Years afterwards, the celebrated Jahn (the "Father Jahn" of the German gymnastics) told a Berlin student of a queer fellow he had met, who made all sorts of wonderful things from stones and cobwebs. This queer fellow was Froebel; and the habit of making out general truths from the observation of nature, especially from plants and trees, dated from the solitary rambles in the Forest.
As the cultivator creates nothing in the trees and plants, so the educator creates nothing in the children,—he merely superintends the development of inborn faculties. So far Froebel agrees with Pestalozzi; but in one respect he was beyond him, and has thus become, according to Michelet, the greatest of educational reformers. Pestalozzi said that the faculties were developed by exercise. Froebel added that the function of education was to develop the faculties by arousing voluntary activity. Action proceeding from inner impulse (Selbsthäligkeit) was the one thing needful, and here Froebel as usual refers to God: "God's every thought is a work, a deed." As God is the Creator, so must man be a creator also. Living acting, conceiving,—these must form a triple cord within every child of man, though the sound now of this string, now of that may preponderate, and then again of two together.
Pestalozzi held that the child belonged to the family; Fichte on the other hand, claimed it for society and the State. Froebel, whose mind, like that of Frederick Maurice, delighted in harmonizing apparent contradictions, and who taught that "all progress lay through opposites to their reconciliations," maintained that the child belonged both to the family and to society, and he would therefore have children spend some hours of the day in a common life and in well-organized common employments. These assemblies of children he would not call schools, for the children in them ought not to be old enough for schooling. So he invented the term Kindergarten, garden of children, and called the superintendents "children's gardeners."—R.H. QUICK, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, xix edition.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| INTRODUCTORY | [1], [2] |
| LETTER TO THE DUKE OF MEININGEN | [3]-[101] |
| Birth and early life | [3], [104] |
| Enters the girls' school | [9] |
| Goes away from home to Stadt-Ihm | [15] |
| Is apprenticed to a forester | [24] |
| Returns to his father's house | [27] |
| Goes to the University of Jena | [28], [105] |
| Returns home again | [35] |
| Goes to Bamberg as clerk | [33] |
| Becomes land-surveyor | [39] |
| Goes to the Oberfalz as accountant | [42] |
| Soon after to Mecklenberg | [42] |
| Gets small inheritance from his uncle | [43] |
| Goes to Frankfurt | [48], [107] |
| Becomes teacher in the Model School | [31], [109] |
| Visits Pestalozzi | [52] |
| Resigns to become a private tutor | [65], [110] |
| Takes his three pupils to Yverdon | [77] |
| Returns to Frankfurt | [84] |
| Goes to the University of Göttingen | [84], [111] |
| Goes to Berlin | [89], [111] |
| Enters the army | [91], [111], [120] |
| Becomes curator in Berlin | [96], [111], [121] |
| Enlists in the army again | [100], [121] |
| SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS BY THE TRANSLATORS | [102], [103] |
| LETTER TO KRAUSE | [104]-[125] |
| Begins at Griesheim his ideal work | [113], [121] |
| Undertakes education of his nephews | [121] |
| Moves to Keilhau | [122], [127] |
| NOTE BY THE TRANSLATORS | [126] |
| CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE FROEBEL COMMUNITY | [127]-[137] |
| Froebel goes to the Wartensee | [131] |
| Then to Willisau | [132], [136] |
| Then to the Orphanage at Burgdorf | [135], [136] |
| Visits Berlin | [137] |
| NOTES BY THE TRANSLATORS | [138], [139] |
| Death of Froebel | [138] |
| CHRONOLOGICAL ABSTRACT OF FROEBEL'S LIFE AND MOVEMENT | [140]-[144] |
| BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FROEBEL | [145]-[152] |
| INDEX | [153]-[167] |
INTRODUCTORY.
The year 1882 was the centenary of Froebel's birth, and in the present "plentiful lack" of faithful translations of Froebel's own words we proposed to the Froebel Society to issue a translation of the "Education of Man," which we would undertake to make at our own cost, that the occasion might be marked in a manner worthy of the English branch of the Kindergarten movement. But various reasons prevented the Society from accepting our offer, and the lamentable deficiency still continues. We have therefore endeavoured to make a beginning by the present work, consisting of Froebel's own words done into English as faithfully as we know how to render them, and accompanied with any brief explanation of our own that may be essential to the clear understanding of the passages given. We have not attempted to rewrite our author, the better to suit the practical, clear-headed, common-sense English character, but have preferred simply to present him in an English dress with his national and personal peculiarities untouched.
In so doing we are quite aware that we have sacrificed interest, for in many passages, if not in most, a careful paraphrase of Froebel would be much more intelligible and pithy to English readers than a true rendering, since he probably possesses every fault of style except over-conciseness; but we feel that it is better to let Froebel speak for himself.
For the faithfulness of translation we hope our respective nationalities may have stood us in good stead. We would, however, add that a faithful translation is not a verbal translation. The translator should rather strive to write each sentence as the author would have written it in English.