Friedrich Froebel

A Critical Introduction to Key Themes and Debates

Tina Bruce

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781474250450
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Théorie et pratique de l'éducation

This book considers the origins of Froebelian early childhood education providing context to the development of his theories and ideas, critically examines the key themes of this philosophy of education and explores the relevance of Froebelian practice today. Tina Bruce reflects on central aspects of Froebelian philosophy of education: the importance of family, highly trained teachers, engagement with nature, mother songs, movement games, play and self-activity of the child, the whole child and the Froebelian concept of unity. In exploring each element Bruce considers the implications for Froebelian practice and research today, and addresses the views of critics and supporters, Each aspect is considered within an international context, drawing on research and practice from across the world. The final chapter gathers together the next steps for Froebelian early childhood education, providing navigational tools and suggestions for what needs to be addressed if Froebel is to remain useful to future practitioners, researchers and policy makers.

CHAPTER ONE

The Life and Historic Context of Friedrich Froebel

In this book, I advocate a reconnection of Froebelian principles with Froebelian practices. This requires a critical look at the key debates and challenges for Froebelians of today, wherever they work in the world. It is two centuries since Froebelian education began, and since then there have been waves of interpretations sweeping the field. Some Froebelians have taken his approach literally without deviation but, in doing so, have destroyed the spirit of what he tried to do. Others have kept what they liked and allowed the rest to fade or drop away. Those who have most influenced the interpretations of Froebel from the turn of the nineteenth century have, until recently, assimilated key aspects of his thinking into developments in other disciplines and theories, such as psychology, sociology, neuroscience and postmodern thinking. In doing so, they disconnected the principles and, in effect, outlawed the practice, suggesting it to be obsolete. It is time to reconnect Froebelian principles and practices and, in doing so, unearth buried treasure. Reconnection with Froebel means looking at his work as an interconnected whole, and not in fragmented pieces. Separating principles from practice destroys his vision of Unity. Reconnectors are Froebelians who are trying to work with the whole Froebelian framework.

This chapter begins with a timeline to support readers as they journey through the book.

It outlines descriptively the key events in Froebel’s life and gives the historical and cultural context in which he lived. This is not undertaken in a strictly linear way, working instead on gathering together emergent points in his thinking, how these developed and then came to fruition.

1782–92

Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel was born, on 21 April, in Oberweissbach in the Thuringian Forest (Germany) (Figure 1.1). He was the youngest child with five older siblings: August (born 1766), Christoph (born 1768), Christian (born 1770), Juliane (born 1774) and Traugott (born 1778). His mother, Jakobine died when he was 10 months old. His father, Jakob Froebel, was a strict Lutheran pastor who spent little time with his sons, who were looked after by servants. He adhered to a literal understanding of the Bible and emphasized his belief in Hell. His father remarried two years after the death of his wife. Froebel’s stepmother at first showered him with loving care but, when she gave birth to her first child, she became neglectful of him and gradually came to reject him. He became close to his 14-year-old brother Christoph until he went to university to study theology and only came home during the holidays. He spent his time alone in the garden and in the attic. He attended the girl’s school opposite the house between the ages of 7 to 10.

1793–6

At the age of 10, he went to live with his maternal uncle who was a gentler and kinder Lutheran pastor than his father. His uncle had recently lost his wife and son. Froebel felt nurtured in this more affectionate home. He met and went to school with other boys of his age, with whom he played and went into the countryside, appreciating the freedom in this. The contrast between the two homes was felt in deep and permanent ways by Froebel. He had experienced what it felt like to be in a dysfunctional family context. He had also experienced the nurture and well-being of living in a loving and affectionate home, in which he was allowed to ask questions and to develop his own thoughts without being judged and punished. He began to tease out the difference between the God of his father’s faith and the loving God of his uncle’s Christianity.

1797–1800

Froebel left school and his uncle’s home when he was 15 years old. Having spent long hours in the garden in his younger days and later exploring the countryside with his school friends when living with his uncle, he had developed a deep love of and Engagement with Nature. He was also good at mathematics. He was apprenticed for three years to a forester but was given little tuition and so, once again, found himself spending long hours alone. However, he used the access he was given to the library to take the time to learn about botany, using books which helped him to classify the trees and plants he found in the forest. These experiences gave him opportunities to think about what the laws of nature might be. His emergent thinking about the concept of Unity began. Because of his loneliness he asked to leave the apprenticeship before the three years were completed, which made his father angry. With the support from Froebel’s siblings, his father finally gave permission for Froebel to use the small legacy his mother had left him to finance a place at the University of Jena, where his brother Traugott was studying.

At Jena he soon realized that his lack of education had not prepared him for this level of study of botany and mathematics. He began to see the need to study these subjects in a more integrated way. His botany tutor, August Johann Georg Karl Batsch, was helpful and encouraged him to see interconnections and unity in nature. He yearned for a more holistic approach to knowledge. He found himself lacking in friends, inexperienced as he was in the kind of socializing that he found at the university. He lent his older brother Traugott money, which he failed to repay in time for Froebel to pay his own bills. Consequently, Froebel was sent to the debtor’s prison for two months until released when his furious father paid off his bill.

1801–4

He considered emigrating to America or Russia to avoid the wrath he experienced from his father. However, his father became ill that year and Froebel returned home to help in the parish. They became more appreciative of each other in working together until his father died in 1802. Froebel felt it was a redemptive experience. He then left home, staying in touch with his brother Christoph. He became, through a series of different kinds of work, a bursar, land surveyor and farm manager in both south and north Germany until he made the decision that he would like to become an architect. He paid for his studies in the liberal city of Frankfurt by teaching in a school where the head of the Experimental School (Liebschner, 2001), Anton Gruner had been trained by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and soon invited him to teach in the school. Froebel taught a class of forty boys. He fell in love with teaching. He wanted to visit Pestalozzi’s training school in Yverdun in Switzerland but could not afford to do so then.

1805–7

During the summer holidays he was able to make this visit, financed by Frau Caroline von Holzhausen whose sons he tutored. He came to see her as an idealized mother. He sent her reports of his visit to Pestalozzi’s school. On his return he taught for a short time at the Experimental School again but then he became the full-time tutor of the two sons of Frau von Holzhausen. The marriage was an unhappy one. With tension between the parents growing, and Froebel’s deepening feelings for Frau Caroline, Froebel readily and wisely agreed and promoted the idea that the boys should go with him to Pestalozzi’s school to study.

1808–11

Froebel arrived in Yverdun at the historical point when Pestalozzi’s work was at its height and was much studied and visited by educators from different countries. However, he began to find that his thinking differed in quite fundamental ways. Froebel focused on the potential that he saw in children, especially the young children. Pestalozzi, he felt, saw them as they were at the time, rather than seeing what they might become. Froebel was influenced in the view he took by the thinking of the Silesian seventeenth-century thinker Jacob Boehme (Smith, 1983: 307). This led him to see life (with education being a part of life) as a process of becoming, so that change was embedded in living. He parted from Pestalozzi on good terms and Froebel always afterwards acknowledged the huge help the experience of spending time in Pestalozzi’s school had been in forming his approach to education. For example, he valued the emphasis on the use of real objects – the ‘object lesson’ – although he felt that the context of the objects should be given more place in the experience. He learnt the importance of observation, which was invaluable in his later work, and the skills he developed in this contributed in deep ways to his recognition of the educational need for young children to play. Pestalozzi recognized the importance of family in early childhood. Getting to know the ideas, thoughts, feelings and relationships of the baby, toddler or child was, Froebel gradually realized, at the heart of teaching. He gave a place to education as part of a nurturing environment from birth. During early childhood, babies, toddlers and young children are already experiencing life. They are not preparing for life. They are alive. Froebel therefore believed that at each age, education is part of life, and that this is so throughout life. His later book The Mother Play and Nursery Songs (1844) developed his thinking about the importance of home as part of the process of becoming, which continues during the whole of life. He was, he always acknowledged, deeply influenced by the time he spent in Pestalozzi’s school.

He returned with the two sons of Caroline von Holzhausen to continue as their tutor but soon left to study at the University of Gottingen because of his deepening relationship with their mother. It is possible that her son, born soon afterwards, was Froebel’s, although there was possibly a reconciliation in her marriage at that time. It is more likely that Froebel felt he must leave, given that this was so. They continued to write to each other until 1816, and without doubt she influenced his belief that women were able to be good teachers and educators.

1812

He soon left the University of Gottingen to work on crystallography at the invitation of Professor Weiss at Berlin University. This was the cutting-edge science of the time, signalling the emergence of chemistry as a new discipline. It was during this time that, in a restless state having taken the decision that he must leave the company of Caroline von Holzhausen, he developed his spherical law involving the law of opposites. This was part of his quest to find the laws of nature. This led to his developing the concept of Unity, with the interconnectivity of the inner and the outer, the law of opposites, the awareness of the self in relationship with community and nature, and for Froebel, with God.

1813

Froebel joined the army in the fight against Napoleon, but never saw battle. He met two fellow students from Berlin, Wilhelm Middendorff and Heinrich Langethal, who proved to be very important in his life and became central figures in the founding and development of the school in Keilhau.

1814

With the coming of peace, he became the scientific assistant at the Mineralogical museum in Berlin and, two years later, the curator of the museum in Stockholm pursuing his interest in crystallography which was driven by his longing to find the laws of nature.

1817–18

His brother Christoph died, leaving three young children and his widow. Their family home in Griesheim was the nucleus of his first school. His brother Christian sent his two sons to the school and so the numbers grew. Middendorff came to help (eventually taking over the school after Froebel’s death in 1852). Langethal’s younger brother joined them. A small farm was bought, funded by Christoph’s wife, in Keilhau and by 1820 the school community numbered fifty-six. Langethal joined the group to help with the teaching. From the beginning, the emphasis in the school was to help children think for themselves rather than to receive knowledge from the teacher. Middendorff and Langethal formed a crucial part of what became a stable, loyal and committed core team. These then included Froebel’s first wife Wilhelmine Henriette Hoffmeister, and after her death, Luise Leven his second wife. Wilhelmine Henriette’s foster daughter Ernestine Crispini married Langethal. Middendorff married Albertine, the oldest daughter of Froebel’s older brother Christian. Middendorff’s nephew, Johannes Barop, married Christian’s second daughter, Emilie, soon after joining the Keilhau community in 1828. This group, and others who were part of it, are the reason why his work came to fruition. He (and they) understood, over the years, the importance of working together as a community. They supported Froebel’s work, despite his lack of skill in dealing with management and finances, and they dealt with his unusual but creative and inspirational ways of working, which did not lead to easy lives for any of them.

Froebel had married Henriette Wilhelmine in 1818. She was the daughter of an aristocrat who opposed the marriage. She had divorced an abusive husband and could not have children because of the violence she had endured in her marriage. They were together until her death in 1839 in a very harmonious and respectful relationship. She supported his work and contributed to it quietly, especially in the developing of the work that led to the founding of the Blankenburg Kindergarten and the development of the Gifts which arose from Froebel’s observation of the needs of young children to play. She also quietly helped him in his work leading to the Mother Songs.

1824

The Prussian government feared that the school in Keilhau was a bed of revolution and atheism and instigated an inspection. Fortuitously this resulted in a glowing report from the experienced and respected inspector.

1826

The glowing inspection report eased the way to the publication of The Education of Man, which documents the first years of the school in Keilhau.

1827

The Prussian government decreed that children must be educated in the state schools. As a result, numbers in the Keilhau school decreased from sixty to five children. The school was saved from collapse because the builders and craftsmen who had made the expanded school did not pursue collecting their debts. It was typical of Froebel to face times of difficulty by intense planning on his vision of education. Perhaps this saved him from a state of despair. He developed the Helba Plan at the request of the Duke of Meiningen for a school, which was not carried forward. This outlined an inclusive approach from the earliest age where children of different backgrounds and religions, especially the Jewish families of colleagues and friends, would learn together, building on the individual strengths and character of each child.

1828–35

Johannes Barop arrived to teach at Keilhau and proved to be an invaluable addition to the core team. As soon as he joined the community, he reassured anxious parents and improved the school image by dealing with the financial situation. After Froebel’s death in 1852, Middendorff became head and was succeeded on his death by Barop.

Between 1828 and 1836 several schools were set up in Switzerland, with Middendorff, Barop and Langethal helping in different ways to deal with opposition which was suggesting that the schools were beds of revolution and irreligious.

Froebel had been interested in the play of young children from his days while working with Pestalozzi, and devoted more time to observing and pondering the value and reasons why young children seem to need to engage in it. When asked to help with education in the Burgdorf orphanage, he began designing the Gifts (six set...