Käthe Stern

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Käthe (Catherine) Stern (born January 6, 1894 in Breslau ; † January 8, 1973 in New York City ) was a German-American Montessori teacher who, after emigrating to the USA, published works on Structural Arithmetic , which the Elementary school significantly influenced.

Live and act

She was the second oldest of four children of the human medicine specialist Oskar Brieger and his wife Hedwig, geb. Lion, and grew up in an assimilated and wealthy Jewish family. All children received a careful upbringing, supported by private educators. Her brother Peter was an important art historian, while his brother Ernst Brieger became a tuberculosis doctor in Great Britain. After graduating from high school, she studied mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Wroclaw . Käthe Brieger received her doctorate in 1918 . The topic of her doctoral thesis was: Reflection measurements in the ultra-red. An example of the constitution of crystal hydrates . The young academic decided not to pursue a scientific career, but to work with children.

In April 1919 Käthe Brieger married the human medicine specialist Rudolf Stern . The marriage resulted in two children, daughter Toni and son Fritz . After a short stay in Berlin, where Käthe Stern completed her training to become a Montessori teacher, she set up a Montessori children's home in Breslau . There she tried out and developed a new method, which she called the Extended Montessori System . In doing so, she attempted to synthesize the pedagogy of Friedrich Froebel and Maria Montessori , taking into account the latest findings in child psychology. In this regard, Käthe Stern stated:

We had to part with Montessori where our own psychological observation or the results of developmental research required expansion. Since today's psychology confirms in many points what Froebel had grasped intuitively, this alone gives us a connection to Froebel .

Margarete Schörl described Stern's extension of the orthodox Montessori system as the best of all practical attempts at a solution at the time .

With the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship , Käthe Stern had to stop her educational work because she was of “ non-Aryan ” descent. But she did not remain idle and developed new materials for arithmetic lessons at home. She was also invited to give lectures abroad. For example, in 1935, at the October conference of kindergarten teachers in Bern, which was published in the specialist journal "Der Schweizer Kindergarten", she gave lectures on her "extended Montessori system". Your conclusion:

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the stark differences between the 'extended Montessori system' and the newly designed Froebel kindergarten have disappeared ... It remains Montessori's unforgettable merit of having created a method that ensures the free development of the child, and it is an unintended, but almost equally enormous success that it gave the impetus to fill the Froebel kindergarten with a new spirit .

The Stern family emigrated to the USA at the last minute. There Käthe Stern worked with Max Wertheimer , who was very interested in the calculation material she had developed in Germany, called Structural Arithmetic . Käthe Stern, together with her daughter and daughter-in-law, wrote several larger works on this. Regarding this, her son wrote:

My mother's books and maths have made a significant impact on American education. In retrospect, I see that the method ... was one of many examples of how German ideas developed and had positive effects in the United States, as a transplantation in which insights and advantages from both countries flowed together .

Works (selection)

  • The optical behavior of the crystal water. In: Annals of Physics. 1918, p. 287 ff.
  • Linguistic egocentrism and community feelings in the children's home. In: Education for the Present. 1932, p. 28 ff.
  • Methodology of daily children's home practice. Psychological and educational experience with my extended Montessori system. Leipzig 1932.
  • Will / imagination and work design in an extended Montessori system. Leipzig 1933.
  • Children Discover Arithmetic. Harper & Brothers 1949.

literature

  • Harold Baumann: One Hundred Years of Montessori Education 1907-2007. A chronicle of Montessori education in Switzerland. Bern / Stuttgart / Vienna 2007.
  • Manfred Berger : Help me do it alone! - Maria Montessori died 50 years ago. In: Forum. Woman and society. 2002, p. 25 f
  • Ders .: Memory of a Montessori teacher who has been forgotten: Käthe Stern (1894-1973), in: Montessori. Journal for Montessori Pedagogy 2011 / H. 2, pp. 37-44
  • Franz-Michael Konrad: Kindergarten or Kinderhaus? Montessori reception and pedagogical discourse in Germany until 1939. P. 228 ff.
  • Margarete Schörl: The teachings of Froebel and Montessori in the educational situation of our time. In: Children's home 1956, pp. 214–223
  • Fritz Stern: Five Germany and one life. Memories. Munich 2007.
  • Helge Wasmuth: Day-care centers as educational institutions On the importance of education and upbringing in the history of public education for young children in Germany until 1945. Bad Heilbrunn 2011, p. 333 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the optical behavior of the crystal water . Excerpt from the dissertation
  2. ↑ Stern 1933, p. 94.
  3. ↑ Schörl 1956, p. 217
  4. ↑ cit. n. Baumann 2007, p. 167.
  5. ↑ Stern 2007, p. 219
  6. ↑ http://sternmath.com/
personal data
SURNAME Stern, Kathe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stern, Catherine (English)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-US-American Montessori teacher
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1973
Place of death New York City