Chapter VIII: 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

1. +Boardman, J. H.+ Educational Ideas of Froebel and Pestalozzi. Second edition. Normal Press, London. (Normal Tutorial Series.) 190-. 76 pages.

2. +Bowen, Herbert Courthope.+ Froebel and Education by Self-Activity. Scribner, New York, 1897. 209 pages.

3. +Cole, P. R.+ Herbart and Froebel: an Attempt at Synthesis. Teacher’s College, Columbia University, New York, 1907. 116 pages.

4. +Compayré, Jules Gabriel.+ History of Pedagogy. Translated, with an introduction, notes, and an index, by W. H. Payne. Heath & Co., Boston, 1903. 597 pages.

5. +Froebel, Friedrich Wilhelm August.+ Education of Man. Translated and annotated by W. H. Hailman. (International Education Series.) Appleton, New York, 1887. 332 pages.

6. ---- Mother Songs, Games, and Stories. Translated by Francis and Emily Lord, containing original illustrations and the music. New and revised edition. Rice, London, 1890. 36 + 212 + 75 pages.

7. ---- Autobiography. Translated and annotated by E. Michaelis and H. K. Moore. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 1889. 167 pages.

8. ---- Letters. Edited by A. E. Heinemann. Lee & Shepard, Boston, 1903. 182 pages.

9. ---- Letters on the Kindergarten. Edited and annotated by E. Michaelis and H. K. Moore. Sonnenschein, London, 1891. 331 pages.

10. ---- Pedagogics of the Kindergarten; or His Ideas Concerning the Play and the Playthings of the Child. Translated by Josephine Jarvis. Appleton, New York, 1895. 37 + 337 pages. (International Education Series.)

11. +Hall, Granville Stanley.+ Some Defects of the Kindergarten in America. _Forum_, January, 1900. Vol. XXVIII, pp. 579-591.

12. +Hanschmann, Alexander Bruno.+ Friedrich Froebel, die Entwicklung seiner Erziehungsidee in seinem Leben. Bacmeister, Eisenach, 1874. 480 pages.

13. +MacVannel, John Angus.+ The Educational Theories of Herbart and Froebel. Teacher’s College, Columbia University, New York, 1906. 120 pages.

14. +Marenholz-Bülow, Bertha Maria.+ Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel. Translated by Mrs. Horace Mann. With a sketch of the life of Friedrich Froebel by Emily Schirreff. Lee & Shepard, Boston; Dillingham, New York, 1895. 359 pages.

15. +Munroe, James Phinney.+ The Educational Ideal: an Outline of its Growth in Modern Times. Heath & Co., Boston, 1896. 262 pages.

16. +Portugall, Adele von.+ Friedrich Froebel, sein Leben und Wirken. Teubner, Leipzig, 1905. 154 pages.

17. +Quick, Robert Hebert.+ Essays on Educational Reformers. Appleton, New York, 1890. 560 pages. The same (International Education Series), 1903. 568 pages.

18. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm.+ Encyklopädisches Handbuch der Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. II.

19. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. II. Die Pädagogik als Wissenschaft von Pestalozzi bis zur Gegenwart. 3 parts. Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897-1908.

20. +Schmid, Karl Adolf.+ Geschichte der Erziehung vom Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1884-1902. Vol. III.