For a time, at least in Bavaria, a curious compromise was allowed. If the teacher were a member of the Orthodox Church, she might have her Kindergarten, but if she belonged to one of the Free Churches, it was permissible to open an Infant School, but she must not use the term Kindergarten.
Froebel was by no means of the opinion that, if only the teacher had the right spirit, the name did not matter. Rather did he hold with Confucius, whose answer to the question of a disciple, "How shall I convert the world?" was, "Call things by their right names." He refused to use the word school, because "little children, especially those under six, do not need to be schooled and taught, what they need is opportunity for development." He had great difficulty in selecting a name. Those originally suggested were somewhat cumbrous, e.g. Institution for the Promotion of Spontaneous Activity in Children; another was Self-Teaching Institution, and there was also the one which Madame Michaelis translated "Nursery School for Little Children."
But the name Kindergarten expressed just what he Wanted: "As in a garden, under God's favour, and by the care of a skilled intelligent gardener, growing plants are cultivated in accordance with Nature's laws, so here in our child garden shall the noblest of all growing things, men (that is, children), be cultivated in accordance with the laws of their own being, of God and of Nature."
To one of his students he writes: "You remember well enough how hard we worked and how we had to fight that we might elevate the Darmstadt crèche, or rather Infant School, by improved methods and organisation until it became a true Kindergarten…. Now what was the outcome of all this, even during my own stay at Darmstadt? Why, the fetters which always cripple a crèche or an Infant School, and which seem to cling round its very name—these fetters were allowed to remain unbroken. Every one was pleased with so faithful a mistress as yourself,… yet they withheld from you the main condition of unimpeded development, that of the freedom necessary to every young healthy and vigorous plant…. Is there really such importance underlying the mere name of a system?—some one might ask. Yes, there is…. It is true that any one watching your teaching would observe a new spirit infused into it, expressing and fulfilling the child's own wants and desires. You would strike him as personally capable, but you would fail to strike him as priestess of the idea which God has now called to life within man's bosom, and of the struggle towards the realisation of that idea—education by development—the destined means of raising the whole human race…. No man can acquire fresh knowledge, even at a school, beyond the measure which his own stage of development fits him to receive…. Infant Schools are nothing but a contradiction of child-nature. Little children especially those under school age, ought not to be schooled and taught, what they need is opportunity for development. This idea lies in the very name of a Kindergarten…. And the name is absolutely necessary to describe the first education of children."
For an actual definition of what Froebel meant by his Nursery School for Little Children or Kindergarten, it is only fair to go to the founder himself. He has left us two definitions or descriptions, one announced shortly before the first Kindergarten was opened, which runs:
"An institution for the fostering of human life, through the cultivation of the human instincts of activity, of investigation and of construction in the child, as a member of the family, of the nation and of humanity; an institution for the self-instruction, self-education and self-cultivation of mankind, as well as for all-sided development of the individual through play, through creative self-activity and spontaneous self-instruction."
A second definition is given in Froebel's reply to a proposal that he should establish "my system of education—education by development"—in London, Paris or the United States:
"We also need establishments for training quite young children in their first stage of educational development, where their training and instruction shall be based upon their own free action or spontaneity acting under proper rules, these rules not being arbitrarily decreed, but such as must arise by logical necessity from the child's mental and bodily nature, regarding him as a member of the great human family; such rules as are, in fact, discovered by the actual observation of children when associated together in companies. These establishments bear the name of Kindergartens."
Unfortunately there are but few pictures of Froebel's own Kindergarten, but there seems to have been little formality in its earliest development. An oft-told story is that of Madame von Marenholz in 1847 going to watch the proceedings of "an old fool," as the villagers called him, who played games with the village children. A less well-known account is given by Col. von Arnswald, again a Keilhau boy, who visited Blankenberg in 1839, when Froebel had just opened his first Kindergarten.
"Arriving at the place, I found my Middendorf[3] seated by the pump in the market-place, surrounded by a crowd of little children. Going near them I saw that he was engaged in mending the jacket of a boy. By his side sat a little girl busy with thread and needle upon another piece of clothing; one boy had his feet in a bucket of water washing them carefully; other girls and boys were standing round attentively looking upon the strange pictures of real life before them, and waiting for something to turn up to interest them personally. Our meeting was of the most cordial kind, but Middendorf did not interrupt the business in which he was engaged. 'Come, children,' he cried, 'let us go into the garden!' and with loud cries of joy the little folk with willing feet followed the splendid-looking, tall man, running all round him.