Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology

by E. R. Murray

Froebel, however, writes:

“Difficult, very difficult, would it be to define where the purely physical ends and the purely intellectual begins. It is precisely on account of this close welding or flowing into one another of the Physical and Psychical, the bodily and mental, the material and spiritual, the vital (des Vitalen) and intellectual, instinct and morality; it is because of this rooting of the higher in the lower that the training and ennobling of the senses, such as smell and taste, are so important.”—M., p. 183.

“Training and ennobling,” these words bring us back to the educational doctrines Froebel based upon what he knew of development, physical and mental, from whatever source he may have gained his information.

“From the beginning of the Darwinian reconstruction of the moral sciences,” says Mr. Graham Wallas, “it was absurd, while speaking of ‘environment,’ to ignore the fact that the deliberate care and contrivance of the parent must form a large part of the environment of the child.” Undoubtedly.

But it was because Froebel exalted “the deliberate care and contrivance of the parent” that he wrote “The Education of Man,” to tell his generation how best to care and contrive. It was because he realized that this deliberate care and contrivance must begin from the very first that he wrote his Mother Songs. He tells the mother here that “if she is wise, in all she does a noble meaning lies”; that she must “do nothing aimlessly or she’ll create a child she cannot educate.” He tells her that it is “by watching what makes the child’s eyes bright, that she will know how best to give delight,” and that she must “seek to strengthen power and mind in all things.”

In very truth the Kindergarten itself, with all its imperfections, is nothing more nor less than an attempt to supply that very environment which its founder is supposed to undervalue—an attempt to foster, by providing suitable conditions, those innate tendencies or natural activities, to which Froebel attached infinite importance.

This is why the discovery of the name Kindergarten gave Froebel the pleasure expressed in his cry, “Eureka, I have it! Kindergarten shall be its name.” The original designation contained the actual words “through the culture of the instinct for activity, inquiry and creation, inherent in man,” but this original title spreads over several lines of print. “Garden” to Froebel expresses just what he wanted, “As in a garden under God’s favour, and by the care of a skilled, intelligent gardener, growing plants are cultivated in accordance with Nature’s laws, so here, in our child-garden, shall the noblest of all growing things, men (that is, children, the germs and shoots of humanity), be cultivated in accordance with the laws of their own being, of God and of Nature.”—L., p. 161.

This is why he urges on his pupil, Ida Seele, to retain the name in spite of the prejudices it aroused. It is to her that he writes:

“Is there really such importance underlying the mere name of a system?—some one might ask. Yes, there is: … It is true that any one carefully watching your teaching would observe a new spirit … you would strike him as personally capable, nay, as extremely capable, but you would fail to strike him as priestess of the idea, and of the struggle towards the realization of the idea—education by development—the destined means of raising the whole human race. For, after all, what do we mean by ‘Kindergarten’?… No man can acquire fresh knowledge beyond the measure which his own mental strength and stage of development fits him to receive. But little children have no development at all.… Infant schools are nothing but a contradiction of child nature. Little children ought not to be schooled and taught, they merely need to be developed. It is the pressing need of our age, and only the idea of a garden can serve to show us symbolically the proper treatment of children. This idea lies in the very name of a Kindergarten. … How much better had you been able to call your work by its proper name, and to make evident by that expression, the real nature of the new spirit you have introduced.”—L., p. 290.