Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology

by E. R. Murray

“We cannot pass over unmentioned the fact, essential for the whole life of the child, for the whole course of his development, that phenomena and impressions which seem to us insignificant, and which we generally leave unnoticed, have for the child, and especially for his inner world, most important results, since the child develops more through what seems to us small and imperceptible, than through what appears to us large and striking … hence—wholly contrary to prevailing opinion—nowhere is consideration of that which is small and insignificant of more importance than in the nursery.”—P., p. 125.

Professor Dewey, one of the few important educational writers who do justice to Froebel as a pioneer, gives as a general summary of his educational principles:

“1. That the primary business of school is to train children in co-operative and mutually helpful living; to foster in them the consciousness of mutual interdependence, and to help them practically in making the adjustments that will carry this spirit into overt deeds.

“2. That the primary root of all educative activity is in the instinctive, impulsive attitudes and activities of the child, and not in the presentation and application of external material, whether through the ideas of others or through the senses; and that, accordingly, numberless spontaneous activities of children, plays, games, mimic efforts, even the apparently meaningless motions of infants—exhibitions previously ignored as trivial, futile, or even condemned as positively evil—are capable of educational use, nay, are the foundation-stones of educational effort.

“3. That these individual tendencies and activities are organized and directed through the uses made of them in keeping up the co-operative living already spoken of; taking advantage of them to reproduce on the child’s plane the typical doings and occupations of the larger maturer society into which he is finally to go forth; and that it is through production and creative use that valuable knowledge is secured and clinched.”[3]

So little, however, are these principles understood as Froebel’s, that in the Pedagogical Seminary for July, 1900, a paper was published on “The Reconstruction of the Kindergarten,” wherein it was maintained that the basis of reconstruction must be the child’s natural instincts. The writer, Mr. Eby, had apparently no idea that the Kindergarten was originally based on this very foundation. He evidently did not know that Froebel has given, in his “Education of Man,” a very fair account of these instincts, omitting nothing of great importance, and pointing, at least, to a better principle of classification than that adopted by Mr. Eby.[4] It is, however, only fair to Froebel to mention that he himself regarded his own account as far from being commensurate with the importance of the subject, for the year following that of the publication of “The Education of Man” he writes:

“Since these spontaneous activities of children have not yet been thoroughly thought out from a high point of view, and have not yet been regarded from what I might almost call their cosmical and anthropological side, we may from day to day expect some philosopher to write a comprehensive book about them.”—A., p. 76.

The problems Froebel endeavoured to solve are precisely those which are absorbing the genetic psychologist of the present day, as stated, for example, in Mr. Irving King’s “Psychology of Child Development,” viz.: “to examine the various forms of the child’s activity, to get some insight into the nature of the child himself”—“to get at the meaning of child-life in terms of itself.”

Every reader of “The Education of Man” will remember how Froebel uses his own boyish reminiscences to help others to understand childish actions often utterly misunderstood. In his paper on “Movement Plays” he writes:

“In that nurture of childhood which is intended to assist development, it is by no means sufficient to supply play-material in proportion merely to the stage of development already outwardly manifest. It is at the same time of the utmost importance to trace out the inner process of development and to satisfy its demands.… In the nurture, development, and education of the child, and especially in the attempt to employ him, his own nature, his own life and energy must be the main consideration. The knowledge of isolated and external phenomena may occasionally be a guide-post pointing our direction, but it can never be a path leading to the specific aim of child culture and education; for the condition of education is none other than comprehension of the whole nature and essence of humanity as manifested in the child.”—P., p. 239.