FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
(1782-1852)
James Munroe writes in his “The Educational Ideal”: “Practical yet
dreamy, scientific yet credulous, analytic yet mystical, filled with
fancies, symbols, extravagances, exuberant in thought and speech,
the new-born German nation was like a child, with a child’s surplus
of strength, a child’s ill-balanced imagination, a child’s elastic
vision, limited to self, yet with a sudden illuminating glimpse into
eternity. Froebel was the embodiment of this _Zeitgeist_, this
exaggeration of yearning, this overestimate of self-promise, this
glamour of existence, which characterized the Germany of sixty years
ago” (15: p. 198). He was born the son of a pious, rigorous, and active
orthodox Lutheran minister, who “never succeeded in understanding
this troublesome, dreamy, and neglected child” (2: p. 7). Having lost
his mother some four months after his birth, and having had an unkind
stepmother, a mother’s love and care were practically unknown to him.
Thus, as he writes, “unceasing self-contemplation, self-analysis, and
self-education have been the fundamental characteristics of my life
from the very first and have remained so until these later days” (7: p.
11). These circumstances of his age and his own childhood not only give
us the key to his whole life, but also to his whole philosophy. His
precocious and all-pervading religiosity, his passionate affection for
Nature, were simply natural. From a lifeless and affectionless home he
fled to the bosom of animated Nature, and thus to his mystic pantheism.
He writes, in his recollections, of one of the incidents of his early
childhood:
“I now had what I needed: to the Church was added the Nature-Temple;
to the religious Christian life, the life of Nature; to the passionate
discord of human life, the tranquil peace of plants. From that time it
was as if I held the clew of Ariadne to guide me through the labyrinth
of life. From that time humanity and Nature, the life of the soul and
the life of the flower, were closely knit together in my mind; and I
can still see my hazel buds, like angels, opening for me the great
God’s temple of Nature” (7: p. 12).
His craze for unity we can largely explain as the result of the longing
of his restless soul and hungry heart for peace. Naturally he found
a predetermined fascination in Schelling’s “Identity Philosophy,” in
which the subjective and the objective worlds are identified in one
principle. On the other hand, self-analysis necessarily leads one to
the desire of self-perfection and self-education; thus his incessant
thirst for “higher culture.” So it came that “I carried my own world
within me, and it was that for which I cared and which I cherished” (7:
p. 107).
One thing saved him from falling into a life of pure reflection. It was
the early habit of engaging in manual occupations around the home. This
he was partly forced to do in accordance with the wish of his rigorous
father, but he did it also from his own inclination. In fact, this was
another refuge for him. Probably his restless soul, oppressed by the
indifference and misapprehension of his parents, as also by isolation
from his playmates, herein found its free expression.
Thus, religion, Nature, and manual work were the three great agents of
his own education, which he later believed also to be the essential for
all others. He calls the love of Nature, the instinct of workmanship,
and religious feeling “the primitive and natural inclinations of every
human being” (7: p. 5). And all these were for him the manifestations
of a restless, incessant desire and endeavor for unity and harmony,
which he asserts is “the basis of all genuinely human development and
cultivation.”
“The Education of Man,” the most important of his writings, opens with
the following passage:
“In all things there lives and reigns an eternal law.... This
all-controlling law is necessarily based on an all-pervading,
energetic, living, self-conscious, and hence, eternal unity.... This
unity is God. All things live and have their being in and through the
Divine Unity, in and through God.... It is the destiny and lifework
of all things to unfold their essence, ... and, therefore, the Divine
Unity itself” (5: pp. 1-2).
Thus, according to Froebel, a living, energetic, self-conscious unity
is both the metaphysical reality and the human ideal, and “_Education
consists in leading man to, ... pure and unsullied consciousness and
free representation of the inner law of Divine Unity, and in teaching
him ways and means thereto_” (5: p. 2). From the Living Unity of all
existence, the living Unity of every human being is self-evident. And
here lies the real foundation stone of his philosophy of education. He
writes in his autobiography: “Mankind as a whole, as one great Unity,
had now become my quickening thought. I kept this conception constantly
before my mind” (7: p. 84). So each new-born child not only “should be
viewed and treated as a manifestation of the Divine Spirit in human
form,” but, “as a necessary essential member of humanity,” he should be
viewed and treated “in his obvious and living relations to the present,
past, and future development of humanity, in order to bring the
education of the child into harmony with the past, present, and future
development of humanity and of the race” (5: pp. 16-17).
The germ of the evolutionary idea had already been floating in the
air of the pedagogical world; we see it in Rousseau, in Kant, in
Pestalozzi, but it found its richest soil in the mind of our incessant
self-educator. Humanity, he says:
“... should, therefore, be looked upon not as perfected and developed,
not as fixed and stationary, but as steadily and progressively
growing, in a state of ever living development, ever ascending from
one stage of culture to another toward its aim, which partakes of the
infinite and eternal. It is unspeakably pernicious to look upon the
development of humanity as stationary and completed, and to see in
its present phases simply repetitions and greater generalizations of
itself. For the child, as well as every successive generation, becomes
thereby exclusively imitative, an external dead copy--as it were, a
cast of the preceding one--and not a living ideal for its stage of
development, which it had attained in human development as a whole, to
serve future generations in all time to come. Indeed, each successive
generation and each successive individual human being, inasmuch as he
would understand the past and present, must pass through all preceding
phases of human development and culture, and this should not be done
in the way of dead imitation or mere copying, but in the way of
living, spontaneous self-activity. Every human being should realize
in him these phases spontaneously and freely.... For in every human
being ... there lies and lives humanity as a whole; but in each one it
is realized and expressed in a wholly particular, peculiar, personal,
unique manner” (5: pp. 17-18).
Only this large and comprehensive view of man “can enable true genuine
education to thrive, blossom, bear fruit, and ripen.” Now, then, the
destiny of the child as a member of the family and of humanity is to
unfold and realize in him the tendencies and forces of the family and
of humanity as a whole, in their harmony, all-sidedness, and purity.
The parental character, “their intellectual and emotional drift, which,
indeed, may as yet lie dormant in both of them as mere tendencies
and energies,” are to harmonize in his development and culture. “The
natural and the divine, the terrestrial and the celestial, the finite
and the infinite,” are to be realized in him “in harmony and unison.”
This will be done “if each unfolds and realizes his own essence as
perfectly, purely, and universally as possible; and, on the other
hand, as much as possible in accordance with his own individuality and
personality.” Therefore, no constraint nor too much assistance should
be given. “The child should learn early how to find in himself the
center and fulcrum of all his powers and members, to seek his support
in this, and, resting therein, to move freely and be active, to grasp
and to hold with his own hands, to stand and walk on his own feet, to
find and observe with his own eyes, to use his members symmetrically
and equally” (5: pp. 19-21). Thus, in the “free, all-sided use” of
one’s powers, in the self-active, unhindered unfolding of every
potentiality, Froebel saw the equal fulfillment of all the claims both
of individuality and of humanity.
Rousseau fought against sacrificing the present for the future; Froebel
made it clear that the perfect fulfillment of the present is, at the
same time, the guarantee of the future. He says:
“The vigorous and complete development and cultivation of each
successive stage depends on the vigorous, complete, and characteristic
development of each and all preceding stages of life!... _The child,
the boy, the man, indeed, should know no other endeavor but to be at
every stage of development wholly what this stage calls for._ Then
will each successive stage spring like a new shoot from a healthy bud,
and at each successive stage he will with the same endeavor again
accomplish the requirements of this stage” (5: pp. 28-30).
For Rousseau the developmental stages in the child’s life were
somewhat like a succession of changes; Froebel conceived them as the
gradual unfolding of the one organic principle which underlies all
manifestations of physical and mental life. So for Froebel very many
things in the life of childhood are symbolic and point to the higher
possibilities of manhood, and he saw, in thus viewing the matter, our
best guidance for directing the child in his destiny.
“How salutary would it be for parents and child, for their present
and future, if the parents believed in this symbolism of childhood
and boyhood, if they heeded the child’s life in reference to this.
It would unite parents and children by a new living tie. It would
establish a new living connection between their present and future
life” (5: pp. 18-19).
But
“To see and respect in the child and boy the germ and promise of the
coming youth and man is very different from considering and treating
him as if he were already a man; very different from asking the child
or boy to show himself a youth or a man; to feel, to think, and
conduct himself as a youth or man” (5: p. 29).
Then what are the nature and requirements of each successive stage?
Froebel teaches us that the child is the only teacher as to his
nature and requirements. Go and observe him, then you will learn,
is his motto. But his own child psychology was as much the product
of self-introspection as of objective observation. He read his own
mentality into every child. Yet we cannot but discern the gems of
immortal insight shining from among the rubbish of obsolete speculation
and magnified symbolism.
Infancy is God in slumber. The eyes of consciousness have not yet
opened. “The external world comes to the child at first out of its
void--as it were, in misty, formless indistinctness, in chaotic
confusion--even the child and the outer world merge into each other”
(5: p. 40). Senses and limbs are the organs by which we determine the
nature and relationship of external objects. Yet, “at this stage of
development the young, growing human being cares for the use of his
body, his senses, his limbs, merely for the sake of their use and
practice, but not for the sake of the _results_ of their use.” He
simply “_plays_ with his limbs--his hands, his fingers, his lips,
his tongue, his feet, as well as the expression of his eyes and face”
(5: p. 48). Therefore education at this stage is merely to offer to him
various objects to “secure occupation for the senses and mind,” and to
prevent mental enervation and weakness.
Development of the speech function marks an epoch. “With language, the
expression and representation of the internal begin; with language,
organization, or a differentiation with reference to ends and means,
sets in.” Speech for an infant is the immediate expression of his
being. “He does not, as yet, know or view it as having a being of its
own. Like his arm, his eye, his tongue, it is one with him, and he is
unconscious of its existence.” Mental education now begins when this
instinct of self-expression manifests itself and instruction of an
informal type is now in order. “The child at this stage should see
all things rightly and accurately, and should designate them rightly
and accurately, definitely and clearly, and this applies to things
and objects themselves, as well as to their nature and properties. He
should properly designate the relations of objects in space and time,
as well as with one another; give each its proper name or word, and
utter each word in itself clearly and distinctly, according to its
constituent vocal elements” (5: p. 50-51).
Play is another form of self-expression. It is “the highest phase of
child development--of human development at this period; for _it is
self-active representation of the inner--representation of the inner
from inner necessity and impulse_.” Indeed, play is the corner-stone
of the kindergarten, and no one had before shown the inherent value of
play to child life in such strong and beautiful words as did Froebel.
“Play is the purest, most spiritual activity of man at this stage,
and, at the same time, typical of human life as a whole--of the inner
hidden natural life in man and all things. It gives joy, freedom,
contentment, inner and outer rest, peace with the world.” “Cultivate
and foster it, O mother!” exclaims he; “protect and guard it, O
father!” For “the plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all
later life, and a child that plays thoroughly, with self-active
determination, perseveringly until physical fatigue forbids, will
surely be a thorough, determined man, capable of self-sacrifice for
the promotion of the welfare of himself and others. Is not the most
beautiful expression of child life at this time, a playing child--a
child wholly absorbed in his play--a child that has fallen asleep while
so absorbed?” (5: pp. 54-55).
Thus “play and speech constitute the element in which the child lives,”
and he animates the whole world, organic and inorganic, with his newly
awakened soul, full of self-expressing activity.
“The child at this stage imparts to each thing the faculties of life,
feeling, and speech. Of everything, he imagines it can hear. Because
the child himself begins to represent his inner being outwardly, he
imputes the same activity to all about him, to the pebble and chip of
wood, to the plant, the flower, and the animal” (5: p. 54).
In the emphasis Froebel laid on this animistic or anthropomorphic
communion of the child with Nature lies another great merit.
Rhythm as an important educational factor of early childhood is another
discovery of his. Froebel sees the natural operation of this in the
mother’s dandling of the child up and down on her hand or arm in
rhythmic movements and with rhythmic sounds. He writes:
“An early pure development of rhythmic movement would prove most
wholesome in the succeeding life periods of the human being. We
rob ourselves as educators, and we still rob the child as pupil by
discontinuing so soon the development of rhythmic movements in early
education.... Much willfulness, impropriety, and coarseness would be
taken out of his life, his movements, and actions. He would secure
more firmness and moderation, more harmony; and, later on, there would
be developed in him a higher appreciation of Nature and art, of music
and poetry” (5: pp. 70-71).
He goes even so far as to say that “for early youth, language
representation should assume a rhythmic form, for this is its first
form in the early youth of mankind.” He thinks that “all primitive
language expressions, as representations of active inner and outer
life, are necessarily rhythmic,” and “the loss of this has deprived him
and mankind as a whole of one of the foremost, most primitive, and most
natural means of elevation” (5: p. 218).
Drawing as a means of the child’s self-expression, his natural
language, is yet another discovery of Froebel. He says:
“The faculty of drawing is, therefore, as much innate in the child,
in man, as is the faculty of speech, and demands its development
and cultivation as imperatively as the latter; experience shows
this clearly in the child’s love for drawing, in the child’s
instinctive desire for drawing.” “The word and drawing belong together
inseparably, as light and shadow”; they are “mutually explanatory
and complementary; for neither one is, by itself, exhaustive and
sufficient with reference to the object represented” (5: p. 79).
His observation of the development of this drawing instinct in the
child is keen and suggestive.
“Give the child a bit of chalk or the like, and soon a new creation
will stand before him and you. Let the father, too, in a few lines
sketch a man, a horse. This man of lines, this horse of lines, will
give the child more joy than an actual man, an actual horse would do”
(5: p. 77).
This linear representation of objects
“opens to the child on the threshold of boyhood a new world in various
directions. Not only can he represent the outer world in reduced
measure, and thus comprehend it more easily with his eyes; not only
can he reproduce outwardly what lives in his mind as a reminiscence or
new association, but the knowledge of a wholly invisible world, the
world of forces, has its tenderest rootlets right here” (5: p. 76).
The beneficial effects of drawing are “more than I can enumerate--a
clear conception of forms, the power to represent the forms
independently, the fixing of the forms as such, strengthening and
practice of the arm and hand”; it “increases knowledge, awakens the
judgment and reflection, which avoids so many blunders, and which,
_in a natural way_, cannot be aroused too soon” (5: pp. 76-79).
Counting is also looked upon by Froebel as an instinct springing from
the nature of the child--“an essential need of his inner being, a
certain yearning of his spirit which should be given due expression”
(5: p. 80). “Mathematics is,” he thinks, “neither foreign to actual
life nor something deduced from life; it is the expression of life
as such: therefore its nature may be studied in life, and life may
be studied with its help” (5: p. 206). Therefore the conception of
number should not be forced in abstract form. It originates from the
reappearance of similar objects, and, according to Froebel, “the
drawing of the object leads to the discovery of number” (5: p. 80).
As to the child’s participation in the domestic activities, Froebel
lays great stress upon this since he regards it as a great source of
knowledge, the basis of the family and social bond, the soil in which
the habit of work and industry grows. Do not impose any domestic or
professional tasks upon the child for the sake of the results, but
allow his meddling with them for the sake of the activity in itself.
“The child--your child, ye fathers--feels this so intensely, so
vividly, that he follows you wherever you are, wherever you go, in
whatever you do. Do not harshly repel him; show no impatience about
his ever-recurring questions. Every harshly repelling word crushes a
bud or shoot of his tree of life. Do not, however, tell him in words
much more than he could find himself without your words.... To have
found one fourth of the answer by his own effort is of more value and
importance to the child than it is to half hear and half understand
it in the words of another; for this causes mental indolence. Do
not, therefore, always answer your children’s questions at once and
directly; but _as soon as they have gathered sufficient strength and
experience_, furnish them with the means to find them answers in
the sphere of their own knowledge” (5: pp. 86-87).
This early childhood is essentially the period of growth, of life, of
nursing, and thus its education is the duty of parents. A child’s life
at this stage is already rich and real; our task is “to guard, nurse,
and develop the inner germ of his life” by quickening all his powers
and natural gifts and to enable all his members and organs to fulfil
the requirements of these. Many “suppose the child to be empty, wish to
inoculate him with life, make him as empty as they think him to be, and
deprive him of life, as it were” (5: p. 70).
Now we come to another epoch of childhood, which Froebel calls the
stage of boyhood. The preceding period was “preëminently the period of
development of the faculty of speech” (5: p. 90). Whatever the child
perceived was designated by the word. It was the period for naming.
“Every object, everything became such, as it were, only through the
word; before it had been named, although the child might have seemed
to see it with the outer eyes, it had no existence for the child. The
name, as it were, created the thing for the child; hence, the name and
the things seemed to be one.”
But now sets in the separation between speech and the speaking
subject, the name and the object; language at last “is externalized
and materialized in signs and writing, and begins to be considered as
something actually corporeal” (5: pp. 91-93). This new period, thinks
Froebel, is preëminently the period for learning, for schooling, for
instruction proper. In the preceding stage everything was considered
as the expression of the child’s own being; the spontaneous activity
springing from his inner life was the starting-point and center of his
education; its process was the externalization of the internal. That
process is now reversed; it is the internalization of the external; we
start from the outer world and unite with it in the inner world of the
child.
“The consideration and treatment of individual and particular things,
as such, and in their inner bearings and relationships, constitute
the essential character and work of instruction.... This instruction
is conducted not so much in accordance with the nature of man as in
accordance with the fixed, definite, clear _laws_ that lie in
the nature of things, and more particularly the laws to which man and
things are equally subjected.... This implies knowledge, insight, a
conscious and comprehensive view of the field.... With this period
school begins for him, be it in the home or out of it, and taught
by the father, members of the family, or a teacher. School, then,
means here by no means the schoolroom or school-keeping, but _the
conscious communication of knowledge, for a definite purpose and in
definite inner connection_” (5: pp. 94-95).
By this it seems clear that Froebel distinguished the character and
function of the school from those of the kindergarten. He explicitly
states this in one of his letters (2: p. 155).
But the education of the efferent side of the human soul should never
be neglected. It is the inner life of a man, and its development
and cultivation must “constitute an unbroken whole, steadily and
continuously progressing, gradually ascending.” It begins with “the
feeling of community awakened in the infant, becomes in the child
impulse, inclination; these lead to the formation of the disposition
and of the heart and arouse in the boy his intellect and will” (5: pp.
95-96). Now “_to give firmness to the will, to quicken it, and make
it pure, strong, and enduring, in a life of pure humanity, is the chief
concern, the main object in the guidance of the boy_.” To attain
this aim “the starting-point of all mental activity in the boy should
be energetic and sound; the source whence it flows, pure, clear, and
ever-flowing; the direction simple, definite; the object fixed, clear,
living and life-giving, elevating, worthy of effort, worthy of the
destiny and the mission of man, worthy of his essential nature, and
tending to develop it, and give it full expression.” But the source of
the will is in the disposition and heart. Therefore “instruction and
example alone and in themselves are not sufficient; they must meet a
good, pure heart”; “activity and firmness of the will rest upon the
activity and firmness of the feelings and heart.” This latter is best
secured in the child by “the complete enjoyment of play,” yet above all
by participation in the domestic life.
“Family life alone secures the development and cultivation of a good
heart and of a thoughtful, gentle disposition in their full intensity
and vigor, also incomparably important for every period of growth,
nay, even for the whole life of man” (5: pp. 96-97).
Now in the period of boyhood the child’s play should become vigorous
and even venturesome. “He never evades an obstacle, a difficulty, nay,
he seeks it.” “Hence the daring and venturesome feats of boyhood; the
exploration of caves and ravines; the climbing of trees and mountains;
the reaching of heights and depths; the roaming through fields and
forests” (5: p. 102). And every adventure widens his scope of life,
means to him “the discovery of a new world.” Athletic games and sports
are recommended by Froebel as a means of character-building as well as
physical exercise, but the excursion was a chief educational feature
of his institute at Keilhau; he thought that every teacher ought to
conduct an excursion party at least once a week.
As to participation in the domestic occupations, it should become wider
and more real than before. In the former period it was mere imitation,
but now it is a voluntary share; formerly it was a part of play, but
now it begins to become work. “What formerly the child did only for the
sake of the activity, the boy does now for the sake of the results or
products of his activity; the child’s instinct of activity has, in the
boy, become a formative instinct, and this occupies the whole outward
life, the outward manifestation of boy-life in this period” (5: p.
99). This creative instinct is, for Froebel, the pledge of the divine
essence of the human soul, and its exercise secures the child the best
development of his spirituality and the highest felicity.
“We become truly Godlike in diligence and industry, in working and
doing, which are accompanied by the clear perception, or even by the
vaguest feeling, that we thereby represent the inner in the outer;
that we give body to spirit, and form to thought; that we render
visible the invisible; that we impart an outward, finite, transient
being to life in the spirit. Through this Godlikeness we rise more and
more to a true knowledge of God, to insight into His Spirit; and thus,
inwardly and outwardly, God comes ever nearer to us. Therefore, Jesus
so truly says in this connection of the poor, ‘Theirs is the kingdom
of heaven’ if they could but see and know it and practice it in
diligence and industry, in productive and creative work. Of children,
too, is the kingdom of heaven; for, unchecked by the presumption
and conceit of adults, they yield themselves in childlike trust and
cheerfulness to their formative and creative instincts” (5: p. 31).
Froebel pictures what a variety of materials a country home presents
for the strengthening and developing of this instinct, and how these
various occupations again stimulate our intellectual activity.
“The son accompanies his father everywhere--to the field and to the
garden, to the shop and to the counting house, to the forest and to
the meadow; in the care of domestic animals and in the making of small
articles of household furniture; in the splitting, sawing, and piling
of the wood; in all the work his father’s trade or calling involves.
Question upon question comes from the lips of the boy thirsting for
knowledge--How? Why? When? What for? Of what?--and every somewhat
satisfactory answer opens a new world to the boy” (5: pp. 101-102).
Froebel’s insight is confirmed by modern child-study, as in many other
points, in the emphasis which he laid on stories, legends, and fairy
tales as necessary food for a boy’s inner being. He says:
“There is developed in the boy at this age the desire and craving
for tales, for legends, for all kinds of stories, and later on for
historical accounts. This craving, especially in its first appearance,
is very intense; so much so that, when others fail to gratify it, the
boys seek to gratify it themselves, particularly on days of leisure
and in times when the regular employments of the day are ended” (5:
pp. 115-116).
He thinks that this is the dawn of historical interest, the longing to
know the past, and he notices the strange or almost mystic harmony or
communion between the figures and events in these stories of the past
and the children’s own inner thoughts and feelings.
Another side of the boy’s story interest is his anthropomorphism. This
has already existed during the earlier period, but it develops with the
growth of the child’s soul. Froebel says:
“There is developed in him the intense desire for fables and fairy
tales which impart language and reason to speechless things--the one
within and the other beyond the limits of human relations and human,
earthly phenomena of life.... If here, too, the boy’s desire is not or
cannot be gratified by his attendants he will spontaneously hit upon
the invention and presentation of fairy tales and fables, and either
work them out in his own mind alone or entertain his companions with
them” (5: pp. 116-117).
Boyhood is preëminently the age of day-dreams and story-telling. Again,
boyhood is the period of song. The juvenile flow of the life tide finds
its outlet in the living waves of rhythm.
“How the serene, happy boy of this age rejoices in song! He feels, as
it were, a new, true, life in song. It is the sense of growing power
that in his wandering from the valley to the hill and from hill to
hill, pours forth the joyous songs from his throat” (5: p. 118).
Songs are enjoyed by him when put into the mouths of others, because
they express the stirring of his own soul in the way he wishes.
“Whatever his mind vaguely apprehends fills his heart with joy and
pleasure, as the sense of the power and the feeling of spring, he
would fain express in words; but he feels himself unable to do so.
He seeks for words, and as he cannot yet find them in himself, he
rejoices intensely to hear them from others” (5: p. 117).
As to the subsequent stages of human life, Froebel never fulfilled his
promise to write about them. The attention and efforts of his later
years were entirely concerned with a plan for the education of early
childhood. And thus he is remembered and is to be remembered forever as
the founder of the kindergarten system. The idea of the kindergarten
rests on the belief that on the complete unfolding of the inner power
of childhood in its all-sidedness, on the full gratification of its
peculiar needs and requirements, depends the normal development of
boyhood, of youth, of man--the entire destiny of human life. This
has been recognized by every educator, but never before so keenly
and clearly as by Froebel. Moreover, for Rousseau, early childhood
was looked upon as purely a physical stage, when education should
be purely negative. “Stand aside and let Nature herself work” was
his motto. But Froebel saw plenty of room here for human coöperation
with the working of Nature. Not “Stand aside,” but “Come, let us live
with and for our children,” was what he exclaimed (5: p. 89). He saw
that the school cannot do much with the spoiled and neglected child
sent from the imperfect home, and that the present home does not well
understand nor provide sufficiently for the nature and requirements
of the child’s soul as well as body. Thus he proclaimed: “All school
education was yet without a proper initial foundation, and that,
therefore, until the education of the nursery was reformed, nothing
solid and worthy could be attained” (2: p. 35). The kindergarten
movement was originally a movement for nursery reform. It was intended
to show mothers an ideal nursery, and also to supplement, where needed,
the work of the home. It is evident that he had a sort of education of
parents in view when he first started the kindergarten. “He repeated
this again and again,” Baroness von Marenholz-Bülow, the champion of
the kindergarten movement, tells us. “‘The destiny of nations lies far
more in the hands of women--the mothers--than in the possessors of
power, or of those innovators who for the most part do not understand
themselves. We must cultivate women who are the educators of the human
race, else the new generation cannot accomplish its task.’ This was
almost always the sum of his discourse” (14: p. 4). Certainly his
kindergarten was set as the model for mothers to copy in their homes.
We find the following passage in one of his letters:
“Let young women go there and see the development of child life going
on before their eyes, noticing and understanding the laws and working
of it.” “There is little hope for improvement until mothers will begin
to educate themselves. Let them attend kindergarten and study the
system themselves” (8: p. 64).
He did “not call this by the name usually given to similar
institutions, that is, _Infant Schools_, because it is not to
be a school, for the children in it will not be schooled, but freely
developed” (2: p. 33). To use his favorite allegory, children are to be
in it like _plants_, and the attendants are like the gardeners.
The character of the kindergarten was essentially to be distinct from
that of the school. Yet in the initial motive and conception of the
kindergarten there lies the elements which allow his followers to make
the two different interpretations of the nature of the kindergarten.
One is to consider it simply as the place “to provide a condition of
life for childhood that renders it pure and beautiful,” as Herr von
Arnswald tells us--“a social nursery _par excellence_.” He says:
“The gifts and games were offered by Froebel for the purpose of
satisfying and directing the spontaneous impulse to work, but not as
a sort of nourishment to feed the mind of the child. He preferred
open pasture to stable feeding. In other words, the direction, ‘Come,
let us live for our children,’ does not mean that we shall teach
children by playing, but that we shall play with them in a sensible
way. According to this view the original idea of the kindergarten can
and should be realized in every family. It is not enough for parents,
that have neither sense nor inclination to assimilate the principle of
the Froebel system, to send their children to the kindergarten for no
other purpose than that of keeping the little ones from home.... The
transformation of the kindergarten into a children’s refuge with the
appearance of a school would surely be a crime against the nature of
the child” (8: pp. 23-24).
He even goes so far as to say:
“That a child, when watched over and cared for sympathetically, will
develop more rapidly, may be an effect, but it is not the end of the
kindergarten” (8: p. 23).
The other interpretation is represented by Arnold H. Heinemann. He
says: “It was his intention to make the kindergarten not only a, but
the sole, ‘preparatory institution for the public school’” (8: p.
27). An English writer, Boardman, counts among the advantages of the
kindergarten that it “increases their (the children’s) aptitude for
the studies of later school life,” and that it “fosters a liking for
school work.” According to him, everything should be disciplinary,
educative, and carried out with “direct aim toward intellectual, moral,
and physical development,” through “the strictly correct mode of
procedure.” He understands that:
“Unlike Pestalozzi, who believed the mother to be the chief agent
in directing the child’s education, Froebel considered that the
mother should partially relinquish the charge of the child at three
years of age, delivering him over more or less to the society of
others, who would exert a somewhat different, though still beneficial
influence over his character, by which means also his limited sphere
of experience would be gradually extended, and scope given for daily
strengthening his mental and physical powers” (1: p. 40).
That both these interpretations contain a partial truth is clear from
the following quotation from Froebel’s “Prospectus of an Institution
for the Training of Nurses and Educators of Children.” He states:
“The institution intends to render generally accessible an education
in agreement with the nature of the child and of man, and satisfying
the demands of the age, and to show how such an education can be
carried on in the family. This can only be done by preparing young
ladies for the business of nursing, developing, and educating a child
from its birth until it can go to school. The course will also qualify
its pupil to prepare children for the first grade of the elementary
course of the public school” (8: pp. 71-72).
Further, he writes:
“A complete preparation for bringing up and educating children ought
to make the pupil theoretically and practically conversant with all
the requirements of the child concerning its bodily (dietetic) and
mental (pedagogic) needs from the cradle to school age. But that is
not enough: the normal school pupil ought also to be enabled to impart
a good preparation for the first grade of the elementary classes of
the public school” (8: p. 74).
These “child nurses” and “child guides” were to go out as professional
women, and “provide kindergarten training within the family” as
mother’s helpers. “But since every family cannot afford to do this
individually, it should be carried out as a problem of general
coöperation, to be solved by and for all the people.” In his invitation
to form a “General German Educational Union,” Froebel had spoken as
follows: “The improvements of education ought to begin in the home
circle, starting with the groundwork necessary for every education,
namely, the careful development of children previous to their reception
into the public school,” and “when kindergarten training is not within
reach, the union ought to devise means for procuring the necessary
help for the introduction of such training into the family circle or
otherwise” (8: p. 39). But, under the circumstances of the age, and in
the course of time, the domestic aspect of the kindergarten receded
into the background, and the institutional aspect developed, with its
natural consequence of systematization and formalization.
The original spirit of the kindergarten training was the careful
fostering and the full gratification of all the instinctive,
spontaneous activities of the child’s body and soul. The free and
complete unfolding and development of his life and being was its sole
aim. All the plays and occupations of the child were considered simply
as the free, spontaneous expression of his instinctive activities,
springing from the necessity of his inner being--the externalization
of the internal. But, gradually and unconsciously, the means and
inventions to supply the demands of this child nature became end in
themselves; the plays and occupations became the instruction and the
schooling; it came to be that the child was treated as if he lived in
order to learn these things; the “gifts,” which were invented only as
one of thousands of means to aid the child’s development, came to be
almost the whole business of the kindergarten. Let it liberate itself
from “the increasing worship of the baggages of his pedagogy,” and
return to the never-dying spirit of its originator. “Let us learn from
our children. Let us give heed to the gentle admonitions of their life,
to the silent demands of their minds” (5: p. 89).
As to the estimation of Froebel’s pedagogy there is a great disparity
of opinions. James Munroe thinks that, “without being a psychologist,
he gave a psychologic twist to all his theories, and complacently
esteemed his will-o’-the-wisp of fancy to be the beacon lights of
progress” (15: p. 200). Compayré’s criticism is no less unfavorable
when he says: “An impartial and thorough study of Froebel’s work
will abate rather than encourage this excessive infatuation and
this somewhat artificial enthusiasm.” In his opinion, “like most of
the Germans of this century, he has ventured on the conception of a
nebulous philosophy, and, following the steps of Hegel, he has too
often deserted the route of observation and experiment, to strike
out into metaphysical divigations.” “But,” he adds, “his practical
work is worth more than his writings, and he cannot be denied the
glory of having been a bold and happy innovator in the field of early
education” (4: p. 447). Quick considers his “Education of Man” as “a
book with seven seals,” and confesses that “at times he goes entirely
out of sight, and whether the words we hear are the expression of
deep truth or have absolutely no meaning at all, I for my part am at
times totally unable to determine” (17: p. 397). Yet he says: “All
the best tendencies of modern thought on education seem to me to
culminate in what was said and done by Friedrich Froebel, and I have
little doubt that he has shown the right road for future advance”
(17: p. 384). G. Stanley Hall, whose educational ideas have much in
common with Froebel, says: “His was one of the deepest, truest, and
most intuitive of minds,” and “his heart was one of the most devoted
to be found in the whole history of education” (11: p. 579). But he
regrets that “unfortunately his schematizations and applications were
not only premature but overdone.” Froebel, as a man and a thinker,
was a mystic, a pantheistic or theosophic mystic; in his training and
vocation he had been a civil engineer before he became a teacher.
This strange combination is reflected upon his kindergarten pedagogy,
ingenious schemes and devices dignified by esoteric speculations. Yet
behind these unworthy “pedagogic scarecrows” one cannot but discern
the immortal starlight of his genius brightening the highway of future
education.
The great idea of developmental stages introduced into the educational
world by Comenius was chiefly in the line of instruction, and rather
artificial. Rousseau’s great genius made it more vital and real, but
he viewed it chiefly from the standpoint of training. Froebel took a
more comprehensive and philosophical view of the matter, and combined
the tendencies of both. And while the Frenchman excels in his treatment
after the age of the teens, the German confines his study to the age of
childhood, best supplementing the former. Rousseau as a Romanticist,
unfettered by the conventions of society, called to us: “Give back to
the child its world.” Froebel, whose childhood was a life misunderstood
and mistreated, says: “Find the child’s soul and restore it to him.”
Pestalozzi wanted to restore home to the child and make it its school.
Froebel wanted to make it the ideal nursery by organizing all the
educative forces in and around it into a unity or system. Pestalozzi
tried to systematize the groundwork of sense-education, Froebel that of
instinct-cultivation. For Pestalozzi the domestic life was the chief
agent of the child’s natural development; Froebel added to it free play
in the lap of nature. For Pestalozzi, education was the development of
man by the exercise of his powers; for Froebel it was the unfolding of
the germinal spirit by self-active creation. Fichte’s creative soul
formed the cosmos within itself; it was mainly the creation of the
world of ideas; but Froebel’s produces its creation in the world of
objects. Pestalozzi became an educator by the way of a social reformer;
Froebel, by the way of a teacher. The former aimed to unite education
with society; the latter aimed to unite instruction with education.
Pestalozzi’s heart throbbed for degraded humanity as a whole, and
wanted to make out of it a people with economic independence, political
equality, enlightened intellect, and pure, loving, and pious heart;
Froebel’s eyes penetrated to the ungratified longings of an individual
soul, not understood even by itself, and “sought to give to man
himself” (7: p. 49) by leading him to what his inner nature craves to
be. If Pestalozzi was the greater educator, Froebel was the greater
teacher.
To leave these summary comparisons, Froebel is the best and truest
successor of Pestalozzi, the more so from the very fact that he
differed from the latter in many respects. By his clearer and more
comprehensive understanding of the child’s nature and wants, by his
enlarging the means to meet these, by his extending the scope and stage
of educability of the child, he best complements the work begun by his
predecessor. We may say with Carl Cassau: “He has regained for the
child its paradise, and thus crowned the work of Pestalozzi” (18: p.
464).
REFERENCES
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6. ---- Mother Songs, Games, and Stories. Translated by Francis and
Emily Lord, containing original illustrations and the music. New and
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11. +Hall, Granville Stanley.+ Some Defects of the Kindergarten
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