. In still other words, a broken color is a tint of that color in shadow; or again we
may say it is a shade of a tint or a tint of a shade” (p. 22). Bradley himself maintained
that nearly all the colors in nature are broken colors. The line of gray papers contained
warm grays (grays with a little red or orange in it), cool grays (grays with a little blue or
violet in it), neutral grays (gray made from black and white only) and green grays
(Bradley, 1893).
Bradley (1893) noted that the Milton Bradley Company produced two types of
paper for kindergarten classrooms: coated paper and engine colored papers. In coated
papers, a white sheet of paper is covered with a coating of colored pigment. The pigment
is ‘fixed’ to the paper with white gum or glue so that it will stick and form an even,
smooth coating. Engine colored paper, on the other hand, is created by mixing the color
with the paper pulp in a tub called the engine. Engine colored papers had the advantage
of being colored on both sides, making them ideal for folding exercises.
Bailey (1910) recalled:
When I first met Milton Bradley he was beginning his experiments in color. It
was he who first saw the value of colored papers as a means of training the color
sense, and as a means of expression in design, and it was he who spent money
freely, who instructed and watched the papermakers day after day, week after
week, month after month, until they turned out what he wanted. I recall his dark
2.
A further explanation of Milton Bradley’s color definitions and classifications can be found in Appendix
C.
48
room, with its quivering spectrum of glory, ten feet long; I remember the patient
experimenting with the Maxwell disks which resulted in the perfecting of the
color wheel; the long discussion which preceded the classification and definition
of the five harmonies of color. (p. 44)
The idea of color theory so consumed Milton Bradley that between the years 1890
and 1900 he wrote five books on the subject: Color in the School-Room (1890), Color in
the Kindergarten (1893), Elementary Color (1895), The Color Primer (1897), and Water
Colors in the Schoolroom (1900). In each book, Bradley
refined his ideas of color theory and its basic premise that colors
should be based on the spectrum and not artists’ pigments.
Bradley (1900) clarified this idea when he wrote:
The success of the Bradley educational colored papers in the
kindergarten and primary school has been remarkable…The
Bradley standard watercolors, being made in imitation of the six
standard colors of the spectrum, complete the only logical
system of color instruction ever devised…. Finding the same
number of colors, the same name and the same meaning to all
the color terms, they can begin at once to learn how to hand the
material found in the color boxes. (p. 15)
Figure 11. Milton Bradley
Shea (1960) reiterated this idea when he said that many
Co. Crayons,
other
manufacturers
based their own production of paper,
Collection of the
author
crayons and paint on Bradley’s ideas about color theory and that the standard six color
assortment, which Bradley introduced, is still the most widely used.
The Watercolors
Shea (1960) noted that Bradley began the
manufacture of his watercolors by grinding the
pigments with a chemist’s mortar and pestle and
mixing them in an ice cream freezer. The room set
apart for this purpose was six feet square. Complete
samples of Bradley’s watercolor sets were
eventually produced by this method and in the
beginning were accorded a grudging acceptance by
a few educators. Soon, however, orders began to
Figure 12. Bradley Watercolor Set,
come in, some calling for as many as twelve boxes,
Milton Bradley catalog,
which taxed the capacity of the mortar and ice
1910
cream freezer to such an extent that a paint grinder
was installed and the quarters were enlarged. The popularity of Bradley’s watercolors
increased every year after that as more teachers began using his product. The price
Bradley charged for his watercolor sets and the way in which they were produced
allowed teachers to buy his sets in bulk. Companies such as Windsor & Newton also
produced watercolor sets during this period, but they marketed their products more to
artists, which Bradley was marketing primarily to teachers.
49
Promotion and Advertisement
The manufacture of kindergarten supplies and materials was only one part of
Bradley’s business. In order to make the manufacture of such materials economically
viable, the Milton Bradley Company made a real effort to promote its products and
increase production to meet demand. Shea (1960) noted that as the company improved
its promotional activities its profits increased. While the educational department of the
company started as a financial loss, it eventually began to turn a profit. An editorial in
Popular Educator for January 1889 stated that “a good many
primary teachers make a serious mistake in spending almost
unlimited time in working out devices for use in the
schoolroom which can be bought for a song” (p. 8).
Additional ways in which the Milton Bradley Company
promoted its products was through its mail order catalog,
magazine advertisements, branch offices and agents.
Milton Bradley Company catalogs presented to their
customers an accurate representation of all of the products
offered by the company. Each catalog included the
kindergarten materials, school supplies, drawing materials,
standard watercolors and color material, and the educational
Figure 13. Milton Bradley
books published by the company.
Catalog, 1910
Illustrations of the majority of the goods in the catalog helped
customers know what they were buying, as well as detailed descriptions of all of the
products
offered. An example of such a description of Fröebel’s first gift, from a 1913 Milton
Bradley Company catalog stated:
First Gift: consisting of six rubber balls, one and one-half inches in diameter,
covered with a worsted netting; one ball each of the six colors—red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, and violet. A thread of the coverings is attached to each ball
by which to suspend it. (p. 5)
Postage was calculated based on the geographic region of the purchaser and sent
from the nearest agent. One such agent, Thomas Charles, sold goods for the Milton
Bradley Company in Chicago, from 1882 until he retired from the day-to-day business of
his company the Thomas Charles Company. In 1919, Charles wrote a history of his
company’s dealings with the Milton Bradley Company for the Embeco News, the Milton
Bradley Company’s employee newsletter.
Charles (1919) noted:
About the year 1882 Mr. George H. Ireland as representative of Milton Bradley
Company came to Chicago for the purpose of soliciting order for the toys and
games made by that firm…. When Mr. Ireland offered the agency for
kindergarten goods to a friend of mine, this friend refused the agency and told Mr.
50
Ireland that I was the very man to take hold of “that little stuff.” … After
considerable talk on the subject I agreed that he might send me a small selected
lot of kindergarten goods that I might test the market here with them…. I soon
sold out the first shipment and ordered a few other goods, but the prospect was
anything but encouraging. I wrote to Mr. Bradley that I fear we were making a
mistake and thought it best that I should give up the agency to someone else. He
wrote me that he hoped I would continue through the year…. But before the end
of the year I had received sufficient orders to enable me to continue. (p. 2)
Advertisements from the late 1880’s and early 1890’s highlighted the materials
being offered by the Milton Bradley Company in a humorous vein (Shea, 1961). An
October 1889 advertisement showed a man with a knife slicing off the end of his nose.
The title of the ad was “He Cut off his Nose to Spite his Face” and it reads:
This man is a Grammar Master of the old school.
He does not believe in the “New Methods.” He
will not send for our Illustrated Catalog of School
Aids and Material, although if he would mention
that he reads the “Ads” in the POPULAR
EDUCATOR we would mail it to him without
charge. Said a prominent teacher the other day: “I
never dealt with any other firm as prompt and
businesslike in all their methods as Milton Bradley
Co., Springfield, Mass., and their material is
always excellent.” The majority of teachers use it,
and you will surely want some of it this year. Do
not attempt to begin school without our Catalog.
Send 12 cents for our new Number Builder for
desk work in figures. Remember that we shall
soon publish a Manual
Primary Work in Ungraded Schools. (Milton
Bradley Co., Springfield, Massachusetts, October
1889)
A later
advertisement published in
the Springfield Register,
May 28, 1909 invited
customers to see the Springfield anniversary exhibit of the
products of the Milton Bradley Company. The ad invited people
to “come and get acquainted with Springfield goods that are
known the world over.” Other advertisements for the Milton
Bradley Company appeared in the educational journals of the
day including Popular Educator, Teachers’ Institute,
the Springfield Register and the Western New England
Advertiser.
Other forms of promotion and advertisement were also
used by the Milton Bradley Company. Thomas Charles (1919)
Figure 14. Milton Bradley Co. Ads,
Its All in the Game, James J. Shea, 1960
51
Figure 15. Milton Bradley Co. Ad, Its
All in the Game, James J.
Shea, 1960
noted:
I made exhibits of the Bradley goods at all important educational meetings and
thus created a feeling in favor of these goods. I became a member of the
Kindergarten Club of Chicago and was on committees from this club to influence
legislatures of Indiana, Michigan and Illinois to have them pass laws favoring
making kindergarten component parts of the public schools in those states. (p. 3)
Bradley himself spoke before the International Kindergarten Union and was a member of
that organization. Oakes (1975) noted that Bradley, along with Henry Barnard, editor of
the American Journal of Education, were both honorary members of the Connecticut
Valley Kindergarten Association. Bradley (1902) noted in his diary on April 23, 1903:
Will Tapley and I go to Boston tomorrow to attend the meeting of I.K.U. [International
Kindergarten Union] (Oakes, 1975, p. 162). Additionally, Bradley spoke to kindergarten
teachers regularly. Bradley (1902) wrote in his diary on April 18, 1902: Trying to
formulate something to say on color to Miss Twitchell’s class of kindergarteners
tomorrow. On April 21, 1902 he wrote: Miss Twitchell invited Miss Murray and I to
give an outline of the Fröebel movement in this country and I gave a few points in the
early progress of the work. Miss K. had all kindergartners in city assembled to hear talk
(Oakes, 1975, p. 162).
Another way in which the Milton Bradley Company promoted its goods was
through its response to educators’ requests. Bailey (1932) wrote that in a conversation
with Patty Smith Hill, Hill said:
He [Milton Bradley] came all the way to Louisville where I was teaching to see
some experiments that I was making with color with the children in my
kindergarten. At that time he was doing his first experimental work in scales of
color, the standard color with two shades and two tints, and finding out that I was
working out experiments along these lines, he was deeply interested. (p. 44)
Bradley (1902) noted in his diary April 4, “Solon P. Davis, drawing teacher,
Hartford, called and we had a very pleasant chat. Showed him around the shop and gave
him some samples of paint.” On September 15, Bradley noted, “have written to Eveline
Walls, Brush, Colo.… letter in my desk file… Told her we would make her anything she
wants if she will be explicit in her statement of what it is….” On October 27, Bradley
noted, “have a letter from Miss Helen B. Thompson, Mt. Holyoke College, asking for
some thin paper and have sent her the best samples we have to meet her want.” And on
December 5, 1902 Bradley writes, “have a letter from Henry Priest, Dean of St. Lawrence
University, Cauton, N.Y., asking for samples and prints for colored paper. Have sent a
sample book and copied letter written today” (Oakes, 1975, pp. 162-165). These
examples from Bradley’s diary showed his willingness to help teachers in any way
necessary while still promoting his own goods and services.
Lascarides and Hinitz (2000) observed “at the Centennial Exposition (1876),
Bradley exhibited the block to his new American audience. He made strong claims that
his educational materials did not merely entertain, they also educated. He had recognized
that educational supplies were a profitable new aspect of the children’s market. The
kindergarten materials at the Centennial Exposition provided an inexpensive way for
American parents to sample kindergarten education” (p. 248).
52
End of an Era
Milton Bradley retired from active participation in the company’s day-to-day
activities in 1907. The company was reorganized in his absence and a new board of
directors was elected. George W. Tapley remained president of the company, with his
son William taking Bradley’s place as treasurer. The Milton Bradley Company
continued to expand, eventually occupying nine buildings and an entire city block in
Springfield, Massachusetts (Milton Bradley Company, 1917).
The slow departure of Milton Bradley from the company he founded signaled a
turn away in some respects from the passionate espousal of kindergarten advocated by
Bradley himself. Shea (1960) noted that business continued to be good throughout the
early 1900’s, even after Bradley retired, as the company expanded its line of educational
products and games. Milton Bradley died in 1911, and is not widely remembered,
perhaps because of his companies continued interested in educational supplies and
materials after his retirement.
In 1914, the Company purchased the buildings they had been renting for over 30
years and continued to enjoy good profits. World War I brought more success to the
company in the form of an updated version of Games for Soldiers, the production of a toy
machine gun and the Tru-Life Paper Dolls. Prosperity continued for the company
through the post-war years, with a strong profit from the school supplies, particularly
crayons, but the Great Depression of the 1930’s signaled a downward turn for the
company. The state of the production facilities declined and were not updated, as the
business was overextended and had a surplus of
stock. By the early 1940’s, the Milton Bradley
Company was on the brink of bankruptcy.
In 1941, James J. Shea, became acting
president of the Milton Bradley Company and
brokered a series of loans from a number of
banks. These loans were designed to help keep
the company afloat and out of bankruptcy. A
variety of money saving measures were enacted,
including: the installation of time clocks, a
system of continuous employment, and the sale
of all overstock and older games and books.
Figure 16. Big Ben Puzzle, The Milton
Shea (1960) noted that three events helped pull
Bradley story, James J. Shea,
the company out of its financial quagmire, the
1973
first was a contract during World War II to
produce Thompson Machine Guns, the second was the design and production by Shea
and the company of a joint used in the landing gear of certain Air Force planes, the third
was the purchase of over a million dollars worth of games by the Coca Cola Company
which were distributed to the troops. The final action implemented by Shea to assure the
success of the company was the raising of prices on all the materials sold by the
company. By 1945, the Company was again showing a profit and the addition of
53
Scrabble (1938), Chutes and Ladders
(1943), Big Ben Puzzles (1941),
Yahtzee (1956), Candy Land (1960),
Rack-O (1960) and Concentration
(1960) helped profits soar
(http://www.hasbro.com).
In 1962, the Milton Bradley
Company broke ground on a new
plant located in East Longmeadow,
Massachusetts; the plant is still
in use today. The Milton Bradley
Figure 17. Milton Bradley Co. Facilities, East
Longmeadow, Massachusetts, The
Bradley Story, James J. Shea,
Company Milton
continued
to make educational
1973
materials through their education
division that promoted both education
and entertainment through the 1980’s.
In 1984, as part of the sale of the
Figure 18. Milton Bradley Co. Educational Games,
company to Hasbro, the educational
The Milton Bradley Story, James J. Shea,
division was sold. The Milton Bradley
1973
Company still makes games, puzzles and
toys for children. The Hasbro
Corporation acquired the Milton Bradley Company, and its subsidiary, Playskool, Inc. in
September 1984.
54
CHAPTER 4: INTERPRETATION, THEMES AND CONCLUSIONS, AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
This chapter is devoted to interpreting the information presented in Chapters 2
and 3 and evaluating that information in relation to the driving question of this study.
Leading to those conclusions, topics discussed in the interpretation section of this chapter
include Milton Bradley’s relation to the Victorian era, common schooling, moral
education, progressive education, kindergarten, art education and business. The
relationship between Bradley and these contextual areas is explored in the evaluation
section of this chapter. Conclusions are based on the interpretation of the facts presented
and the evaluation of those facts in light of their contextual base and their relevance to art
education. The chapter concludes with implications for further study.
Interpretation of Chapters 2 and 3
Bradley in Relation to the Victorian Era
Milton Bradley was born in 1836, before the Civil War, Industrial Revolution, the
Victorian Era, common school, progressive education or kindergarten. The majority of
modern societal practices had their beginnings in the Victorian era and Milton Bradley
was in a prime position to experience all of those changes (Schlereth, 1990). The
Industrial Revolution changed the way life was lived in the United States. Life was
changing from primarily agrarian pursuits to a more urban, industrial focus. For the first
time in history, we see the white-collar worker, the bureaucrat, and the entrepreneur or
small business owner predominating. Consumerism and marketing increased as wages
increased and people had more spending money. Milton Bradley both participated in and
took advantage of the massive changes going on in the United States in the latter half of
the 1800s as described below.
Immigration and migration. The population of the United States was in a state of
flux during the nineteenth century. Immigrants were moving into the country in record
numbers and within the country, a massive migration was taking place as people moved
from rural to urban to suburban communities throughout the 1800’s (Schlereth, 1991).
Milton Bradley’s family was no exception. The Springfield Homestead (1911) noted that
Milton Bradley’s family moved often when he was a child. During Bradley’s childhood
his family moved five times, finally settling in Lowell, Massachusetts, where Lewis
55
Bradley secured work in the textile mills in 1847 (“Milton Bradley Dies,” 1911). This
pattern of migration to secure better jobs and wages by the Bradley family mimicked the
general migratory patterns taking place in the United States at the time. While part of the
migration taking place was to secure better jobs and wages, another part of that migration
was to increase social standing with the view of joining the growing middle class in the
United States.
Milton Bradley took advantage of the increased money and leisure time that
higher paying jobs afforded workers. Following his graduation from high school,
Bradley sold stationary to female mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts. Bradley (1910)
writes of this period:
I established a stationary trade by peddling paper, envelopes, pens, ink, wafers,
etc. through the boardinghouses of the corporations. As a certain portion of the
corporations paid off each week, I always selected the days when the girls were
‘flush.’ All the mill girls at that time were intelligent Americans, and in some of
the larger houses there were 50 girls in a tenement. (p. 6)
The purpose behind the sale of stationary to the mill workers was to allow him to raise
the funds to enroll in the Lawrence Scientific School, which he did in the fall of 1854.
This anecdote also shows Bradley’s understanding of what people wanted, and helped
establish the sale of those products in way that profited both them and himself. In many
ways, the sale of those stationary products was Bradley’s first taste of entrepreneurship.
The middle class. Milton Bradley rose above his humble beginnings and entered
the middle class primarily as the owner of a small business. Archer and Blau (1993)
noted that the mid-nineteenth century, or early industrial period found the middle class
peopled mostly with small capitalists, who during this period tended to expand their
businesses and therefore ascended into middle class standing. Milton Bradley was no
exception. With the success of the Checkered Game of Life in 1860, Bradley was able to
expand his business to include an increasing number of games and amusements. Archer
and Blau (1993) wrote that, “entrepreneurship also emerged in the late nineteenth century
as the central theme of middle class ideology of success” (p. 10). The success of the
Milton Bradley Company placed its founder, Milton Bradley, firmly on the side of
success and middle class affluence. Much of that success was due to the dissemination of
middle class culture throughout the country.
One of the reasons for the dissemination of middle class values and cultural codes
was the relative geographic and residential stability of the middle class. The result of this
stability was the idea among working class families that the attainment of middle class
status promoted such stability. Milton Bradley would use the growing interest in middle
class culture in the marketing of his games and amusements. Bradley and his company
used elements of popular culture, famous people of the era and fads such as croquet and
mah jongg that appealed to the general public. The games produced by the company,
both then and now, reflect the influence of popular culture and the interests of the middle
class.
56
Bradley in Relation to the Common Schools
Most communities had some form of elementary level schooling by the 1830’s,
although legislation requiring such schooling was not in place at that time. Uniformity,
according to Kaestle (1983), was provided by the strong Protestant content of the
curriculum, by the popularity of certain textbooks and by the traditions prevalent in the
communities themselves. Educators during this period stressed three goals that would
become the hallmark of public schooling: intelligent citizenship, industrious habits and
upright behavior.
The roles of the student and the teacher were well defined in most public school
classrooms during the nineteenth century. Students listened to their teachers, recited
passages from textbooks, worked with classmates and worked at their desks on
assignments. Teachers expected students to be quiet and well behaved. Memorization,
instruction, drill and recitation were the most common learning tools used by students
and teachers during the early to mid-nineteenth century (Finklestein, 1989).
The goals of educational reformers during this period were to increase the number
of days children attended school, to increase the state presence in public schooling and to
provide more uniformity among schools (Cremin, 1964). The goals of the common
school system: moral training, discipline, patriotism, mutual understanding, formal
equality, and cultural assimilation were presented to the public for the first time (Kaestle,
1983).
Milton Bradley attended school at this time of common school reform. Bradley
was eleven years old when he began attending Lowell High School in 1847. The high
school had only been open for two years, echoing the general trend of high schools being
introduced in the mid-nineteenth century. The course of study Bradley took during his
four years at the high school mirrored the interests and morals of the time (Lowell
Historical Society). While the subjects Bradley studied during his time in school would
have provided him with the means to run a successful business, it is the area of moral
education that would have the most profound affect upon the choices Bradley made
concerning his business endeavors.
Common schooling and the push for a more unified school system had a strong
effect on Bradley’s school supply business. Prior to the beginning of the common school
movement, school supplies were produced by the teachers who used them. With the
implementation of a more uniform school setting, textbooks began to be published for the
first time. Bradley would have been exposed to textbooks such as Mr. James A. Russell’s
Arithmetic (nd) and Smith’s First Book in Geometry (nd) during his tenure at Lowell
High School. In the realm of art education, Walter Smith (1872) authored a series of art
teaching textbooks published by the Louis Prang.
The beginning of the public school system and its continuing expansion would
provide Bradley with a platform to introduce his mass produced educational supplies.
Bradley used the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition as a way to introduce American
educators to his products. Lascarides and Hinitz (2000) wrote that, “at the Centennial
Exposition (1876), Bradley exhibited the block to his new American audience. He made
strong claims that his educational materials did not merely entertain, they also educated.
57
He had recognized that educational supplies were a profitable new aspect of the
children’s market. The kindergarten materials at the Centennial Exposition provided an
inexpensive way for American parents to sample kindergarten education” (p. 248).
Bradley in Relation to Moral Education
Moral education was taught in a variety of ways. Though it was not always
religious, Kaestle (1984) noted that religious, political and economic ideas during the
nineteenth-century were overlapping and mutually reinforcing. Kaestle (1983) observed
that moral education was intended primarily to produce obedient children, reduce crime
and discourage vice. This was achieved through a curriculum that placed a strong
emphasis on character, discipline, virtue and good habits.
Milton Bradley grew up in a time of extreme focus on moral attitudes. Moral
education suffused the books, newspapers and periodicals of the time. All of these
sources strove to create a citizenry that had strong moral and ethical beliefs. Bradley,
was influenced by both his family and his schooling. Throughout his life, Bradley was a
churchgoer, often noting in his journals his attendance at church (Oakes, 1975). The
educational materials and games produced by the Milton Bradley Company had the same
strong moral element present in its founder. Bradley (1910) himself noted that “in the
games which we introduced we aimed higher than mere amusement, and very often there
were in them elements of instruction which made them of considerable educational value
in a family of children” (pp.28).
The Checkered Game of Life is a good example of the type of game produced by
the Milton Bradley Company. Steck (1992) described the Checkered Game of Life as a
lithographed game board with a grid of red and white squares. Wooden counters were
moved from one space to another, the moves governed by the spin of a teetotum. A
teetotum is a spinning top with numbers marked on the top of the disk. The red squares
were neutral. The white squares carried clear references to good and evil, with labels like
truth and honor, or disgrace and crime. The object of the game was to be the first player
to reach Happy Old Age and avoid Ruin.
For many years, the Milton Bradley Company refused to produce any game made
on cards or involving dice, as these objects were associated with morally questionable
behavior. That policy changed with the introduction of game called Authors, which
required the player to match a quotation with the person who said it. The Milton Bradley
Company did not, however, print a deck of playing cards until well into the mid-twentieth
century (Shea, 1960). Cross (1990) noted that games like checkers and chess were
advocated for their ability to engage the mind. The traditions of the Puritan family were
still felt heavily in early nineteenth century Protestant New England. Like most families
with a strong Protestant background, the Bradley family banned dice, cards and smoking
as time wasters. Leisure, according to most Protestants, included moderate exercise and
singing. The rise of choral singing groups in the nineteenth century was due in part to
that early Puritan tradition. Children played games that reinforced Protestant moral
themes, such as Pilgrim’s Progress, The Mansion of Happiness and the Checkered Game
of Life.
58
Bradley in Relation to Progressive Education
Progressive education entered the public school system as an offshoot of the
larger progressive era reforms. Cremin (1964) observed that the school during this period
took on the role of the meeting place, public forum, recreation house and civic center, as
well as the home of all formal and informal education during the progressive era. The
school was seen as the most efficient way to introduce large numbers of children to the
broad goals of the progressive movement.
Manual training was one of the ways in which the scientific ideas of the
progressive era were passed on to students. Manual training, with its emphasis on
practical application of scientific method would enter the public school system primarily
through manual training courses in the high schools. The passage of the Smith-Hughes
Act of 1917, which provided federal aid for vocational secondary education was in many
ways the culmination of the work that began in the late nineteenth century with the
beginnings of the progressive education movement.
Another way in which progressive era reforms changed public schooling was in
the area of higher education. Geiger (2000) noted that by the 1850’s three different types
of scientific/technical education had emerged from the idea of manual training: “schools
of science” attached to some of the foremost colleges and universities; colleges of
agriculture; and “polytechnics” devoted to engineering and the mechanic arts (p. 155).
The Lawrence Scientific School, one of the “science schools” discussed by Geiger
(2000), was part of the Harvard University System. Story (2000) noted that Harvard fit
into a network of institutions that defined and perpetuated the mercantile and cultural
aristocracy of eastern Massachusetts. Milton Bradley, who attended the Lawrence
Scientific School, certainly fit into that mercantile class even though he came from more
humble beginnings. Geiger (2000) observed that, “colleges in general offered the
prospect of upward social mobility for large numbers of young men from middling
circumstances,” (p. 4).
Like many young men attending the scientific schools, Bradley had to earn his
own money to pay for tuition. In order to save money Bradley roomed at home and
traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, everyday to attend school. To earn additional
money, Bradley taught lessons to mechanics working for the Merrimac Corporation
(“Milton Bradley Dies,” 1911). Geiger (2000) noted that students often mixed periods of
education with periods of employment. The Scientific Schools and Polytechnic Colleges
of the time served such a clientele and as such developed a flexible program to meet the
needs of their students. Many of the students attending such programs attended school
irregularly and rarely completed their degrees. Geiger (2000) noted, however, that in a
time when less than 1% of the population had a college degree, the completion of a
degree was not necessary to obtain employment.
Milton Bradley was not an exception to the rule; he attended the engineering
program of the Lawrence Scientific School but did not complete his course of education.
When Bradley’s family moved from Lowell, Massachusetts, to Hartford, Connecticut, it
signaled the end of his formal education. Bradley (1910) himself noted, “One morning in
June I decided I would strike out in search of a job, as I was tired loafing, and could find
nothing that suited me in Hartford; so I took the train for Springfield… The looks of
things made me homesick, but I was bound to have a job” (p. 10). The lessons Bradley
59
learned at the Lawrence Scientific School formed the basis on which he first obtained
work with the Wason Car Works and later built a business in the manufacture of toys,
games and educational supplies and materials. Bradley (1910) noted:
My own training in mathematics and in mechanical and civil engineering enable
me the more easily to adapt machinery and develop processes of manufacture.
Any new tools and machines had to be invented specially for the work, for the
articles to be turned out were of such a character that the like of them had never
before been seen in an American workshop. (p. 32)
Without this training it is doubtful Bradley’s business ventures would have been
successful.
Bradley in Relation to Kindergarten
The kindergarten movement, with its emphasis on a “child-centered” approached,
was part of the larger Progressive Education movement. Frederic Fröebel, founder of the
kindergarten, was an important influence on many progressive educators. Chung and
Walsh (2000) observed that Fröebel was one of the first educators to suggest that young
children required special schooling to match their developmental level. Fröebel’s idea of
organized play would have a lasting effect on education through an increased use of
manipulatives as learning tools and in the view that the child is the focus of the
curriculum.
The first English speaking kindergarten was founded by Elizabeth Peabody in
1860. Peabody was influenced by the transcendental philosophy of her mentor Bronson
Alcott. The Transcendental movement, with its themes of creation as fundamentally
spiritual, universal truth and the idea that such truth exists in all people appealed to
Peabody and she incorporated those ideas into her teaching methods in the kindergarten.
Chung and Walsh (2000) noted that Peabody viewed children’s nature as perfect and
innocent and to be protected by moral education in the kindergarten classroom.
Milton Bradley became acquainted with the kindergarten through his neighbor
Edward Wiebe. Wiebe was a music teacher and recent German emigrant who had
brought with him from Germany a manuscript he wrote on kindergarten methods entitled
the Paradise of Childhood: A Practical Guide to the Kindergarten.
Bradley may not have published the manuscript had he not met Elizabeth Peabody
when she came to Springfield to speak on the matter of kindergarten. Peabody, who had
opened the first English-speaking kindergarten in the United States in 1860, had just
returned from a tour of kindergartens in Germany. It was during this period that Milton
Bradley met Elizabeth Peabody, a meeting that changed the course of his business.
Bradley (1910) said of that first introduction:
I cannot recall what it was that brought us the favor of her visit…. At any rate she
was announced to speak on a certain evening at the Elm Street school house, quite
near where I was then living, and I was there, being accompanied by my father,
who was associated with me in my business; and to that evening’s awakening I
attribute all that I have done for the kindergarten, and all that the kindergarten has
ever done for me. (p. 30)
Kindergarten practices began to change during the end of the nineteenth and the
beginning of the twentieth century. Spodek (1981) asserted that although kindergarten
60
maintained such Fröebelian practices as circle time and the use of finger plays,
kindergartens became more reflective of children’s lives at home and in the community
and the methods used reflected changing views on the way children learn and develop.
This change is indicative of the greater changes going on in general education during the
beginning of progressive education. By the end of the 1930’s kindergartens in the United
States were organized around experiences with the social sciences, physical sciences, the
creative arts, and the subjects of reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic (Spodek, 1981).
These ‘progressive’ kindergartens echoed the philosophy of John Dewey and helped
bridge the gap between the kindergartens of Peabody’s day and contemporary
kindergartens.
The Milton Bradley Company changed as a result of Bradley’s association with
Elizabeth Peabody and Edward Wiebe. Bradley opened an educational division with the
intention of marketing the gifts and occupations mentioned in the Paradise of Childhood.
It is an example of Bradley’s strong moral beliefs and his educational training that he
committed his company to the production of teaching materials.
The expansion of the company into the realm of kindergarten teaching aids
proved expensive for the company, since the design of many new machines was
necessary for production to begin. A small booklet, The Little Acorn and the Great Oak,
published by the Milton Bradley Company in 1917, stated that “as there was no source
from which the materials demanded by this book [The Paradise of Childhood] could be
obtained, Milton Bradley & Company decided to make them. Owing to the limited
demand and high manufacturing cost, this part of the business was carried on a financial
loss for several years” (p. 4). Bradley (1910) himself said of this period:
The appearance of this book [Paradise of Childhood] and the work of Miss
Peabody soon began to create a limited demand for the kindergarten gifts and
other material, and probably there was no place in the country better fitted to
begin the manufacturing of such goods than our Springfield factory. Miss
Peabody and Professor Wiebe gave their advice freely, and we had the advantage,
also, of the models which they had brought from Germany. My own training in
mathematics and in mechanical and civil engineering enabled me the more easily
to adapt machinery and develop processes of manufacture. Any new tools and
machines had to be invented specially for the work, for the articles to be turned
out were of such a character that the like of them had never before been seen in an
American workshop. (p. 32)
In fact, Peabody not only gave her advice freely, but criticized the materials being
produced if she felt they were inferior to carry the weight of the association with Fröebel
(Bradley, 1894). This ultimate belief in the rightness of Fröebel’s system may have come
from her Unitarian upbringing. Ronda (1999) observed that Unitarians believe that God
is revealed in the intricacies of the natural world and that the power of human beings is in
their moral sense. Education, then, acts as the balancing of that moral sense with the
more mechanical, non-rational drives. Milton Bradley was heavily influenced by the
beliefs of Elizabeth Peabody. That influence was in part fostered by their mutual strong
moral compass and belief in education.
61
Emilie Poulsson (1911), a kindergarten teacher and editor of Kindergarten
Review, observed that:
He [Milton Bradley] could speak and write for the cause, but his best expression
of his understanding and faith was through his careful manufacture of the
Fröebelian playthings. Kindergarteners who had dealings with Mr. Bradley not
only found business relations with him pleasant but held him in friendly esteem
on account of his kind, genial ways, his originality and humor, and his real belief
in the kindergarten. (p. 64)
Additionally, the Milton Bradley Company published both the Kindergarten
Review, a magazine devoted to the teaching of kindergarten, and a number of books on
the subject of kindergarten. Bradley’s belief in the kindergarten system extended to the
teaching of his own daughters, the first kindergarten students in Springfield. Bradley
himself acted as the first kindergarten teacher, along with his wife and his father
(www.hasbro.com). Additionally, probably as a result of his own experiment with
teaching his daughters, the Milton Bradley Company also supplied all of the art supplies
and materials needed in the classroom of the free kindergartens in Springfield,
Massachusetts. Bradley noted in the preface to the twenty-fifth edition of the Paradise of
Childhood (1896)
The experimental stages of the kindergarten are now passed so far as the proof is
necessary to determine the value to the world of the general truths set forth by
Fröebel. It now remains for the friends of the work to devise the best means for
fully carrying those principles to the masses. They must put forth every effort to
rightly direct those who are to determine the nature of the education which is to
be provided for the children of the coming generation (p. 6)
Progressive changes in kindergarten. Cuban (1992) observed that the
occupations of drawing, weaving and pea work changed throughout the latter portions of
the nineteenth century as school systems placed more and more pressure on kindergarten
teachers to align their curriculum with the primary grades. The result of these pressures
was a realignment of the traditional Fröebelian materials and concepts with the pragmatic
and behavioristic approaches recommended by educators and psychologists such as Hall,
Thorndike and Dewey in the late 1800’s. Traditional or conservative kindergarteners,
such as Elizabeth Peabody and Susan Blow, who wanted to maintain the original Fröebel
curriculum, were soon replaced with more progressive or liberal kindergarteners, such as
Patty Smith Hill. Hill saw the merit of using the Fröebelian materials and processes but
who wished to adapt those processes to the American setting and the emerging research
on child development (Cuban, 1992).
Although Milton Bradley would have been considered a conservative
kindergartener, due to his training by Elizabeth Peabody and Edward Wiebe, he
continued to manufacture to order the many and varied playthings requested by more
progressive teachers around the country. Bradley himself noted in the preface to the
twenty-fifth edition of the Paradise of Childhood (1896):
The editor is, of course, aware that some leading kindergarten training teachers
object to the use of all “guide books’ by either the pupils or teachers of the
system. He believes, however, that they still have their place in the educational
62
world, although they may not be as essential as they were twenty-five years ago.
(p. 6)
Bradley spoke at both the National Education Association meetings and the International
Kindergarten Union meetings on the subject of kindergarten. Bradley did not choose
sides in the kindergarten debate, but supported the work of both liberal and conservative
kindergarteners through the continued production of kindergarten supplies to their
specifications throughout his lifetime.
Bradley in Relation to Art Education
Drawing instruction became the first type of art education to enter the schools and
was approached by many educators in a purely academic manner. William Bentley
Fowle, credited with being the first art instructor in the Boston public schools, began
teaching in a monitorial school in 1821 (Wygant, 1993). Not trained as a drawing
instructor, Fowle used the drawing methods created by Pestalozzi in his classroom.
The Pestalozzi method used exercises in drawings, the division of straight lines,
construction of two and three-dimensional forms, classical architecture, arithmetic and
geometry. In How Gertrude Teaches Her Children, Pestalozzi (1801/1898) observed
that:
The usual course of our art education is to begin with inaccurate observation and
crooked structures; them to pull down and build up again crookedly ten times
over, until at last and late, the feeling of proportion has matured. Then we come,
at last, to that with which we should have begun, measurement. (p. 186)
Rembrant Peale, another early drawing instructor, used a drawing method similar to
Fowle’s method. Efland (1990) noted that drawing instruction during this period was
limited to outline drawing. Exercises involving shading were not generally taught; the
focus of student work was accuracy and neatness. There was little to no emphasis on
personal creativity or original creativity in these systems. Art instruction was seen as a
way of developing the minds of children and was not considered for its own sake.
The Massachusetts Free Instruction in Drawing Act of 1870 is often cited,
according to Smith (1996), as the official start of art education in the American school
system. The act was a direct result of a petition signed by some of Boston’s most
influential business leaders. The result of the petition was the passing of the act requiring
towns of more than 5000 to have a drawing program in the public schools.
Although the act ultimately only applied to towns of 10,000 or more (Efland,
1990), it signaled the beginning of the industrial drawing movement. Walter Smith, State
Instructor of Drawing for Massachusetts described industrial drawing as an “important
element in the trades and manufactures” and distanced industrial drawing from “the more
ornamental or professional branches of art” (Efland, 1990, p. 101).
The purpose of industrial drawing was sharply delineated from fine art drawing.
Industrial drawing systems used lines, shapes and geometric forms in the elementary
grade and often drew upon the drawing system advocated by Pestalozzi. The emphasis of
any industrial drawing program was the training of students in the fundamentals of
industrial design. Milton Bradley was an early advocate of manual training and industrial
education. He was an active influence in the establishment of the first manual training
school in Springfield, Massachusetts (Milton Bradley catalog, 1910).
63
Additionally, Bradley published a number of books on the subject of industrial
drawing and manual training including Industrial-Social Education; by W.A. Baldwin
(1903) which is described in the 1910 Milton Bradley Company catalog as, “a book full
of the spirit of the new education. It is sure to appeal to all progressive teachers,
superintendents of schools, and all persons who are interested in social settlement work
and vacation schools” (p. 89). Woodwork in the Common School, by Frederick A.
Hinckley (nd), was described as, “a manual for teachers, bridging the chasm between the
kindergarten and the advanced manual training schools” (p. 90). These books, along with
many others, were marketed in the Milton Bradley Company catalogs, which made them
available to teachers all over the country.
Kindergarten and art education. When Fröebel published his philosophical
treatise The Education of Man (1826), he outlined his goals for the kindergarten. One of
the major ideas stressed in the book is the “principle of activity.” Efland (1990) noted
that, “For Fröebel, then, the essential feature of mind is activity. The mind is not
something that must exist before it can put forth activities. Rather, it is the process of
activities,” (p 121). These activities in the Fröebelian kindergarten system took the form
of “gifts and occupations.” The gifts and occupations were designed by Fröebel to enable
the child to find unity in the diversity of forms and patterns of things. Bradley observed
in his Editors Notes to the twenty-fifth edition of the Paradise of Childhood (1896) that,
“Fröebel in his Gifts of the Kindergarten, does not present anything perfectly new. All
his means of occupation are the result of careful observation of the playful child. But he
has united them in one corresponding whole; he has invented a method…” (p. 242).
Examples of occupations include perforating, sewing on cards, paper cutting and
mounting, braiding, slat weaving, paper folding, pea work and clay modeling. Both the
latter gifts and the occupations have clear associations with art education; an association
that was made clear to the National Education Association by kindergarten advocate
Mary Dana Hicks in 1891 (Efland, 1990). Bradley concurred with her sentiment in the
Editors Notes to the 1896 edition of the Paradise of Childhood when he said, “…no
argument is now necessary to convince progressive teachers that clay modeling should
have a prominent place in primary instruction…modeling in clay is valuable
educationally because it enables us to comprehend and reproduce ideas of form” (p. 271).
Milton Bradley, through his association with Elizabeth Peabody and Edward
Wiebe, was instrumental in the commercial distribution of the gifts and occupations.
Efland (1990) observed that:
Bradley’s commercial catalogs of educational materials were organized in terms
of the gifts. The product specified for each gift was generally presented in
Fröebel’s original form, followed by new products replacing the original that were
often described as “improvements.” The fact that Bradley produced a varied line
of products that deviated from Fröebel’s original versions suggests that he had a
stable market…. Bradley’s company more than likely realized a profit from the
sale of the gifts and occupations, since it continued to sell them for many years
after Bradley’s death. (p.128)
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Bradley noted in the preface to the twenty-fifth edition of the Paradise of Childhood
(1896) that:
To that single evening talk [given by Elizabeth Peabody], given in a school-house
near his home, the editor attributes whatever he has done in the name of
kindergarten in the last twenty-five years, and as an immediate result he yielded to
Mr. Wiebe’s entreaties to publish the manuscript…and also began making the
kindergarten material. (p. 5)
Beginning with the Paradise of Childhood (1868) and continuing through the
early 1900’s, the Milton Bradley Company produced over forty-four books dedicated in
some way to teaching Fröebel’s kindergarten curriculum. A review of these books,
written mostly by kindergarteners themselves, would reveal titles such as Knife Work in
the School Room by George Kilbon (1891), Clay Modeling in the School Room: A
Manual of Instruction in Clay Modeling for the Kindergarten and School based on the
Curved Solids by Nora Smith (1893), Paper and Scissors in the Schoolroom by Emily
Weaver (1893), Story Telling with Scissors by M. Helen Beckwith (1899), Love and Law
in Child Training: A Book for Mothers by Emilie Poulsson (1899) and Industrial-Social
Education by W.A. Baldwin (1903). The Milton Bradley Company also published a
professional periodical for kindergarten teachers entitled Kindergarten News, later
changed to Kindergarten Review.
Color theory. Bradley (1893) wrote in Color in the Kindergarten:
Fröebel made no mistake when he included color as a part of the first material
used in his system of elementary education. The realm of color is universal; it is
the first thing that attracts the child, winning his eye before he pays any attention
to form. A bright color is noticed almost as soon as a peculiar noise. (p. 3)
In the last ten years that Milton Bradley actively worked for his company, he
published five books on color theory. In those books, Bradley advocated a color system
based on the theory postulated by Sir Isaac Newton and furthered by J. Clarke Maxwell
(Shea, 1960). Bradley (1893) stated, “Just why Newton saw and named seven colors
instead of six, introducing indigo between blue and violet, is not altogether clear…it is
now maintained by all who have given the subject careful thought that the six colors
furnish a convenient and sufficient number of standards for all practical purposes,” (pp.
5-6). Bradley produced his six standard colors in order to develop a standard set of
colors from which colored paper, watercolors and crayons could be produced.
Bradley (1893) himself noted, “very little color enters into the Kindergarten Gifts,
except the First. But in the Occupations color has an important place, being represented
in the papers, sticks, thread, silk, worsted, beads, etc.,” (p. 3). The color standards set by
Milton Bradley during his color experiments would be used in the production of paper,
watercolor, and crayons for the Milton Bradley Company.
Hewes (1990) noted that the Milton Bradley Company, in fact, manufactured
everything one would need to stock a kindergarten classroom, right down to the furniture.
An example of one of these manufactured items was the first paper cutter. The Milton
Bradley Company (1917) noted that, “in 1881 Milton Bradley manufactured, to order, for
a New Haven printer, a device for cutting single sheets of paper or cardboard. This
proved so popular that other sizes and styles were added, and from these beginnings a
valuable and profitable line of card and paper cutters has been developed” (p. 18).
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The Milton Bradley Company also made an effort to eliminate the more
poisonous ingredients in their art supplies, a precursor to the non-toxic supplies we use
today. Since Bradley seemed concerned with the welfare of children throughout his
lifetime, it is not surprising to note the effort he made to reduce the toxicity of his
products. Bradley’s support of both kindergarten and safe materials for the teaching of
art to students helped the kindergarten movement gain acceptance in general society.
Bradley also described in his 1902 diary his efforts to help teacher’s requests for
materials manufactured by the company. Bradley (1902) noted:
On September 15, Bradley noted, “have written to Eveline Walls, Brush, Colo.…
letter in my desk file… Told her we would make her anything she wants if she
will be explicit in her statement of what it is….” On October 27, Bradley noted,
“have a letter from Miss Helen B. Thompson, Mr. Holyoke College, asking for
some thin paper and have sent her the best samples we have to meet her want.”
And on December 5, 1902 Bradley writes, “have a letter from Henry Priest, Dean
of St. Lawrence University, Cauton, N.Y., asking for samples and prints for
colored paper. Have sent a sample book and copied letter written today. (Oakes,
1975, pp. 162)
The above examples illustrate that Milton Bradley had an innate ability to
recognize important educational ideas that reflected good moral values. Milton Bradley
was, as a manufacturer and publisher, primarily a facilitator of others social and moral
ideas, as is evidenced by his publication of kindergarten materials and books on the
subject of kindergarten and art education. He introduced his own ideas in his role as
editor of the many books published by his company, in the materials produced by his
company and in the writing of many books on the subject of color theory.
Bradley in Relation to Business
The way in which business was conducted changed rapidly during the Victorian
era due to advances in time, mass production, the U.S. post office, advertising and
promotion (Schlereth, 1991). Cross (1990) noted that the standardization of time allowed
employers to precisely measure time and to intensify the pace of work. Standardization
also affected the work and leisure habits of factory workers. Industrialization changed
the way in which leisure was measured (Cross, 1990).
Standardization of time also affected mass production. Saving time on the
production of each part allowed goods to be produced at lower cost and with more
efficiency, thereby allowing manufacturers of such goods to produce large numbers of
products for sale. The Milton Bradley Company was in an ideal position to benefit from
these labor saving advances in technology. Bradley, with his training in engineering,
invented the machinery necessary to produce the kindergarten materials advocated by
Peabody and Wiebe. Concerning the first production of kindergarten supplies and
materials for the company, Bradley noted that both Peabody and Wiebe offered their
advice. Bradley created the machines necessary to produce the kindergarten gifts and
occupations based on a set of models purchased by Peabody during her visit to Germany.
The creation of those machines allowed Bradley to produce the materials at little
cost, enabling him to sell them at lower prices than other, ultimately turning his
educational division into a huge moneymaker for the company, although it did not start
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out that way. Bradley’s decision to make kindergarten supplies and materials stemmed
from his strong belief in the moral and educational value of the kindergarten (Shea,
1960).
While the creation of specialized machinery allowed the products of the Milton
Bradley Company to be produced more cost and time efficiently, innovations in the U.S.
post office would have a more direct impact on the sales of the company. The post office
introduced several initiatives in the late 1800’s including bulk mail rates, postal money
orders, rural free delivery (RFD), and parcel post (Gustaitis, 1993). In the case of the
Milton Bradley Company, postage was calculated based on the geographic region of the
purchaser and sent from the nearest agent.
The Milton Bradley Company did the majority of its business through mail order
catalogs, a not uncommon practice at the time. Milton Bradley Company catalogs
presented to their customers an accurate representation of all of the products offered by
the company. Each catalog included the kindergarten materials, school supplies, drawing
materials, standard watercolors and color material, and the educational books published
by the company. Without the use of mail-order catalogs and advertising, the Milton
Bradley Company would not have been able to sell their products to teachers all around
the country. Horowitz (1985) observed that advertising became the key to the movement
of mass produced goods throughout the population. The increase in advertisements seen
during this period helped change the way consumers purchased and used goods. As a
result of this increase in advertising, American consumer habits changed during the
period of 1876-1915 (Schlereth, 1991). The result of this was the wide consumption of
goods by consumers. Martin (1993) noted that as more and more people began making
use of the manufactured household goods being produced during this time, the demand
for such products increased.
The Milton Bradley Company took advantage of the increasing role of
advertisements on sales in a variety of ways. Through the use of advertisements extolling
the virtues of Milton Bradley Company products, the company made the public aware of
the goods and services they offered. Company catalogs were available free of charge to
any interested customer through magazines such as Popular Educator and the
Kindergarten Review (Shea, 1960). Customers were invited through advertisements to
view the Springfield manufacturing facility, and in fact, many educators did come to
Springfield to talk in person with Milton Bradley. Bradley (1902) noted in his diary
April 4, “Solon P. Davis, drawing teacher, Hartford called and we had a very pleasant
chat. Showed him around the shop and gave him some samples of paint” (Oakes, 1975).
Additionally, the Milton Bradley Company sent company representatives the
meetings of the National Education Association and the International Kindergarten
Union, as well as the Centennial Exposition. Hewes (1990) observed that, “one way
educators and school supply companies introduced new ideas and products was through
exhibits at the annual meetings of the National Education Association, which included
the kindergarten advocates in its membership” (p. 3). Hewes also noted that during the
late nineteenth century the exhibits at such conventions and expositions were often more
influential than advertisements because of the sheer number of educators, over 5,000 for
the 1884 meeting, attending the conventions.
Lascarides and Hinitz (2000) observed “at the Centennial Exposition (1876),
Bradley exhibited the block to his new American audience. He made strong claims that
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his educational materials did not merely entertain, they also educated. He had recognized
that educational supplies were a profitable new aspect of the children’s market. The
kindergarten materials at the Centennial Exposition provided an inexpensive way for
American parents to sample kindergarten education” (p. 248).
Milton Bradley agent Thomas Charles (1919) noted:
I made exhibits of the Bradley goods at all important educational meetings and
thus created a feeling in favor of these goods. I became a member of the
Kindergarten Club of Chicago and was on committees from this club to influence
legislatures of Indiana, Michigan and Illinois to have them pass laws favoring
making kindergarten component parts of the public schools in those states. (p. 3)
Bradley himself spoke before the International Kindergarten Union and was a
member of that organization. Oakes (1975) noted that Bradley, along with Henry
Barnard, editor of the American Journal of Education, were both honorary members of
the Connecticut Valley Kindergarten Association. Bradley (1902) noted in his diary on
April 23, 1903: Will Tapley and I go to Boston tomorrow to attend the meeting of I.K.U.
[International Kindergarten Union] (Oakes, 1975, p. 162). Milton Bradley made every
effort to accommodate the wishes of teachers while still promoting his goods and
services.
Themes and Conclusions
The guiding question for this study is: What contributions did Milton Bradley
make to education and to art education, and how was that influenced by the
circumstances of his life? The supporting questions are: 1. How did his social
circumstances influence Milton Bradley’s point of view? 2. What educational theories
were prevalent at the end of the 20th century and how did they influence Milton Bradley?
3. Who, in particular, was influential in Milton Bradley’s shaping of his educational
philosophy? 4. How did Milton Bradley become interested in kindergarten? How did
that interest affect both general and art education? 5. What were Milton Bradley’s
theories on education and color theory, and have they had a lasting influence on art
education? In conducting this research, the answers to the supporting questions have in
many ways revealed themselves. What has been discovered, however, is the fact that
many of those answers overlap, as each aspect of Bradley’s life also overlapped the
others. Neat, clean cut categories are almost always impossible to delineate when dealing
with a person’s life, and the life of Milton Bradley is no exception. This section will help
establish two main points: 1) Milton Bradley was a man of his times, and those times
bridged from the Victorian era to the early Progressive era and 2) Bradley’s connection to
contemporary art education. By first addressing the five supporting questions, the
guiding question of this study is answered.
Bradley’s Social Circumstances
How did Milton Bradley’s social circumstances influence his point of view?
While Milton Bradley was schooled during the beginning of the common school
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movement, the majority of his business dealings were set in the early years of the
progressive education movement. Yet, his upbringing strongly influenced his outlook on
education. His association of education and play can be seen in the choices he made in
both the production of boardgames, supplies, and materials that had an educative
element.
Bradley noted in the Editors Notes to the twenty-fifth edition of the Paradise of
Childhood (1896):
In playing, every part should be used, otherwise the material is wasted. The child
should early learn that nothing is isolated and unconnected, nothing without its
purpose and its appointed use… In the whole world of nature nothing develops
without activity, consequently play or the exercising of the child’s activity is the
first means of development of the human mind, the means by which the child is to
become acquainted with the outer world and his own powers of body and mind.
(p. 104, 273)
The strong moral foundation Bradley received from his parents and his schooling, as well
as the mores of the predominant society, can be seen in his avoidance of games that used
anything morally questionable. Rather, he chose to produce games with a strong moral
message.
Influences on Bradley’s Educational Philosophy
Who, in particular, was influential in Milton Bradley’s shaping of his educational
philosophy? What educational theories were prevalent at the turn of the 20th century and
how did they influence Milton Bradley? Milton Bradley was schooled in the common
school era and his educational ideals reflected the moral philosophy of the day. That
philosophy focused on the idea that a strong moral foundation would help produce
students who would become good citizens of the United States. Bradley’s strong moral
compass, fostered in both his home and his schooling, and his belief that play could have
an educational component meshed nicely with the philosophies of Pestalozzi and Fröebel,
who he was introduced to through his acquaintance with Elizabeth Peabody and Edward
Wiebe.
Elizabeth Peabody in particular, was instrumental in helping Bradley shape his
own educational philosophy. Peabody’s strong interest in kindergarten, with its focus on
art and activity-based instruction, would spur Bradley to produce Fröebel’s gifts and
occupations. Her idea that kindergarten was “organized play” was very similar to
Bradley’s own ideas concerning the value of play in educational endeavors. His ideas
were also heavily influenced by his parents, who encouraged him to learn through
educational games such as chess and through the use of manipulatives in the area of
mathematics. Bradley (1896) noted in the Paradise of Childhood that, “By means of the
directed games the surplus energy of the child may be guided, the basis for study laid,
and the foundation principles in chemistry, physics, geometry, construction and design
furnished, thus utilizing his activities for educational purpose,” (p. 273).
What is remarkable to note, however, is that although Bradley is what would be
termed a conservative kindergartener, one schooled in Fröebel’s kindergarten philosophy,
he was willing to both listen to more liberal/progressive kindergarteners and adapt the
gifts and occupations to the American audience. Bradley (1896) observed, “the games
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should reflect the prevailing thought of the day or week or season of the year…let the
games be spontaneous, merely allow and guide the play spirit, keeping the child
unconscious by making the thing he does prominent and not the child,” (p. 274). The
ability to adapt to changing movements in both education, from common schooling to
progressive education, and leisure allowed the Milton Bradley Company to prosper
throughout Bradley’s lifetime.
Bradley’s Connection to Kindergarten and Art Education
How did Milton Bradley become interested in kindergarten? How did that
interest affect both general and art education? Milton Bradley’s contributions to art
education are in many ways tangential to his interest in kindergarten. Bradley’s interest
in kindergarten itself is a connection to art education. Korzenik (2004) noted:
Their [Peabody and Mann] efforts led to the widespread adoption of Fröebel’s
kindergarten “system” for young children. Although not an art system per se, its
emphasis on the use of tangible objects, known as “gifts” and “occupations,” to
enhance the child’s understanding of the conceptual served as one of the first
justifications for bringing art instruction to public schools. Art was said to
cultivate children’s innate ability to observe, reason, express, and understand the
interconnectedness of all things. (p. 11)
As the manufacturer of kindergarten supplies and materials, Milton Bradley was
instrumental in helping spread the kindergarten system. Through the production of the
gifts and occupations, Bradley made available for the first time the means to easily
reproduce Fröebel’s kindergarten system. Working with kindergarteners and the
kindergarten system seemed to be an act of love on the part of Milton Bradley. Bradley
truly believed in the kindergarten system and in its innate ability to educate the young.
Bradley (1896) noted in Paradise of Childhood, “through the gifts the formative and
expressed powers of the child are exercised, his judgment and reason are developed and
he gains a love of all that is beautiful and harmonious,” (p. 106).
Bradley was equally convinced in the value of the drawing system advocated by
Fröebel, although he noted the changing focus of art education. Bradley (1896) noted:
Adopt as much of it [Fröebel’s drawing method] as seems to be of value and then
go on with the more modern methods which have been proved to be desirable,
during the last twenty-five years of progress in art and industrial education…the
kindergarten child should have free access at proper times to the blackboard, or be
furnished with chap paper and pencil for illustrating in his own way the stories
which are told to him…the kindergarten may be the means for developing many
an artist as well as an artisan who would otherwise never show any talent in these
directions. (Paradise of Childhood, Editors Notes, pp. 205)
The link between Pestalozzi, Fröebel and art education is still seen in today’s classrooms.
Tarr (1989) observed that:
Fröebel’s art has never disappeared from the school. It has moved out of the art
class into other curricular areas. It has retained its place as a means of integrating
art into other curriculum areas. It exists in the outline forms which abound on the
mimeographed sheets to color that children receive in primary reading classes and
in arithmetic; and in the precut pumpkins to color, paint or collage, and the folded
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Easter baskets which typify holiday activities in the school. It flourishes in
educational games and crafts such as parquetry blocks and paper weaving, based
on Fröebel’s gifts and occupations…. Fröebel’s art permeates the school and
spills into the world of the infant and young child through adult-guided play and
coloring books supplied with paint and drawing sets. (p. 120)
As a manufacturer of Fröebel’s gifts and occupations, Milton Bradley is part of the
continuum of art education, although his role is primarily tangential. The secondary
nature of Bradley’s contributions to art education stem from the fact that kindergarten
was the motivating factor in his production of colored papers, paints, paper cutters and
other art supplies. Although those products were a benefit to art educators, the primary
purpose of the products was to outfit a kindergarten classroom.
Bradley’s Influence on Art Education and Color Theory
What were Milton Bradley’s theories on education and color theory, and have
they had a lasting influence on art education? Bradley’s connection to the continuum of
art education can be seen in a variety of ways. Many of the standard practices seen today
in the field of art education had their beginnings in the nineteenth century. Art teachers
today order the art supplies for their classrooms through either art supply catalogs or via
art supply company websites. The practice of ordering from mail-order catalogs was
pioneered in the nineteenth century. The Milton Bradley Company marketed its products
primarily through their catalogs. Milton Bradley manufactured items that he believed
had an educational benefit. He took suggestions from educators in order to produce
products that they would purchase and that would be beneficial in the classroom. The
Milton Bradley Company advertised their product and innovations in both art and
education magazines, just as art supply companies do today.
The Milton Bradley Company also promoted their products at the conventions of
the National Education Association and the International Kindergarten Association. We
see that practice still in evidence today at modern conventions of the National Art
Education Association. At these conventions, the Milton Bradley Company would show
their latest innovations, give out samples of their products and hand out copies of their
catalogs to interested educators. This is not so different from what we see today in the
vendors’ hall at the national convention.
The Milton Bradley Company also produced a number of books for teachers.
While these books were not curricular books per se, they certainly contained a number of
lesson ideas for teachers to use with their students. Books about color, knife-work, clay,
paper weaving and parquetry were published by Milton Bradley as a reference for
teachers. These books were often written by educators and focused on practical
suggestions for using a particular medium. While the media-based approach was not
invented by Milton Bradley, he certainly fostered it by publishing books focusing on the
use of media. Books are being published for that same purpose today, and while the
topics of interest may have changed with the times, the idea behind their publication, that
of being a resource for educators, is the same.
In the production of colored papers, watercolors and crayons we can see the
strongest link to contemporary art education practices as those products are still being
produced today. The Milton Bradley Company was one of the first companies, however,
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to try to reduce the toxicity of their products, a forerunner to the non-toxic art supplies we
see today. In addition, Milton Bradley’s interest in color theory has ramifications for
today’s art educators.
Color theory. In order to establish where Milton Bradley’s color theory fits, it is
necessary to review color theory from Newton forward. Sir Isaac Newton was the first
person to explain the rainbow. Ball (2002) noted that in 1665 Newton split a sunbeam
into a spectrum by passing it through a prism. Newton determined that the spectrum had
seven distinct colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Ball (2002)
noted that later color theorists, including Milton Bradley, generally replaced indigo and
violet with just a single hue, either purple or violet.
In 1855, J. Clerk Maxwell observed that the frequency of vibrations passing
through empty space increases from the red to the violet end of the spectrum, thus
determining the perceived color of light. Maxwell showed that three kinds of light—
orange-red, blue-violet, and green can generate almost any color. Maxwell stressed that
color is not about light alone (Ball, 2002).
Milton Bradley’s (1900) color theories built on those of Newton and Maxwell.
Bradley used the prism developed by Newton to identify what he felt were the ‘truest’
versions of the six spectrum colors in pigment. From those ‘true’ versions of the
spectrum colors Bradley developed what he called his ‘standard colors.’ The importance
of the setting of the six standard colors should not be overlooked. Prior to setting his
standard colors, Bradley was at the mercy of his suppliers when it came to colored
papers. Bradley observed that the colors were not the same from lot to lot. He developed
his standard colors to alleviate that problem. Bradley marketed his standard colors in all
of his products, from paper, to crayons, to watercolor sets. Other companies used the
idea of standard colors; in fact, you still see standard colors today in the watercolor sets
of companies such as Crayola, even if those standards are not the exact colors used by
Bradley.
The color theory advocated by Newton, Maxwell and Bradley was used primarily
in the scientific production of art supplies and materials. The color theory taught in most
classrooms was created by American artist Albert Munsell in 1905. The Munsell system
was in direct competition with Bradley’s system. Bradley’s system was marketed
primarily for grammar school and kindergarten teachers who were interested in
incorporating color in their classrooms, while Munsell’s system was marketed for
traditional art teachers.
Since Bradley and Munsell developed their color theory systems there have been
a variety of other color theory systems developed. The Swedish Natural Color System
developed by Tryggve Johansson, Sven Hesselgren and Anders Hård in the 1960’s and
the Quiller color wheel developed by Steven Quiller in the 1980’s, like every color wheel
developed since, owe a debt of gratitude to Newton, who first bent his spectrum colors
into a circle, marrying the red to violet so that the progression of colors would be
continuous (Bell, 2004, www.korins.com/m/ml/, 2005).
All the color theory systems developed throughout the years have both strong and
weak points. Milton Bradley’s color theory is one of many logical systems of color
theory that failed to make the transition to modern day practice. His idea of color
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standards, however, lives on in the paints produced by other companies and in the idea of
using standard colors in the sale of paint and other color materials.
Conclusions
Milton Bradley deserves a place in the continuum of kindergarten and to a lesser
extent art education theory and practice. In attempting to determine what contributions
Milton Bradley made to education during his lifetime and what, if any, affect that had on
art education it was first necessary to establish the circumstances in which he lived.
Milton Bradley straddled the Victorian and Progressive eras and was a product of his
times. He was schooled in the Victorian era in the time of common schools and as such
was imbued with a strong moral foundation. But his business was conducted primarily in
the early progressive era, with its focus on a more child-centered curriculum, and it was
in this arena that he met with his greatest success. Kindergarten, an offshoot of the
progressive era, struck a chord in Milton Bradley, and became a consuming passion for
him for many years.
Bradley’s passion for the kindergarten initially proved unprofitable and
unpractical. His later success in the area of kindergarten was only possible because of his
achievement as a game maker. Milton Bradley was a practical man, schooled in
engineering and interested in drawing. He found a way to indulge his ideas for new
machinery and materials that would be a benefit to fledgling kindergartens around the
country. Bradley’s focus as an inventor and engineer was on the production of materials
and processes necessary to establish a successful kindergarten classroom. Because of
this, he helped usher in a progressive education movement that had a focus on fine art
through his production of papers, paints, crayons and the other materials needed to stock
a kindergarten classroom. Due to the experiential, media-based focus of Fröebel’s
kindergarten system, and Bradley’s faithful reproduction of his gifts and occupations, he
should be seen as an important, but secondary figure in the world of art education. The
secondary nature of his contributions stems from the fact that the materials he created
were designed for the kindergarten first, and art education second.
Bradley helped make educational materials both affordable and readily available
to educators. In his willingness to work with teachers, Bradley helped produce new art
supplies and materials, such as the paper cutter, which would ultimately become an art
room staple. Additionally, Bradley reproduced materials suggested by educators around
the country and those designed by Fröebel himself. Bradley did make improvements to
some of the ideas suggested to him and often marketed several versions of the same
product in his catalogs, but this tends to support the idea that kindergarten was his first
priority, and the comfort level of kindergarten teachers was paramount. It is only in the
area of color theory that we see the imagination and creativity of Milton Bradley himself.
Bradley helped produce a set of six standard colors still seen in paper, crayons, and
watercolor sets today. Bradley (1896) observed that:
When Fröebel prepared his material for the kindergarten, color was for the first
time introduced into a system of elementary instruction disconnected from
drawing and painting, and it is worthy to note that the only system by which
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colors can now be intelligently designated without actual samples was originated
and developed in response to the demands of the kindergarteners of America for
better material…the fact that there is so much color material used in the
kindergarten insures constant attention on the part of the children. (Paradise of
Childhood, Editors Notes, pp. 221,223)
The use of color in the kindergarten is still in evidence today, and in fact, any primary
school in the nation is usually rainbow of different colors. The idea that this was not
always the case is almost unbelievable, but the introduction of the kindergarten into the
American public education system signaled the first time that color became widely
available for students.
In the marketing of his supplies, Bradley again displayed the imagination that
made him a successful businessman. The Milton Bradley Company was one of the first
companies to begin a tradition of marketing their products through mail-order catalogs, a
tradition that has carried down to art supply companies today. While today’s companies
take advantage of innovations such as the internet to market their goods, the mail-order
catalog, with its long history, is still a staple in the art supply market.
Bradley foreshadowed the vendors halls seen today at major educational
conferences by either attending conventions himself or sending a subordinate. The
marketing of innovations at conventions and conferences helped the Milton Bradley
Company make educators around the country aware of their products. Art supply
companies still use this practice today, handing out free samples to educators and
attempting to interest teachers in new products. Bradley differed in one respect however,
and that was his willingness to create a product for a teacher if they simply requested it of
him. If the product proved useful, Bradley would then market it in his catalogs. While
teachers still make suggestions to companies today regarding products of interest the
direct contact possible with Milton Bradley during his time is not often seen. Teachers
were encouraged to stop by the Springfield, Massachusetts plant, and in fact many did, to
visit with Bradley and discuss innovations in educational supplies and materials.
Bradley was also an innovator in his production of art materials with less toxic
ingredients. Bradley helped foster an interest in producing art materials with non-toxic
ingredients. Today the Arts and Creative Materials Institute designates materials as CP
(certified product) or AP (approved product), meaning that they are non-toxic and can be
used with students. These certification are based on the specifications of the Federal
Hazardous Substance Act, which requires schools to use all non-toxic products with
students under twelve years old. The use of non-toxic products that Milton Bradley
helped usher in is now required by law in the public school system.
As both an educator and inventor, Milton Bradley helped usher in a set of
practices in art education that are still seen today. Milton Bradley was truly
representative of his time, a moral man with his eye on the future. And while his
contributions to art education are secondary to his contributions to the kindergarten,
Milton Bradley should be remembered as a man who helped facilitate the entrance of art
into the public school curriculum through his production of art supplies and materials
intended for the kindergarten classroom. Ultimately, Milton Bradley was a practical
businessman with a good moral compass and the ability to recognize important
educational ideas that reflected good moral values.
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This idea was reinforced when I came across a small card tucked into Bradley’s
file at the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum. The small card, undated and
anonymous, read,
Carefully examine every detail of your business. Be prompt in everything. Take
time to consider and then decide quickly. Dare to go forward. Bear trouble
patiently. Be brave in the struggle of life. Maintain your integrity as a sacred
thing. Never tell business lies. Make no useless acquaintances. Never appear
something more than you are not. Pay your debts promptly. Learn how to risk
your money at the right moment. Shun strong liquor. Employ your time well.
Do not reckon upon chance. Be polite to everybody. Never be discouraged.
Then work hard and you will succeed. (Milton Bradley Company, nd)
In this one item, the core beliefs of Milton Bradley become clear. The strong moral tone
of the card suggests that the beliefs of Milton Bradley were passed on to the employees of
the Milton Bradley Company. The choices made by the Milton Bradley Company bear
out this idea.
I am convinced that the contributions Milton Bradley made to the areas of
kindergarten and art education were based on that strong moral code. Bradley’s place in
the chronology of kindergarten and the beginnings of art education should be well
documented and unfortunately, it is not. This seems to be because Bradley’s focus was
primarily on kindergarten philosophy rather than art education, unlike his contemporary
Louis Prang, who worked directly with art education. This study has attempted to
address that lack of documentation by presenting what is known about Milton Bradley,
his primary interest in kindergarten, and the effect that had on art education. This has
entailed a very traditional approach to historical inquiry, what Erikson (1994) refers to a
realistic history. What has been presented in this study are the facts that I have been able
to ascertain given the limited amount of information. The evidence collected and the
conclusions made in this study will be, hopefully, reinforced and made stronger as more
information is discovered.
Areas for Further Study
Since the focus of this paper has been on a very traditional application of
historical inquiry, the application of a variety of other approaches can and will be
undertaken in the future. The research conducted on Milton Bradley has lead to a number
of additional questions. This study focused on Milton Bradley’s contributions to art
education in the context of his time. The information presented in this study has been
what I could gather from a number of other sources, both primary and secondary. The
information available about Milton Bradley comes from a variety of scattered sources,
some of which focus on his business dealings, others with his interest in kindergarten.
Much of what has been done in this study is to present what has been found about Milton
Bradley in a more complete way as to highlight his involvement in both general
education, art education, and business.
Through the use of a contextualist approach with its underlying social
constructivist theory, the information in this study has attempted to place Milton Bradley
75
in his social context and then present the people and circumstances in his life that helped
shape his personal choices regarding business and education. Bradley’s own life is an
example of the social constructivist learning theory, as the information gathered in this
study has shown. Learning through experience is a recurring theme seen in many areas
of Bradley’s life.
My own voice is not as clear in this presentation format, as the focus is meant to
be primarily informative, focusing on information about Milton Bradley, as befits
traditional historical inquiry. This opens up a whole range of additional research that can
help further our understanding of Bradley. Both his positive and negative contributions
to education and business need to explored further and with a greater emphasis on my
own point of view. This emphasis could be explored in a variety of ways which are
detailed below.
Continued research into the existence of Bradley’s letters and diaries could be
extremely helpful in determining his intent regarding the production of some of his
games and educational materials. Dr. Clifton Oakes proved the existence of the diaries
when he was able to make contact with Milton Bradley’s granddaughter in 1975.
Inquiries made by this researcher over the course of the study went unanswered, but
additional study may reveal the current location of the diaries. The acquisition of the
diaries would be extremely useful in ascertaining Bradley’s motives regarding the
production of art supplies and materials. Additionally, having Bradley’s own words
could help further clarify his intentions regarding his business decisions.
Obtaining access to the Hasbro Corporation Archives may prove helpful in
conducting further research into the life of Milton Bradley. Although access to the
archives has been denied to researchers, including myself, an appeal to the president of
the Hasbro Corporation may prove beneficial in conducting additional research. Access
to the archives may ultimately prove not beneficial, but since the scope of the collection
owned by the archives is not known, it is impossible to judge at this point. A recent
conversation with Diana Korzenik (NAEA conference, 2005) has revealed some
strategies that might prove useful in approaching the archivist at the Hasbro Corporation.
Further research could be conducted into the financial affairs of the Milton
Bradley Company. This research could prove helpful in determining the buying and
selling practices of the Company. Additionally, obtaining the financial information from
the Company could help determine the market value of their products and the actual cost
of production. Several sources noted that Milton Bradley ran the educational division of
his company at a loss for many years after its inception. Viewing the Company’s
financial records could help determine the accuracy of those statements. Given that
Bradley was primarily a businessman, it could be extremely telling to know the scope of
his educational division.
Further research into some of Bradley’s business competitors could help establish
a timeline concerning the production of boardgames and educational materials. This
information would be helpful in establishing a more complete contextual picture of the
late nineteenth century and Milton Bradley’s place within that time.
Conceptually, several issues could be explored including the connection between
ideas and materials, how materials facilitate or inhibit ideas and creativity, and the
potential bridging between general education, art and kindergarten through materials.
The important role of manufactured objects and items in constructing curriculum could
76
lead to a whole new line of research focusing on the positive and negative aspects of
both. Bradley was a pioneer in the commodification of art education through the
production of his supplies and materials and the positive and negative aspects of that
commodification need to be explored further. These issues could form the basis for a
tremendous amount of further research which could shed light not only on Milton
Bradley, but on the beginning of the field of art education and its place in the public
schools. Contemporary art education practices could benefit by continued exploration of
the past and a more thorough understanding of its place in the continuum of public
schooling in the United States.
77
APPENDIX A
Letters Pertaining to Obtaining Information
for this Study
78
The following letter was sent to Mrs. John F. Walker, Milton Bradley’s granddaughter,
concerning Mr. Bradley’s personal diaries.
Mr. and Mrs. John F. Walker
33 Haas Rd.
1845 Bellevue Way #131
Tallahassee, FL 32304
jls02z@fsu.edu
Somer, Connecticut 06071
July 6, 2004
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Walker,
My name is Jennifer Snyder. I am currently a PhD student at Florida State
University in Tallahassee, Florida. I am writing to you because I believe you may be able
to help me with my dissertation. My research question concerns Milton Bradley and his
contributions to the field of art education through his interest in kindergarten and his
production of art supplies and materials.
In conducting my research I have come across a dissertation written by Mr.
Clifton Oakes, in 1975, concerning Milton Bradley’s contributions to general education.
In the appendix there are excerpts from Milton Bradley’s diary. A footnote at the end of
the appendix indicates that the diary was at that time in the possession of Mrs. John F.
Walker of Somers, Connecticut. I am hoping that in contacting you I have found the
right family.
It is my wish, with your permission, to use the diary to enhance my research and
increase my knowledge of Milton Bradley and his motivations concerning kindergarten
and art education. If you are still in possession of the diary I would very much like to be
able to look at and review it. If you are not in possession of the diary at this time if you
could point me in the right direction I would be grateful.
I hope to be in contact with you soon concerning the diary. I will be in
Connecticut at the end of July and would love to be able to talk with you in person at that
time. Please expect a phone call from me next concerning this matter. You may also
contact me directly at (850) 576-2544 or email me at jls02z@fsu.edu. Thank you in
advance for any help you can give me concerning the status of Mr. Bradley’s diary.
Sincerely yours,
Jennifer L. Snyder
79
The following letter was sent to Mr. James Shea Jr., former president of the Milton Bradley
Company, concerning his father’s collection of Milton Bradley memorabilia.
April 30, 2004
Dear Mr. Shea,
My name is Jennifer Snyder. I am currently a PhD student at Florida State
University in Tallahassee, Florida. I am writing to you because I believe you may be able
to help me locate some information that would greatly help me with my dissertation. My
research question concerns Milton Bradley and his contributions to the field of art
education through his interest in kindergarten and his production of art supplies and
materials.
In conducting my research I have come across a book written by your father, Mr.
James Shea Sr. called It’s All in the Game, detailing the life of Milton Bradley. The
information on the back of the dust jacket indicates that at one time your father owned a
large collection of Bradley memorabilia, including diaries and personal correspondence.
If you are still in possession of these materials I would very much like to be able to look
at and review them. If you are not in possession of these materials at this time I would be
grateful if you could tell me where these materials are currently located, if you know.
It is my wish, with your permission, to use these materials to enhance my research and
increase my knowledge of Milton Bradley and his motivations concerning kindergarten
and art education.
I hope to be in contact with you soon concerning the Bradley materials. You may
contact me directly at (850) 576-2544 or email me at jls02z@fsu.edu. Thank you in
advance for any help you can give me concerning the status of Mr. Bradley’s diaries.
Sincerely yours,
Jennifer L. Snyder
80
I received the following response from Mr. Shea concerning his father’s Milton Bradley
memorabilia collection.
From:
To:
Date:
Subject:
JJSHEAJR@aol.com
jls02z@fsu.edu
Mon, 10 May 2004 15:15:24 EDT
(no subject)
Show full message header
Printer-Friendly Version
Dear Ms. Snyder - Regarding your letter of April 30, unfortunately I do not have any Milton Bradley
memorabilia nor did my father. These materials were turned over the Milton Bradley Library in
East Longmeadow, MA. You might contact David Wilson, General Manager of Milton Bradley Games
who may be able to help you.
Sincerely - James J. Shea, Jr.
81
The following is a response I received to an email I sent to Mr. David Wilson, General
Manager of Milton Bradley Games, concerning Mr. Bradley’s personal diaries and
correspondence.
From:
To:
Date:
Subject:
"Morris, Mark" <Mmorris@Hasbro.com>
"'jls02z@fsu.edu'" <jls02z@fsu.edu>
Mon, 24 May 2004 11:31:19 -0400
Milton Bradley Information
Show full message header
Printer-Friendly Version
Dear Ms. Snyder:
Thank you for your interest in the history of Milton Bradley. Mr. Wilson
has asked me to look into your request for historic materials.
You reference the dust jacket from "It's All in the Game" which suggests
that Mr. Shea collected diaries and records of Milton Bradley. While he
certainly did that at the time he wrote the book, what exists in our
archives is only a limited amount of material. We do not have the sizable
collection that you may have inferred from the dust jacket. Furthermore,
our archives are stored in an area with no public access.
Your best bet might be to contact the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum,
located in Springfield, MA. (Phone: 413-263-6800). There are several
historians who live in the Springfield area who have written about the life
and times of Milton Bradley. The Museum staff can assist you in locating
them.
Another source that may be able to help you is the American Game Collector's
Association. While their focus is on early board games, several members of
the group are historians who may be able to offer some further insight to
Mr. Bradley.
We wish you success on your dissertation. Hopefully the sources above will
be able to assist you.
Sincerely,
Mark Morris
Public Relations Director
Hasbro Games
443 Shaker Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
82
The following information was submitted via email to the Lowell Historical Society website
concerning Milton Bradley’s school records from Lowell High School.
Sunday August 30, 2004
Hello. My name is Jennifer Snyder. I am a PhD student in the Art
Education department at Florida State University. I am trying to
research Milton Bradley's early educational experiences as part of my
dissertation and I know he graduated from Lowell High School in 1852. Do any school
records exist from Lowell High School circa 1848-1852?
Verification that he actually attended Lowell High School and a listing
of courses offered at that time would be particularly helpful, but any
help you could give me in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Jennifer Snyder
I received the following replies from the Janine Whitcomb, the research assistant at the
Lowell Historical Society.
From: Janine Whitcomb
To: jls02z@garnet.acns.fsu.edu
Date: Tues, 31 Aug 2004 15:11:45 -0400
Subject: Re: Milton Bradley
I will check our school collection to see what we might have, but I think it would be best
for you to go directly to the Lowell School Department, or call Lowell High School itself.
I’m not sure how well they kept their records, or how easily accessible they are, but they
should have the information you need. If I find anything though, I will definitely write
back. Wish me luck,
Janine
From: Janine Whitcomb
To: jls02z@garnet.acns.fsu.edu
Date: Tues, 31 Aug 2004
Subject: Re: Milton Bradley
Hi
I did some research and couldn’t find anything on Milton Bradley. I was hoping the
graduates were listed in the newspaper, which they ordinarily were and are still today.
We don’t have the newspaper of that year. Perhaps the Pollard Memorial Library would.
83
Again, you would need to be in touch with the school department, and possibly try the
library. Best wishes,
Sincerely,
Janine
I sent the following request to the Lowell High School website comment system.
From: schoolnews@smartedu.net [mailto:schoolnews@smartedu.net]
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 5:21 AM
To: Cormier, June
Subject: Comment from LPS Web Site (Home)
This is an automated email from the LPS web site.
A comment was submitted on 10/22/2004.
News heading: Student Records.
Content: My name is Jennifer Snyder, I am a current doctoral student at
Florida State University. My dissertation topic is Milton Bradley and
his contributions to art education. Milton Bradley attended Lowell
High School between starting around 1845/46/47. I would like to know
if you maintain records from that period, and if you do, where they
would be located. I am specifically interested in the types of courses
Milton Bradley would have taken while attending Lowell High School.
Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Jennifer Snyder
Submitted by: jls02z@fsu.edu
I received the following response to my inquiry.
Good afternoon, Thank you for your email inquiry. I forwarded you
request for information to Lowell High School for their review and
response.
Thank you,
June
Superintendent's Secretary
Lowell Public Schools
155 Merrimack Street
Lowell, MA
Tel: 978-937-7614
Fax: 978-446-7436
84
I sent the following inquiry to the archivist at the Harvard University
Archives.
At 02:14 PM 6/21/2004
-0400,
you wrote:
To: Jennifer Snyder
Email Address: jls02z@fsu.edu
Telephone: 850-576-2544
Address: 1845 Bellevue Way #131
Tallahassee, FL 32304
Question: I would like a copy of the Lawrence Scientific School
preliminary drafts of catalog, 1847-1848, call number UZV 1347 hd. I
would also like any information pertaining to Milton Bradley in the
records of the Lawrence Scientific School 1846-1907. I believe Bradley
attended the school beginning sometime around 1852-1854 to complete the
course in drawing. Any information you have concerning the courses
offered at that time, or anything specifically related to Mr. Bradley’s
enrollment in the school would be greatly appreciated. My dissertation
topic at Florida State University concerns Milton Bradley and his
contributions to art education, so any information you have would be
helpful.
Thank you,
Jennifer Snyder
I received the following reply from the Harvard University Archives.
From: Archives Reference archives-ref@rockhop.harvard.edu
To: jls02z@fsu.edu (Jennifer Snyder)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 08:44:27 -0400
Subject: Re: email request: Administrative Records: Milton Bradley
Dear Ms. Snyder,
Greetings from the Harvard University Archives. Thank you for your
inquiry concerning Milton Bradley. A member of our reference staff
will check our holdings for relevant material and respond to you as
soon as possible. Please note that, due to the volume of requests that
we receive, a response may take several weeks.
Sincerely,
The Reference Staff
Harvard University Archives
85
APPENDIX B
Milton Bradley’s Educational Records from the
Lowell Historical Society and Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University
86
The following notes were taken March 3, 2005 at the Lowell Historical Society, run in
part by the city of Lowell, Massachusetts and in part by the University of Massachusetts,
Lowell.
22nd Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lowell, MA, 1847
• Average age of students: 13-15 yrs. Old
• Courses offered: reading, spelling, geography, grammar, arithmetic
• In 1847, total number of students who were sent to Lowell High School=110
• 47 schools in Lowell
81 teachers
• Arithmetic Books used at Lowell High School: Mr. James S. Russell’s
Arithmetic, Frederic A. Adams Arithmetic
• Corporal Punishment: “If they could be successfully appealed to only through the
instrumentality of the rod, it would then be the teacher’s disgrace, and his alone.
If, on the other hand, they could be controlled by those high moral considerations
which should influence rational human beings, it would redound to the teacher’s
honor. But the influence of parents upon their children, begins earlier, reaches
deeper, and extends farther, than the teacher’s can” (p. 31).
• Publisher: James Atkinson
87
23rd Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lowell, MA, 1848
• Principal, Lowell High School: C.C. Chase
• March 23, 1848--$800.00 allocated for Vocal Music at the Grammar/High School
Instructors: B.F. Baker, I.N. Metcalf
½ hr. classes, twice a week
• “The committee believe that in general, the knowledge of music which has been
acquired and that the improvement in singing which has been made in our
schools, are quite as great as the amount of instruction would lead us to expect,”
(pp. 11-12).
• Average class size: Primary school = 50 pupils
• Textbooks used: Smith’s First Book in Geography, Willson’s History of the
United States, Jarvis’s Physiology
• Edward H. Viau—French instructor, each pupil received 2 hours of instruction
per week
• Subjects offered in the high school: Greek and Latin, reading, spelling,
geography, English grammar and parsing, natural philosophy, astronomy,
physiology, useful arts, history
88
24nd Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lowell, MA, 1849
• Natural science teacher hired
26th Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lowell, MA, 1851
• Introduction of sewing—2 hours per week in the Grammar schools
“The industrious habits which it [sewing] tends to form, and the consequent high
moral influence which exerts upon society at large, may cause its introduction
more extensively in all their schools,” (p. 23).
• Physical education introduced
• Students were required to pass a general competency test to leave Grammar
School and attend the high school. Sample questions included:
1. What is the difference between a ratio and a proportion?
2. Draw an outline map of Massachusetts noting the localities and names of its
three largest rivers; of it three largest commercial, and three largest
manufacturing places.
3. What is the difference between imperfect tense and present perfect tense?
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
APPENDIX C
Color Definitions and Classifications based on
Milton Bradley’s Color Theory System
109
Bradley’s Color Nomenclature
Bradley (1893) noted:
It is true that a concise and reasonably full dictionary of color terms must be the
outcome of long experience in the study of the science of color and its use in our
every-day lives, and at the best only suggestions can be made at present. But as
there must be a beginning and some terms seem to be fairly well established, the
following incomplete list of definitions is offered, always subject to amendment
by the majority vote, for whenever such changes indicate advance they should be
welcome. (p. 27)
Color Definitions
Standard Colors—As used in this system of color nomenclature, the best pigmentary
imitation of each of the six spectrum colors red, yellow, green, blue and violet,
and black and white.
Pigmentary Colors—All colors used and produced in the arts and sciences. This is in
distinction from colors seen in nature, as in flowers and the solar spectrum. The
term refers not only to pigments in the strictest sense but to all surfaces coated,
painted or dyed artificially.
Pure Colors—A pure or full color, also called a saturated color, is the most intense form
of that color without the admixture of white or black or gray. All spectrum colors
are pure, while no pigmentary color is absolutely pure, but the pigmentary color
which approaches most nearly to the corresponding color in the spectrum must be
selected as the pigmentary type of purity for that color.
Hue—The hue of a color is that color mixed with a smaller quantity of another color. An
orange hue of red is the standard red mixed with a smaller quantity of orange.
With the disks pure hues are secured only by mixing two standards adjacent in the
spectrum circuit.
Local Color—The term applied to the natural color of an object when seen in ordinary
good daylight and at a convenient distance, as a sheet of paper at arms length, a
tree at twice its height, etc.
Tint—Any pure or full color mixed with white, or reduced by strong light. In the
disk combinations a spectrum disk combined with a white disk.
Shade—A full color in shadow, i.e., with a low degree of illumination. In disk
combinations a disk of a spectrum color combined with a black disk produces by
rotation a shade of that color. In pigments the admixture of black does not usually
produce a satisfactory a shade of a color as may be secured with some other
pigments, and each artist has his own preferences in making shades of the various
colors on his palette.
Scale—A scale of color is a series of colors consisting of a pure or full color at the center
and graduated by a succession of steps to a light tint on the one side and a deep
shade on the other.
Tone—Each step in a color scale is a tone of that color, and the full color may be called
the normal tone or the key tone. In art this word has had such a variety of
meaning as to render it very convenient for amateur art critics, together with such
110
terms as breadth, atmosphere, quality, values, etc., but in the consideration of
color it should have this one, definite meaning.
Warm Colors—Red, orange and yellow, and combinations in which they predominate.
Cool Colors—Usually considered to be green, blue and violet, and the combinations in
which they predominate. But it is, perhaps, questionable whether green and violet
may properly be termed either warm or cool. The term cool as applied to colors is
quite indefinite, except in a general way, but red, orange and yellow are
considered as warm, and blue and green blue as cool.
Neutral Gray—Pure black and white mixed by disk rotation, or white in shadow. Black
and white pigments mixed do not usually produce a neutral gray, but rather a blue
gray.
Warm Gray—A neutral gray with the admixture of a small quantity of red, orange or
yellow.
Cool Gray—A neutral gray with a small quantity of a cool color.
Neutral Colors—A term usually applied to gray, white, black, silver and gold; but the
term PASSIVE COLORS has been suggested as better, with ACTIVE COLORS
for the pronounced colors, such as the spectrum colors and their combinations.
This suggestion is made because the word neutral should be confined to black and
white and their combinations, while the term passive can be used more broadly.
The term neutral has also sometimes been improperly applied to all grays and
very broken colors.
Broken Colors—Often improperly called broken tints. For simplicity a tint is described
as a pure color mixed with white, and a shade as the color mixed with black; the
corresponding broken color is the same color mixed with both black and white or
neutral gray. A tint of a color thrown into a shadow or a shade of a color in bright
sunlight gives a broken color. For various reasons a very large proportion of the
colors in nature are broken. Broken colors are much easier to combine
harmoniously than full colors, or even tints and shades.
Luminosity—The luminosity of a color is determined by comparing it with a neutral
gray. When a color seems to be of the same brightness as a given neutral gray,
i.e., not lighter nor darker, then the gray is its measure of luminosity.
Potentiality—The ability or strength of a color to effect other colors by combinations
with them. For example, white has a greater potentiality than black, yellow
greater than red, and violet the least of all spectrum colors.
Ray of Light—The finest supposable element of light-impression in the eye.
Beam of Light—A number of rays.
Quality—This term seems to be used rather indefinitely when applied to color, but
perhaps it is not far removed from the term hue or kind of color.
Value—This word as applied to art is much abused and one which gives trouble to many.
It may be difficult to define this term, although it has a very definite meaning to
the artist. It is the one subject which must be carefully considered by the engraver
or artist who attempts to interpret nature in black and white. It is the thing that the
photographic plate usually fails to give in color subjects.
Complementary Colors—As white light is the sum of all color if we take from white light
is a given color the remaining color is the complement of the given color. When
the eye has been fatigued by looking intently for a few seconds at a red spot on a
111
white wall and is then slightly turned to the wall, a faint tint of a bluish green is
seen, and this is called the accidental color of the red, which is supposed to be
identical with its complementary color. If with the disks we determine a color
which with a given color will produce by rotation a neutral gray, we have the
complementary color more accurately than by any other means at present known
in the use of pigmentary colors.
Harmony—Two colors are said to be in harmony or to combine harmoniously if the
effect is pleasing when they are in juxtaposition or are used in a composition.
Spectrum Circuit—If a pigmentary imitation of the solar spectrum with the addition of
violet red at the red end and red violet at the violet end be made, and the two ends
joined, we shall have a spectrum circuit. This may be in the form of a circle, an
ellipse or an oval.
Primary Colors—In the Brewster theory, red, yellow and blue. In the Young-Helmholtz
theory red, green and violet are termed primary colors because it is supposed that
from these three sensations all color perceptions are experienced. But this theory
is questioned by many scientist to-day. Practically every spectrum color is a
primary, because each has its own wave length.
Secondary Colors—In the Brewster theory orange, green and purple are called secondary
because it is claimed that they are produced by the combination of primary colors
in pairs.
Tertiary Colors—A term used in the Brewster theory to denote three classes of colors
called russet, citrine and olive, made by mixing the secondaries in pairs. These
are all broken spectrum colors. The orange and purple produce russet; the orange and
green form citrine; the green and purple, olive. There seems to be no good reason for
perpetuating the indefinite terms secondaries and tertiaries as applied to color.
All color definitions are reproduced from Milton Bradley’s (1893) book Color in the
Kindergarten, published by the Milton Bradley Company in Springfield, Massachusetts.
112
REFERENCES
23rd Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lowell, MA, 1847. Lowell,
MA: James Atkinson Publishing.
24rd Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lowell, MA, 1848. Lowell,
MA: James Atkinson Publishing.
25rd Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lowell, MA, 1849. Lowell,
MA: James Atkinson Publishing.
27rd Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lowell, MA, 1851. Lowell,
MA: James Atkinson Publishing.
Agoston, G.A. (1979). Color theory and its application in art and design. Berlin:
Springer-Verlag.
Anderson, T. (1993). Defining and structuring art criticism for education. Studies in Art
Education, 34(4). 199-208.
Anderson, T. (1997). Talking with kids about art. School Arts, 97(1). 21-25.
Anderson, T. and Milbrandt, M. (2002). Art for life. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Andrews, P. (1972). Games people played. American Heritage, 23(4). 64-79,104.
Archer, M. and Blau, J. (1993). Class formation in nineteenth-century America:
The case of the middle class. Annual Review of Sociology, 19. 1-18.
Ball, H.G. (1976). What’s in a game? The Elementary School Journal, 77(1). 42-49.
Ball, P. (2002). Seeing red—and yellow—and green—and. Natural History,
111(2). 64-75.
Bailey, C.S. (1932). Who was who, Milton Bradley, Child gardener. American
Childhood, 18(4). 10, 43-44.
Bailey, H.T. (1910). Milton Bradley. In Milton Bradley Company (Ed.), Milton
Bradley: A successful man (pp. 42-46). Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley
Company.
Bigge, M.L. and Shermis, S.S. (1999). Learning theories for teachers. New York:
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Bohan, C.H. (2003). Early vanguards of progressive education: The committee of ten,
the committee of seven, and social education. Journal of Curriculum and
Supervision, 19(1). 73-94.
Bolin, P. E. (1986). The influence of industrial policy on enactment of the 1870
Massachusetts free instruction in drawing act. In Wilson, B. and Hoffa, H. (Eds.),
The history of art education: Proceedings from the Penn State conference
(pp.102-107). Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.
Bradley, M. (1890). Color in the schoolroom. Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley
Company.
Bradley, M. (1893). Color in the kindergarten. Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley
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Company.
Bradley, M. (1894). A Reminiscence of Miss Peabody. The Kindergarten News, 6. 3940.
Bradley, M. (1895). Elementary color. Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley Company.
Bradley, M. (1897). The Color Primer. Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley Company.
Bradley, M. (1900). Water colors in the schoolroom. Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley
Company.
Bradley, M. (1910). Early days of the kindergarten. In Milton Bradley Company
(Ed.), Milton Bradley, A successful man (pp.24-37). Springfield, MA: Milton
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Jennifer L. Snyder
Professional Experience
2002-Present
Florida State University; Tallahassee, Florida
Teaching/Research Assistant, Art Education
2000-2002
Brewton Parker College; Hinesville, Georgia
Adjunct Instructor, Art Education
2000-2002
Satilla Marsh Elementary School; Brunswick, Georgia
Art Teacher, grades K-5
1998-2002
Altama Elementary School; Brunswick, Georgia
Art Teacher, grades K-5
1998-1999
Glyndale Elementary School; Brunswick, Georgia
Art Teacher, grades K-5
Education
2002-2005
Florida State University; Tallahassee, Florida
Doctor of Education, Art Education
1996-1998
University of Georgia; Athens, Georgia
Masters of Art Education, Art Education
1992-1996
University of Georgia; Athens, Georgia
Bachelor of Fine Art, Fabric Design
1988-1992
Central Gwinnett High School; Lawrenceville, Georgia
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