Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology

by E. R. Murray

“Thus it is certain that very many of the boy’s actions have an inner, an intellectual importance, that they indicate his mental tendencies and are therefore symbolical.”—E., p. 118.

Here, again, significant would be a better English translation than symbolical.

Again, in accordance with his belief in instinct, Froebel declares that it is his “firm conviction that wherever we find anything that gives children ever freshly a joy belonging to real life there is at the bottom of it something important for a child’s life.” When he sees that children often enjoy going to church and joining in the singing at an age when the words can have no meaning, he says: “All the spontaneous activity of child-life is symbolical (Sinnbildlich).” But there is not a word of anything that is ordinarily called “symbolical” in what follows, so far as the child is concerned. The little one is supposed to have “reached a new life-stage,” viz. “the dim anticipation that he is not alone in life, but one amid mankind.” Consequently he is attracted by “assembly life.” The most ardent believer in symbolism can make little of the very practical answers the mother is told to give to the child’s questions. He is to be answered “out of the range of his own experience, feelings and ideas, his own intellectual development and necessities.” He is to be told that when he is old enough to go to church, he will not only like to hear the organ, but will find out “why flowers bloom and birdies sing and why we still remember Christmas Day.”

There is another child in the Mother Songs, who wants to visit the moon, and drags his mother towards the ladder that he may climb up. According to the translator Froebel says he wants to point out “the higher symbolical meaning.” But what he says is that one remark presses itself upon him, how “we ought to cultivate intelligently the child’s observation of and pleasure in the moon, and in the night sky, and not let this sink into the formlessness and emptiness of mere wonder.” For example, it is, he says, quite as easy to tell a child that the moon is a beautiful bright swimming ball, as to say it is a man; or that the stars are sparkling suns which look small because they are far away, as to call them “golden pins,” and he adds “Truth never injures, but error always does.”

There are certainly some instances in which Froebel found for the tendencies and actions of children, a meaning that does not commend itself to common sense, but as a rule he only “ventures to suggest” rather than insists, and his practical application is generally unobjectionable. We assent willingly, when Froebel tells us that rhythmic movement, passive as well as active, is the earliest beginning of all ordered activity. But we smile when, in accounting for the childish interest in clocks, after allowing for the mystery, he goes on:

“Let me hold the opinion that a deeply slumbering notion of the importance of time lies at the bottom of the pleasure children take in playing with a clock.”—M., p. 139.

As he truly and naïvely remarks, “this opinion of mine hurts, as an opinion, neither the child nor any one else,” and the application may, even in this instance, be useful as he says it is, viz. that we should use this pleasure to instil the beginnings of punctuality or law and order. As an opinion it is not worthy of Froebel’s insight, and we can only say that instances of this kind are really negligible, though some have been unnecessarily emphasized by certain Froebelians to whom they appeal.

There are, it is true, a few instances which deserve the strictures which have been heaped up somewhat rashly. It is only put as a question, but Froebel does say of children’s pleasure in circle games, “May not their delight spring from the longing and efforts to get an all-round, or all-sided, grasp of an object?”

As to metaphor, Froebel delights in this; his bent of mind is to take pleasure in all analogies, and he suggests that the mother should make more use of the metaphors implied in ordinary language. For example, he speaks of “the transferred moral meaning of such words and phrases as ‘straight and straightforward,’ and of ‘walking in crooked paths.’” In using little finger plays to give a child control over his hands, the mother is told to think how important for later life is “the right handling of things, in the actual as well as in the figurative sense.” The wise mother is represented as cherishing the child’s love of light and brightness, saying, “Never shrink away from light”; and while she shows the picture she says, “Here is a boy who has broken the window and now he must go a long way to fetch the glazier unless he can content himself with a dark board that will keep out the dear bright light. You must not heedlessly stop Light’s entering your heart and mind, for if you do, you will have to buy it back by trouble and loss of time lest heart and mind become dark. Open your door and little window to the light.” Thus she makes the child “see inner things through the outer,” and uses his pleasure in light to make him hate deeds of darkness. But there is no harm in all this, the words are used as a clergyman uses the half-dozen words of his text, as a germ of thought which he cultivates, as a finger-post pointing the way in which our minds may travel. And Froebel, like the clergyman, sometimes travels far from the branching of the roads.

Froebel’s curious attempts at etymology ought perhaps to be mentioned as a weak point, though they really do not affect his theories, psychological or educational, one way or another. The ball, as the child’s first object through which he gains his first perceptions of solidity, weight, mass, etc., is described as on that account “an image of the universe” (der B—all ist der Bild des Alles). The thought is worth having, the pseudo-etymology does not much matter.