To another German, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), we are indebted, directly or indirectly, for three other additions to elementary education —the kindergarten, the play idea, and handwork activities.
ORIGIN OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Of German parentage, the son of a rural clergyman, early estranged from his parents, retiring and introspective by nature, having led a most unhappy childhood, and apprenticed to a forester without his wishes being consulted, at twenty-three Froebel decided to become a schoolteacher and visited Pestalozzi in Switzerland. Two years later he became the tutor of three boys, and then spent the years 1808-10 as a student and teacher in Pestalozzi's Institute at Yverdon. During his years there Froebel was deeply impressed with the great value of music and play in the education of children, and of all that he carried away from Pestalozzi's institution these ideas were most persistent. After serving in a variety of occupations—student, soldier against Napoleon, and curator in a museum of mineralogy—he finally opened a little private school, in 1816, which he conducted for a decade along Pestalozzian lines. In this the play idea, music, and the self-activity of the pupils were uppermost. The school was a failure, financially, but while conducting it Froebel thought out and published (1826) his most important pedagogical work—The Education of Man.
Gradually Froebel became convinced that the most needed reform in education concerned the early years of childhood. His own youth had been most unhappy, and to this phase of education he now addressed himself. After a period as a teacher in Switzerland he returned to Germany and opened a school for little children in which plays, games, songs, and occupations involving self-activity were the dominating characteristics, and in 1840 he hit upon the name Kindergarten for it. In 1843 his Mutter- und Kose-Lieder, a book of fifty songs and games, was published. This has been translated into almost all languages.
SPREAD OF THE KINDERGARTEN IDEA. After a series of unsuccessful efforts to bring his new idea to the attention of educators, Froebel, himself rather a feminine type, became discouraged and resolved to address himself henceforth to women, as they seemed much more capable of understanding him, and to the training of teachers in the new ideas. Froebel was fortunate in securing as one of his most ardent disciples, just before his death, the Baroness Bertha von Marenholtz Bulow-Wendhausen (1810-93), who did more than any other person to make his work known. Meeting, in 1849, the man mentioned to her as "an old fool," she understood him, and spent the remainder of her life in bringing to the attention of the world the work of this unworldly man who did not know how to make it known for himself. In 1851 the Prussian Government, fearing some revolutionary designs in the new idea, and acting in a manner thoroughly characteristic of the political reaction which by that time had taken hold of all German official life, forbade kindergartens in Prussia. The Baroness then went to London and lectured there on Froebel's ideas, organizing kindergartens in the English "ragged schools." Here, by contrast, she met with a cordial reception. She later expounded Froebelian ideas in Paris, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and (after 1860, when the prohibition was removed) in Germany. In 1870 she founded a kindergarten training-college in Dresden. Many of her writings have been translated into English, and published in the United States.
Considering the importance of this work, and the time which has since elapsed, the kindergarten idea has made relatively small progress on the continent of Europe. Its spirit does not harmonize with autocratic government. In Germany and the old Austro-Hungary it had made but little progress up to 1914. Its greatest progress in Europe, perhaps, has been in democratic Switzerland. [16] In England and France, the two great leaders in democratic government, the Infant-School development, which came earlier, has prevented any marked growth of the kindergarten. In England, though, the Infant School has recently been entirely transformed by the introduction into it of the kindergarten spirit. [17] In France, infant education has taken a somewhat different direction. [18]
In the United States the kindergarten idea has met with a most cordial reception. In no country in the world has the spirit of the kindergarten been so caught and applied to school work, and probably nowhere has the original kindergarten idea been so expanded and improved. [19] The first kindergarten in the United States was a German kindergarten, established at Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1855, by Mrs. Carl Schurz, a pupil of Froebel. During the next fifteen years some ten other kindergartens were organized in German-speaking communities. The first English-speaking kindergarten was opened privately in Boston, in 1860, by Miss Elizabeth Peabody. In 1868 a private training-college for kindergartners was opened in Boston, largely through Miss Peabody's influence, by Madame Matilde Kriege and her daughter, who had recently arrived from Germany. In 1872 Miss Marie Boelte opened a similar teacher-training school in New York City, and in 1873 her pupil, Miss Susan Blow, accepted the invitation of Superintendent William T. Harris, of St. Louis, to go there and open the first public-school kindergarten in the United States. [20]
To-day the kindergarten is found in some form in nearly all countries in the world, having been carried to all continents by missionaries, educational enthusiasts, and interested governments. [21] Japan early adopted the idea, and China is now beginning to do so.
THE KINDERGARTEN IDEA. The dominant idea in the kindergarten is natural but directed self-activity, focused upon educational, social, and moral ends. Froebel believed in the continuity of a child's life from infancy onward, and that self-activity, determined by the child's interests and desires and intelligently directed, was essential to the unfolding of the child's inborn capacities. He saw, more clearly than any one before him had done, the unutilized wealth of the child's world; that the child's chief characteristic is self-activity; the desirability of the child finding himself through play; and that the work of the school during these early years was to supplement the family by drawing out the child and awakening the ideal side of his nature. To these ends doing, self activity, and expression became fundamental to the kindergarten, and movement, gesture, directed play, song, color, the story, and human activities a part of kindergarten technique. Nature study and school gardening were given a prominent place, and motor-activity much called into play. Advancing far beyond Pestalozzi's principle of sense- impressions, Froebel insisted on motor-activity and learning by doing (R. 358).
Froebel, as well as Herbart, also saw the social importance of education, and that man must realize himself not independently amid nature, as Rousseau had said, but as a social animal in coöperation with his fellowmen. Hence he made his schoolroom a miniature of society, a place where courtesy and helpfulness and social coöperation were prominent features. This social and at times reverent atmosphere of the kindergarten has always been a marked characteristic of its work. To bring out social ideas many dramatic games, such as shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and farmer, were devised and set to music. The "story" by the teacher was made prominent, and this was retold in language, acted, sung, and often worked out constructively in clay, blocks, or paper. Other games to develop skill were worked out, and use was made of sand, clay, paper, cardboard, and color. The "gifts" and "occupations" which Froebel devised were intended to develop constructive and aesthetic power, and to provide for connection and development they were arranged into an organized series of playthings. Individual development as its aim, motor-expression as its method, and social coöperation as its means were the characteristic ideas of this new school for little children (R. 358).
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Wholly aside from the specific training given children during the year, year and a half, or two years they spend in this type of school, the addition of the kindergarten to elementary-school work has been a force of very large significance and usefulness. The idea that the child is primarily an active and not a learning animal has been given new emphasis, and that education comes chiefly by doing has been given new force. The idea that a child's chief business is play has been a new conception of large educational value. The elimination of book education and harsh discipline in the kindergarten has been an idea that has slowly but gradually been extended upward into the lower grades of the elementary school.