Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology

by E. R. Murray

It may be said, too, that there is symbolism in children’s drawings, the animal or object is symbolized by that which to the child is the most outstanding characteristic. One small boy drew a camel with a rider so small that some one protested he could not see over the hump, so the artist promptly drew a second rider in front. Being asked if he could draw an elephant, he assented cheerfully and added a trunk to his camel. By the addition of claws the elephant became a cat, but at that point he paused, remarking, “It’s not very like a cat, it’s more like a bird,” and a pair of wings completed the transformations. In like manner by help of a walking stick a child becomes his own father, and a pair of spectacles transforms him into his grandmother. But in all such cases the child is dealing with ideas he has already grasped.

To say that circle or ring games help a child to gain an idea of unity—Ring a Ring of Roses may give the first dim idea of corporate unity—is a very different thing from saying that a circle is to the child a symbol of unity. This is the kind of thing, however, that Froebel is supposed to have said, but after careful investigation one is surprised to find how little there is, and to what extent Froebel’s disciples and translators seem to have read in their own interpretations.

For instance, in searching for passages about symbolism, we find in the English translation of the paper on Movement Plays, a passage stating that the “Snail Game” forms a frequent conclusion to a “games” period, because it yields the form of the circle, “which is symbolic of wholeness.” On comparing this with the original, however, we find that this phrase is an addition of the translator’s. No doubt she considered it explanatory, but all that Froebel himself says is that the game is suitable “because it finally unites all the players in a lively and completely finished whole.” To practical teachers, who know the difficulty of getting a number of children to settle down after a game, this may bear a very different meaning.

It seems to me that Froebel’s translators have been altogether too fond of the word “symbolic.” The German words usually translated “symbol” and “symbolic” are “Sinnbild” and “Vorbild,” with their respective adjectives. After considering innumerable passages in which these words occur it seems plain that Froebel’s meaning would often have been better expressed by “typical,” or by “significant,” and sometimes by “metaphorical.”

For instance, it is quite legitimate to say of such perceptions as Froebel intended a child to gain from his second “Gift”—resistance, weight, hardness and softness, noise, etc.—that the ball and cube give, and are only intended to give, “normal, fundamental and typical perceptions” (nur die normalen, begründenden und vorbildlichen Anschauungen), and Froebel goes on to say that the same perceptions must come from many other objects. There is nothing symbolic here, and there is no reason for using this word.

That in many passages significant would be a much more correct translation than symbolic is abundantly evident. Froebel was convinced, and most people will now agree with him, that there is real meaning or significance in those activities, which are common to children of all countries, and this meaning he endeavours to discover. Small blame to him if, though wonderfully correct on the whole, he sometimes hits upon a wrong meaning, in which case we are apt to fall back upon that convenient scapegoat, his symbolism.

In one of his letters he thanks his cousin for describing to him how she had watched a tiny child “who quietly let his eye travel from the ball hanging at the end of its cord, up to the hand which held it,” and he adds:

“I am convinced, and I wish that all teachers, and especially all mothers, shared in the conviction, that the very earliest phenomena of child-life are full of symbolic meaning, that is to say, they indicate the higher, the intellectual life in the child and his individual peculiarities at the same time. Our duty is to search in everything for its ultimate basis, its point of origin, its well-spring; and to make clear the connection between the outward manifestation and its inward cause.”—L., p. 101.

What Froebel deduced from the incident was that the child looks not only at the appearance of the swinging ball, but for the cause of the swinging phenomenon, the supporting, moving hand. So it is plain that for “full of symbolism” we should here read “full of significance.” Or, again, in his excellent sketch of early boyhood, with its desire to share the work of the father, its desire to explore, to collect, to construct, etc., Froebel concludes: