Do Parent Co-Op Preschools Float on Kondratieff's Economic Waves?

Certain economic theories can help explain the rise to prominence of parent participation preschools in the 1950s and help to make predictions about their future. Specifically, the long-wave cycle of economic behavior and its explanation of social systems and innovations can be useful. One popular approach is that of the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratieff, who discovered 50-year cycles in capitalist economies, although governments now may be able to moderate those cycles in the future. A related observation is that clusters of inventions or innovations that have been proposed while the economy descended into a depression have become successful as it recovered. Further, while invention is constant, application of such invention is cyclic: only during a "window of opportunity" provided by an economic downturn will new concepts be seriously considered. Educational developments seem to fit this pattern, including the introduction of the ideas of Locke, Pestalozzi, and Froebel into United States education. Charting the history of the nursery school movement in the United States shows that the years for the introduction of parent co-ops and their rapid rise occurred as the economy rose to a plateau after World War II. At that time, federal funding for war-time nursery schools was terminated, and mothers with increasing numbers of preschool children were dependent upon the co-op community for social support networks. Thus, awareness of economic wave theories may add a critical perspective to analysis of early childhood education history and enable comprehension of current and future situations. (Contains 25 references.) (TM)