Even his detractors generally allow that Froebel had a wonderful insight into child-nature, but this is too often spoken of as if it were due to some specialized faculty of intuition, not known to psychology.
Froebel’s knowledge of child-nature came to him precisely as it comes to the psychologist of the present day, through patient observation of the doings of little children, and thoughtful interpretation of their possible meaning. It is true that he drew his conclusions from too narrow a field, but of this he was well aware. In a letter to a cousin thanking her for the “comparative account of the various manifestations of children,” which she had sent him, he complains, and this, be it remembered, in 1840, that “it is a subject to which one can rarely get even cultivated parents to pay attention,” and he adds:
“I would beg of you to collect as many observations for me as you can, both things which you yourself have observed, and also remarks made by your Robert and the other children when at play. If you have the time for this, pray do it for the furtherance of the cause; other friends are at work for me in the same way.”—L., p. 67.
In another letter to this cousin he says:
“It would delight me greatly if you could confide to me what you remember of your feelings, perceptions, and ideas as a mother greeting the new-born life of her infant, and your observations of the first movements of its limbs and the beginning of the development of its senses.”—L., p. 110.
To another friend he writes:
“In the interests of the children I have still another request to make—that you would record in writing the most important facts about each separate child. It seems to me most necessary for the comprehension, and for the true treatment of child-nature, that such observations should be made public from time to time, in order that children may become better and better understood in their manifestations, and may therefore be more rightly treated, and that true care and observation of unsophisticated childhood may ever increase.”—L., p. 89.
Froebel made these requests, as he made his own observations, as the result of the conviction with which he declares himself “thoroughly penetrated,”
“that the movements of the young and delicate mind of the child, although as yet so small as to be almost unnoticeable, are of the most essential consequence to his future life.”—P., p. 53.
“Why do we observe the child less than the germ of a plant? Is it to be supposed that in the child, the capacity to become a complete human being is contained less than in the acorn is contained the capacity to become a strong, vigorous and complete oak?”—P., p. 62.