Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology

by E. R. Murray

“For what man tries to represent or do he begins to understand.”—E., p. 76.

“As now, habit in the child proceeds from spontaneous and independent activity, so also does imitation; … the whole inner life of the child shows itself as a tri-unity in the three-#fold phenomenon of spontaneous activity, habit and imitation.”—P., p. 28.

It is impossible to make plain how Froebel regarded play, until it is known how he regarded work, work, too, not only for a child but for a human being. What he desired for all was work which produces joy; he calls it “a debasing illusion that man works, produces, creates, only in order to preserve his body, only to secure food, clothing and shelter.” Man, he says, works “primarily and in truth that his real essence may assume outward form,” and one of his sayings is that “the true spirit of life is the genuine spirit of play.” In an ideal state of affairs, no human being would be condemned to entirely mechanical work. Work “worthy of the nature of man” is to Froebel work which in some way expresses the man; mechanical work is dismissed as “degrading man into a beast of burden or a machine.” It is because man is of God that he must work, must produce. “Nearer we hold of God who gives, than of his tribes who take, I must believe,” is Froebel’s thought in Browning’s words:

“Each thought of God is a work, an act, a result.… God created man in His own image. Therefore man must create and work like God. Man’s spirit must hover over the unformed and move it that figure and form may come forth. This is the higher meaning, the deep significance, the great purpose of work and industry, of working, and, as it is truly significantly called, of creating. We become like God by diligence and industry, by work and action, which are accompanied by the clear perception or even the least anticipation that thereby we represent the inner by the outer; that we give body to spirit and form to thought, make visible the invisible, give an outward transient existence to the eternal that lives in the spirit.… Early work, guided in accordance with its inner meaning, confirms and elevates religion. Religion without work is apt to become empty dreaming.”—E., p. 30.

“The boy is to take up his future work which now has become his calling, not indolently in sullen gloom, but cheerfully and joyously, trusting God, himself and Nature, rejoicing in the manifold prosperity of his work.… Nor will the father say that his son must take up his own business … he will see that every business may be ennobled and made worthy of man.”—E., p. 233.

It is too cheap a jibe to throw at Froebel and his educational theories that he makes little distinction between work and play. It ought never to come from any one who has made even a slight study of psychology. The sting is meant to lie in the suggestion that play is trifling and easy and that it requires no exertion, while work is serious and demands concentrated effort, but this view will not bear any consideration. Every one knows that the play even of an adult, where the differentiation between work and play ought to be more possible, is often most exhausting, either to body or to mind. As to the play of childhood, one of the best known passages in “The Education of Man” is the one in which Froebel protests that:

“Play at this time is not trivial, it is highly serious and of deep significance.”—E., p. 55.

It is in this passage, too, that he speaks of the child “wholly absorbed in play,” who after “playing enduringly even to the point of fatigue” has fallen asleep “while so absorbed,” and calls this “the most beautiful expression of child-life at this stage.”

It is Froebel’s glory that as early as 1826 he had applied the theory of development to education and, rightly or wrongly, he believed that if we could but supply to our school children material suited to their needs according to their stage of development, they would respond with the same eagerness that the younger child shows in what we call his play, but what Froebel called his “self-culture and self-education.” He states this view quite distinctly:

“We have considered the object and aim of human life in general.… It now remains to show in what sequence and connection the life impulses of the boy develop at this stage, how and in what order and form, the school should work in order to satisfy human instincts in general, and especially the instincts of the boy at this stage of school-life.