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Week 8: Friedrich Froebel 1782-1852

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Last updated 03.05.11.

‘The plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all later life; for the whole man is developed and shown in these, in his tenderest dispositions, in his innermost tendencies.’

(Froebel, 1826/1885; p. 55)

Introduction

Froebel (1782-1852) promoted play as an educational activity because he believed it is the chief means by which the child constructs an interpretation of reality. The teacher’s task is to organise and guide the free development of the pupil through play

He offers a continuation of Rousseau’s and Pestalozzi’s identification of the source of a child’s problems as external and imposed rather than natural.

Froebel asserted that in all manifestations of nature there is an element of the divine

‘Each person, as a small, essential portion, contributes to God’s purpose in so far as he performs his part as a smoothly functioning, balanced unity.’(Curtis and Boultwood, 1953; p. 377)

Everything is bound together in an essential unity with a divine source; the purpose of everything is to realise its essence, and education is the process by which this is achieved (Bowen, 1981)

Even the least intelligent and most difficult children are essential and important members of the community – and should be educated.

Biography

Early Life

· Mother died when he was 10 months old

· Strained relationship with step-mother and little or no relationship with father

· Isolated childhood in the country led him to an appreciation of nature

· Became a forester at age 15 but did not complete his apprenticeship

· Went to university to learn natural sciences and mathematics

· Explicitly stated that forest environment profoundly influenced him and stated that man must be educated to see nature as a complete, integrated, purposeful system with himself as an integral part

Later Life

· Declined job offer of curatorship of the Mineralogical Museum and took care of his late brother’s family.

· 1807-1810 tutored the boys at Yverdon (Pestalozzi’s school)

· The Sphere (1810)

· Argued for the symbolic unity of all matter and form in the perfection of the sphere

Starting Out as an Educator

· Opened Universal German Institute in Keilhau (1816). Intention to teach children initially to ‘become German’, and then to become ‘members of the universe’

· Education of Man (published 1826)

· 1835 Asked to take charge of a new orphanage in Burgdorf (Pestalozzi’s old centre), which Froebel developed as a demonstration school and training establishment

· Beginning of Froebel’s particular interest in pre-school education and the creation of the Kindergarten

· 1849 Established the first training institution for kindergarten teachers

Influences

Influenced by German Romantic philosopher Schelling. A deeply religious man God is ever present in his pedagogical reflections, but, following Schelling, Froebel’s is a God immanent in everything. Underlying interpenetration of opposites. All things are interrelated and mutually responsive.

His doctoral thesis developed his ideas about the sphere. For Froebel, the sphere is “the basic structural unit, the final form of the universe, and the symbol of the lawfulness and unity of the worlds of mind and nature.” (Lilley, 1967, p.14)

The centrality of the sphere is carried through into his later educational writing. In its spherical nature everything emanated from the centre point, God, and retains the capacity for reunion with its own essential being or centre. Froebel’s absolute laws of the universe are geometrical.

However, although he was greatly influenced by his mathematical and scientific studies, Froebel’s writings are principally mystical. The properties of crystalline structures and of spheres which pervade his thought operate as mystical and symbolic resonators rather than as precise formulations.

In Novalis, the great German Romantic, Froebel finds an intuitive response to Nature, “a perception of the physical worlds as a manifestation of the spiritual, a ‘mystical geometry’ and an imagery of spiritual renewal and growth.” (Lilley, 1967, p.16)

Froebel could not have failed to be influenced by the most challenging educator of the day, Johann Pestalozzi, and, drawn into teaching by one of Pestalozzi’s followers, he taught for two years in Pestalozzi’s institute. However, he moved away from Pestalozzi because he was too empirical, centred too much on the child in a social context rather than in a ‘cosmic’ context. Whilst Pestalozzi’s method was effective and efficient, it lacked the spiritual centre Froebel sought. Education should be like the sphere, emanating from a central point, united and interrelated.

On the basis of an inner organising principle, the basic aim of education should be about the growth of relationships. Not only is every individual self-centred and autonomous, they are also absolutely interrelated with all other individuals in the great chain of being. Each part of the universe, children included express themselves as a part of a greater unity. Each thing in life is a whole in itself, but also a part of a greater whole.

Unity in all Things

Reconciliation of two great opposites/contradictions

a) Everything functions in relation to the Creator, the total unity

b) Every individual is uniquely different

‘ … he is both a part and a whole. On the one hand he is a member of the created universe and on the other his is a complete being, since his creator’s nature, which is a unity in itself, lives within him.’ (Froebel, 1900b, cited in Lilley, 1967: p. 93)

· Unity with the community

· Unity with the Nation - his model; for this was the school established at Keilhau – the Universal German Educational Institution – which was intended to serve as a model for the nation. In referring to teaching his pupils to be German, he writes that he does so in opposition to a vocationalism which would teach them to be “servants, shoemakers or tailors”. Though this might be deemed far more ‘useful’, Frobel’s is a higher aim, to “educate men to be free, to think, to take action for themselves” (Froebel, 1967, p.42), i.e., to follow the Enlightenment ideal.

· Unity of mankind – However, he was not a nationalist, but saw the nation as part of the whole of mankind.

All aspects of life are a striving for unity. The starting point for education is not, as Pestalozzi would have it the immediate “products of a man’s labour”, but rather, Nature, “inclusive of the works of man” (Froebel, 1967, p.35) Pestalozzi failed to allow an organic connection between all learning; “free and joyful activity flows from the vision of the whole world as a unity; all life and activity are one, for it is conditional on the essential character of the universe.” (Froebel, 1967, pp.36-7)

Two Realms of Human Experience

· Individual

· Social

Aim to produce a ‘harmonious individual’ who synthesises these realms

‘Education consists in leading man, as a thinking, intelligent being, growing into self-consciousness, to a pure and unsullied, conscious and free representation of the inner law of divine unity, and in teaching him ways and means thereto.’ (Froebel, 1826 cited in Hughes, 1897; p. 49)

Divine Purpose

Froebel’s tone is deeply spiritual. He emphasis the divine within the human, and the sacredness of the child. “From the moment of his birth the human being is to be viewed in this light. Possessing an immortal soul, he should be cared for as a manifestation of the divine in human form, as a pledge of God’s present love and grace, as a gift of God.” (Froebel, 1967, p.57)

“Man should not be satisfied with an education which meets his need only as a creature of this world but must be thoroughly prepared for all the phases of development in the natural world with which he is confronted, for the eternal here and beyond of each new moment of life, for eternal activity and life in God.” (Froebel, 1967, p.44)

Education should be far more permissive than directive, “otherwise there is an end of human progress, which consists in man freely expressing the divine spirit in his life.” (Froebel., p.53) Even arguments about didactic methods being required in order to obtain timeless and eternal truths, Froebel replies that the self evident truth relies upon the divine principle, which, on Froebel’s account, is a principle of spontaneity and self-determination.

For Froebel, the ‘implanting’ of religious sentiments in earliest infancy is important for the child’s whole education. This does not mean religious teaching, or training; rather, the “sense of community is the first beginning of all true religious feeling, of all genuine striving for unimpeded union with the eternal” (Froebel, 1967, p.62) and is realised first and foremost in the unity of the family.

Here Froebel foreshadows Marx in his emphasis on intrinsic rather than alienating extrinsic motivators to earning, “The idea that man labours only to get material things and to earn food, shelter and clothing is illusory and degrading,” but, rather than Marx’s species being, it is a spiritual purpose which Froebel identifies as the reason for labour: “He works primarily to give outward form to the divine spirit within him so that he may know his own nature and the nature of God.” (Froebel, 1967, p.65)

This “productive activity” which expresses those powers which are derived from God are seen first in earliest childhood, “its first sign is the baby’s activity of sense and limb; then it flowers into the child’s play as he is busy creating shape and form; and this is the time to implant the seeds of activity and effort for the future.” (Froebel, 1967, p.66) Whilst Froebel’s identification of the foundational importance of play in shaping the character and activity of the individual might be echoed in the EYFS, his rationale for this, to be found in his assertion of the importance of the expression of the creative and divine principle at work in the child, is not one shared by contemporary EY theory or practice.

Productive activity, in particular physical labour, should be an important part of the school for children. Children should learn to value their creative energies and to put them to productive use, for “early training in purposeful activity is as important as early training in religion which, indeed, it strengthens if its significance is understood.” (Froebel, 1967, p.67)

The developing child

For every individual, there is a final complete form. The child should be guided towards this form, the adult recognising the growth of the individual young life and the means by which each phase of the fulfilment might be realised.

The educator therefore needs to be aware of their own early life, to search into the child’s life to establish its present phase and to examine the child’s environment to discover whether it meets the growing child’s needs in its stage of development.

The connections of the child outwards from the mother into school and then the wider community are parts of the discovery of a real and important spiritual unity. The earliest stages of growth are the most important; the bonds established early serving as the basis of later relationships.

“From birth, therefore, the child should be recognised in his essential nature and allowed to use his energy freely in all its aspects. There should be no hurry to get him to use some of his powers while others are repressed” (Froebel, 1967, p.59) You might think her of the ‘hurry’ expressed in the EYFS to bring about ‘competence’ in some areas of development (mathematical, phonic, etc) at the possible expense of others (physical, social?).

Although he describes the stages a child passes through, from the sensory and physical into the mental, he is clear that “there is no hierarchy in the stages of human development, apart from the necessary order of their appearance which always makes the earlier the more important.” (Froebel, 1967, p.82) Depending on your reading of this, you may interpret a contrast with the EYFS.

Play

Froebel planned to devise an educational environment that fostered the children’s spontaneous delight of play, and exploited the outcomes of the child’s self-expression.

Learning to know and understand the objective manifestation of life is achieved through play, the purpose of which is “to guide children back upon their own nature” (Froebel, in Lilley, 1967, p.24)

For Froebel, play, like all activity, connects children into a wider network of relationships with people and Nature. “If he is building a house, he builds it so that he can live in it as grown-up people do, so that he can have his own cupboard and so on, and be able to give them something out of it.” (Froebel, 1967, p.38) That is if one gives a child something to play with – a gift – he should be able to give something back as he is not happy until he has met this human need to give and to please. In marked contrast with the atomism and materialism of modern consumerist childhood, Froebel says, “The good-natured child values only that which can serve as a shared possession, a bond of union between himself and those he loves.” (Froebel, 1967, p.38)

“Play is the highest level of child development. It is the spontaneous expression of thought and feeling – an expression which his inner life requires. This is the meaning of the word ‘play’. It is the purest creation of the child’s mind as it is also a pattern and copy of the natural life hidden in man and in all things. So it promotes enjoyment, satisfaction, serenity, and constitutes the source of all that can benefit the child. A child who plays well of his own accord, quietly persisting until he is physically tired out, will develop as an efficient and determined person, ever ready to make sacrifices for the good of himself and others. This age has no lovelier sight than that of a child absorbed in play, so completely absorbed that eventually he falls asleep as he plays.” (Froebel, 1967, p..83-4)

So we see Froebel investing a spiritual importance to play, making of play of an almost divine act of revelation of the hidden nature and purpose of human life, and indeed cosmic destiny. The significance of play cannot be overstated for Froebel, “connections with family and society, with Nature and God, all depend on his mode of life at this time when these relationships are in complete unity.” (Froebel, 1967, p.84)

Froebel’s great concern with play seems to lie principally in the moment of creative exploration itself, rather than in how this event fits into a preordained sequence. However, the child’s play does connect her into a sequence of sorts, revealing possible directions and openings. The child

“wants to know why he finds pleasure in a object and what its nature and properties are so that one day he will come to understand himself and his likings. So he twists and turns it around, picks it to pieces or puts it in his mouth and tries to bite it. We shout at him and say he is clumsy, but he is much wiser than we are. He needs to know what the object is really like because he is driven by an innate urge which, rightly understood and directed, seeks for a knowledge of God in all his works.” (Froebel, 1967, p.86)

The Kindergarten (1840)

Catered for children aged 1-7, and open from six in the morning until seven at night.

Not called a school because this implies the traditional form of teaching, when knowledge is imposed from outside.

Attempt to provide an environment where children would feel secure enough to try and match their inner lives with the demands of the outside world.

Protected and predictable environment like a plant nursery where a gardener tends his plants and allowed them to flourish:

‘Froebel does not propose to leave the child wholly with other children, nor does he endeavour to isolate it as Rousseau advised; but he places it with other children, amid favourable surroundings, and gives it the companionship of persons whose knowledge and training fits then to guard, guide and help it in its development.’

(Courthope-Bowen 1989; p. 93)

Improvement of the group and the improvement of the individual go hand in hand

‘No community can progress in its development while the individual who is a member of it, remains behind; the individual, who is a member of the whole body, cannot progress in his development while the community remains behind’ (Froebel, 1834 cited in Curtis and Boultwood, 1989; p. 378)

Curriculum consisted of:

· Games

· Songs

· Nature study

· Gifts and Occupations

Founded on the child’s inborn desire for activity, which manifests itself in self-activity, and in particular, play

‘Nature seemed to say to him plainly, almost audibly: I educate children by play. If you wish to educate them as I do, encourage and organise their play.’ (Courthope-Bowen, 1989; p. 101)

The teacher’s task was to:

‘See and observe the child; he will teach you what to do.’

(Froebel, 1885; p. 77)

Assertion of education through self-activity

‘Do not tell him in words much more than he could find himself without your words. For it is, of course, easier to hear the answer from another, perhaps to only half hear and understand it, than it is to seek and discover it himself. To have found one fourth of the answer by his own effort is of more value and importance to the child than it is to half hear and half understand it in the words of another; for this causes mental indolence.’

(Froebel, 1885; pp. 86-87)

Gifts and Occupations

Froebel intended that the creative play of the child would be facilitated by a series of geometric objects in which pure form is dominant.

Devised a coherent system of graded activities, progressing from the very simple to the complex, which would develop the child’s sensory experience and understanding of spatial relationships.

Intended to cover the whole range of intuitive and sensory instruction and lay the basis for all further teaching.

Designed to represent typical forms in nature and art, which can be classified into three categories, but which also signify the unity of the nature and art created by the source of all unity.

The gifts are expressions of unity – of the unity of Nature, of the unity of the child with God, of the unity of the child and the mother. “He comes to see the objects of play as silent expressions of love; he perceives his mother’s love for him, and through the plaything he comes to feel that the external world to which it belongs is full of life and love.” (Froebel, 1967, p.105)

The system of gifts and occupations, if divorced from Froebel’s belief if their symbolic meaning, become formalistic in a way which would not be acceptable in today’s EY practice.

1. Forms of Knowledge

Mathematical and logical ideas such as number, proportion, equivalence and order

2. Forms of Life

Representations of objects in the natural and the manufactured world

3. Forms of beauty

Aesthetic objects produced by humans or evident in nature

The gifts are intended to be presented to the child in a sequence so that they can play with them freely and discover their properties and possibilities for design

When child runs out of idea for play an adult can intervene to extend and enhance their ideas

The Gifts

First two gifts are intended to symbolise the building blocks of nature

The others intended as didactic materials to facilitate child’s knowledge of form and number, and to develop their appreciation of beauty

· Set of six woollen balls in the colours of the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Intended to introduce the very young child to the concept of the sphere, and to give them opportunities for exploratory play

· Wooden cube, cylinder and sphere. The material is deliberately contrasted with that of the first gift: the cube is presented as a contrast to the sphere, and the cylinder as a ‘transitional’ form between the two. In combination they represent knowledge, beauty and life.

· Eight cubes of the same proportion as the second gift. Can be used in various arrangements to represent Knowledge Forms (geometry and numbers), Life Forms (representation) and Beauty (pattern and symmetry).

· Eight rectangular blocks each twice as long and half the thickness of the cubes of the third gift.

· More cubes, some halved or quartered, 29 in total. 21 cubes, 6 triangle half-cubes and 12 triangle quarter cubes. These enable further exploration of beauty and life forms, and enable demonstration of Pythagoras’ theorem.

· More rectangular blocks, some halved by either length or breadth.18 rectangular blocks as in the fourth gift, 12 square blocks and 6 narrow columns.

· Parquetry tiles, whose shapes are derived from the surfaces of the previous gifts.

· Lines (sticks) The same length of the sides of the cubes of the third gift so that they can be assembled to match the edges of the earlier gifts or arranged to create patterns.

· Rings, whose diameter is the same length as the sticks.

· Points. Seeds, pebbles, buttons etc. to be used with other gifts to make representations and patterns

The Occupations

Solids

Clay, cardboard, wood

Surfaces

Paper-folding and cutting, parquetry etc.

Lines

Interlacing, weaving, thread games, embroidery

Points

Stringing beads, buttons etc.

Collective Activity

Children’s language and social skills to be developed through collective games and songs. Mother and Love Songs (1843) consisted of 45 action songs to be sung in a group.

Communal games and nature study also part of the Kindergarten routine.

The Role of the Teacher

Function of teaching is not to impart existing knowledge, but to point out and make intelligible the inner spiritual nature of things: “The child requires very little to be given to him; we need only put into words what he is doing and discovering.” (Froebel, 1967, p.86)

The human being is always in relationships and every relationship is formative. Thus the educator needs to be highly aware of their actions and intentions.

Froebel’s method was very hands-off, learning from his pupils as they explored Nature, his work, similar to that of Emile’s tutor “consisted merely in living, going out and walking in the open air.”

On record keeping:

“Since the behaviour of even the youngest child is of great significance and the expression of his thoughts may so easily be forgotten or confused, parents ought to keep a record of the child’s life in which they note down the first signs of his mode of thought, describe and interpret his development in all its aspects, and set down the effects and changes produced in his life and behaviour be certain impressions situations and ideas.” (Froebel, 1967, pp.79-80)

How does this differ from EYFS assessments and the EYFSP? For Froebel, much of the reason for keeping such a record is so that the child discovers the care that his parents have for his own unique development, and so comes to have confidence in them and in himself.

The mother is identified not only as the person who cared for a child’s physical and emotional needs, but one who also provided for his/her intellectual demands.

Therefore they were not only the mothers of their offspring but also the ‘mothers of humanity’.

Asserted that child’s first impression are also the most lasting ones, therefore care needed to be taken to ensure that child’s first instructions were sensitive and appropriate.

Froebel asserted the notion of the ‘mother made conscious’. Mother needed to be educated accordingly, as she was the child’s first and most important educator

‘The natural mother does all this instinctively, without instruction and direction; but this is not enough: it is needful that she should do it consciously, as a conscious being acting upon another being which is growing into consciousness, and consciously tending toward the continuous development of the human being, in a certain inner living connection.’ (Froebel, 1885; p. 64)

Froebel’s is a preindustrial world, and the real-life activity which he describes as at the heart of education in the family can no longer not be found or experienced in the developed West. He speaks of farmers and gardeners and blacksmiths.

“Notice how the farmer’s child can learn simply from his father’s cart or plough, or the merchant’s son from the multiplicity of things in which his father deals. These are genuine forms of knowledge and insight such as the child will afterwards learn at school only with the greatest difficulty, if at all, and which result from his life of work and play at home with his family.” (Frobel, 1967, p.89) Is it possible that the computer-bound life activity of many modern workers could yield the same richness of opportunity for their children to share? If it of the child’s nature that she learns organically through contact with the occupations and meaning of this kind of real-life activity, perhaps schools offer the only hope for stepping into the vacuum.

The movement

Size of the new school movement less important to him than the metaphor of the seed-corn – the small living group: a prefigurative ideal.

Although Frobelianism gained ground rapidly in the UK in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, what found a foothold in the public elementary school system was not the philosophical side of Froebel, but the methods and manuals, games and apparatuses which became rather restricted in their use. The grand ideals of organic child growth and the unity of God, child and nature were largely sidelined. It is perhaps interested to note how the current Early Years system in the UK engages far less with philosophy or ideals and far more with methods of effectiveness. In contrast, Kindergartens in the USA showed “a greater sympathy with the transcendental and symbolic features of Froebel’s teaching” (Lilley, 1967, p.26), where it greatly influenced John Dewey.

Conclusion

‘It is by far easier than we think to promote and establish the happiness and welfare of mankind. All the means are simple and at hand; yet we see them not. […] In their simplicity, naturalness, availability, and nearness, they seem too insignificant, and we despise them.’ (Froebel, 1885; p. 62)

References

Froebel, F. (1885) The Education of Man. (Translated by Jarvis, J.) New York, A. Lovell and Co.

Froebel, F. (1896) Friedrich Froebel's Education By Development : the second part of the pedagogics of the kindergarden (Translated by Jarvis, J.) New York : D. Appleton.

Froebel, F. (1887) Letters on the Kindergarten. (Translated by Michaelis, E. and Moore, H. K.) London, Swan Sonnenschein.

Froebel, F. (1900a) Mother's Songs, Games and Stories. (Translated by Lord, F. and E.) London, W. Rice.

Froebel, F. (1900b) Pedagogics of the Kindergarten. (Translated by Jarvis, J.) London, Edward Arnold.

Froebel, F. (1902). Pedagogies of the kindergarten. (J. Jarvis, Trans.). New York: D. Appleton and Company

Lilley, I. (ed.) (1967) Friedrich Froebel: A Selection from his Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press