Froebel died in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-two. His first Kindergarten was not a success until he was nearly sixty years old, but the idea had been perfecting itself in his mind more or less unconsciously for over thirty years.
He had been thinking, writing, working, experimenting all these years on the subject of education, and he had become well-nigh discouraged. He had observed that six was the "school age." That is, no child could go to school until he was six years old—then his education began.
But Froebel had been teaching in a country school and boarding 'round, and he had discovered that long before this the child had been learning by observing and playing, and that these were formative influences, quite as potent as actual school.
In the big families where Froebel boarded, he noticed that the older girls took charge of the younger ones. So, often a girl of ten, with dresses to her knees, carried one baby in her arms and two toddled behind her, and this child of ten was really the other-mother. The true mother worked in the fields or toiled at her housework, and the little other-mother took the children out to play and thus amused them while the mother worked.
The desire of Froebel was to educate the race, but what are a few hours a day in a schoolroom with a totally unsympathetic home environment!
To reach and interest the mother in the problem of education was well-nigh impossible. Toil, deprivation, poverty, had killed all the romance and enthusiasm in her heart. She was the victim of arrested development; but the little other-mother was a child, impressionable, immature, and she could be taught. The home must co-operate with the school, otherwise all the school can teach will be forgotten in the home. Froebel saw, too, that often the little other-mother was so overworked in the care of her charges that she was taken from school. Besides, the idea was abroad that education was mostly for boys, anyway.
And here Froebel stepped in and proved himself a law-breaker, just as Ben Lindsey was when he inaugurated the juvenile court and waived the entire established legal procedure, even to the omission of swearing his witnesses, and believed in the little truant even though he lied. Froebel told the little other-mothers to come to school anyway and bring the babies with them.
And then he set to work showing these girls how to amuse, divert and teach the babies. And he used to say the babies taught him.
Some of these half-grown girls showed a rare adaptability as teachers. They combined mother-love and the teaching instinct.
Froebel utilized their services in teaching others in order that he might teach them.