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he went to Switzerland, where he conducted various schools, one an orphanage in Burgdorf, the famous scene of Pestalozzi's labors.

The kindergarten period, 1837-1852.- Returning to Germany in 1837, Froebel devoted the rest of his life to the organization of education for children too young for the ordinary elementary schools. He opened a "school for little children" not far from his other school, which had continued under the management of one of his associates. The chief feature of this new school was organized play, and for several years such schools were known as "play schools." In 1840 Froebel hit upon the name Kindergarten for his new school. The latter was combined with his first school in 1844. From 1844 to his death in 1852 Froebel devoted his energies to propagating the kindergarten movement in Germany and to training girls to become kindergarten teachers. Some of the most important German cities and several of the smaller German states soon organized kindergartens, but in Prussia they were prohibited by a decree of 1851, ostensibly on the ground that they taught atheism. This was an absurd misrepresen tation of Froebel's ideas, because he considered the development of religious insight the most important aim of education.

Froebel's extremely mystical religious temperament.— It is important to understand how extremely religious Froebel was, in order profitably to interpret his notions of child life. He is commonly described as a religious mystic, which means roughly that he believed it possible to attain a knowledge of God and divine things through direct experience, as from the "voice of nature." Coupled with this mysticism, or as a part of it, was an exaggerated tendency to introspection, that is, to a reflective examination and analysis of his own mental life, his experiences, his emotions, his motives, and his behavior.

"Uninterrupted self-observation, self-reflection, and selfeducation," he said, "is the key to my life, early shown and continued to the later periods of it." If we may believe his

own account (written when he was about forty-seven years of age), he had experiences as a child that many people never have, even as adults. Thus he said in his autobiography :

Three crises of my inner life which happened before my tenth year I must bring out here before I turn to my outer life of this period. As folly, misconception, and ignorance, even in the earliest epoch of the world, are presumed to have determined its ruin, so it happened in the time of which I now speak. My inner life was then very quiet. I said to myself, very determinedly and clearly, the human race will not leave the earth until it has reached so much perfection in this dwelling place as can be reached on earth. The earth — nature in the narrow sense will not pass away until men have attained a perfect insight into the composition of the same. This thought often returned in different aspects to me; to it I often owed rest, firmness, perseverance, and courage.

These ultrareligious, introspective elements in Froebel's personality are important in relation to his educational theory for two reasons: (1) he overestimated the value of these elements in the lives of most people; and (2) he failed to realize that most children do not, in fact cannot, have such experiences.

Froebel's educational theory. — In the light of the previous discussion of the factors in Froebel's career, his theories may be divided into two classes: (1) those that are peculiar expressions of his own mystical introspective temperament; and (2) those that are based on more generally valid facts of human nature. In the further study it will be worth while to keep this division in mind.

Froebel's curriculum. - Before discussing the educational theories and practices for which Froebel deserves especial credit, however, we shall glance at the curriculum of the elementary school as he outlined it, in order to note in what respects he repeats the work of Rousseau and Pestalozzi. His discussion of the curriculum is contained in Chapter VI of "The Education of Man" and occupies the last third of the book as translated. The chapter is headed Connection between the School and the Family and the Subjects of Instruction it implies. In the second sentence he says, "The union of

the school and life, of domestic and scholastic life, is the first and indispensable requisite of a perfect human education of this period [boyhood]." This is easily recognized as a reiteration of Pestalozzi's fundamental contention. Under a " particular consideration of the different subjects of instruction" Froebel takes up the following points (I have indicated in brackets after some of the points their relation to movements previously studied):

A. Arousing and cultivation of the religious sense.

B. Respect for the body, knowledge and cultivation of it. [Same as emphasis by Rousseau, Basedow, and Pestalozzi on physical training.] C. Observation of nature and surroundings. [Typical Pestalozzian Heimatskunde leading to geography, natural history, and physics.]

D. Memorizing of short poetical representations of nature and life, particularly for purposes of song.

E. Language exercises based on the observation of nature and surroundings. [Typical Pestalozzian oral language lessons.]

F. Exercises in systematic outward corporeal representation, proceeding from the simple to the complex. [Various forms of constructive work outlined.]

G. Drawing in the network (of lines) or in accordance with outward law. [Horizontal and vertical lines used as primary guides in creating forms.]

H. Study of colors, coloring of outline pictures, painting in the network (of lines).

I. Play, or spontaneous representations and exercises of all kinds. J. Narration of stories and legends, fables and fairy tales, etc. Only the study of the life of others can furnish such points of comparison with the life he himself has experienced. In these the boy can view the latter as in a mirror, and learn to appreciate its value. [The same point emphasized by Herbart in the study of the Odyssey, etc. Froebel has probably exerted as much influence along this line as Herbart.]

K. Short excursions and walks. [Home geography of Rousseau, Salzmann, and Pestalozzi.]

L. Arithmetic. [Pestalozzian objective methods.]

M. Form lessons (geometry). [Pestalozzian.]

N. Grammatical exercises.

O. Writing. [Pestalozzian method of beginning with lines, letters, words, syllables, etc.]

P. Reading. [To follow writing.]

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Many Pestalozzian and Rousseau elements in Froebel's outline. It is evident from the comments inserted in brackets in the foregoing outline that Froebel copied many of the Pestalozzian practices directly. So much was this the case that it was not uncommon for contemporary German educators to assert that Pestalozzi had achieved all that Froebel advocated.

The similarity to Rousseau's curriculum is also evident. Many of the passages in Froebel's "The Education of Man" are so similar to the statements in Rousseau's "Émile" that one might imagine that the latter was the source of the former. This similarity is probably due to the absorption from the generally dominant Rousseau movement, from reading Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Jean Paul Richter, Goethe, Schiller, and others, rather than to direct copying of the "Émile." The following quotations from "The Education of Man" show, however, how thoroughly Froebel had imbibed the fundamental philosophy of the "Émile," namely, the cultivation of the child's instincts and capacities as the basis of education :

1. Education . . . should necessarily be passive, following (only guarding and protecting), not prescriptive, categorical, interfering. (1: 7.) [Rousseau's negative education.]

2. The young human being . . . seeks, although unconsciously, as a product of nature, yet decidedly, and surely, that which is in itself best; and, moreover, in a form wholly adapted to its condition, as well as to his disposition, his powers, and means. (1: 8.) [Rousseau's nature-is-right theory.]

3. The vigorous and complete development and cultivation of each successive stage depends on the vigorous, complete, and characteristic development of each and all preceding stages of life. . . . The child, the boy, man, indeed, should know no other endeavor but to be at every stage of development wholly what this age calls for. (1: 29-30.) [Rousseau's theory of maturing.]

4. Let parents-more particularly fathers-... contemplate what the fulfillment of their parental duties in child guidance yields to them; let them feel the joys it brings. . . . Let us live with our children. (1: 87-89.) [Rousseau's epoch-making appeal reiterated.]

Many other quotations could be given showing how similarity in certain fundamental principles of Rousseau and Froebel is accompanied by similarity in the details of education.

We will next take up three of Froebel's theories, the embodiment of which in practice is especially and directly due to his influence. These factors are the following: (1) symbolism; (2) motor expression, including play; and (3) social participation.

Symbolism. Froebel keenly interested in analogies between physical and spiritual phenomena. - Froebel's philosophy of unity and his mystical religious tendency included the belief that the same processes of change are found in physical development as occur in spiritual or mental and social development, and that the study of changes or laws in one of these realms would inform a person concerning similar changes in the other realms. Thus he said:

A life of more than thirty years with nature, often, it is true, falling back and clouded for great intervals, has taught me to know this, especially the plant and tree world, as a mirror, I might say, an emblem of man's life in its highest spiritual relations; so that I look upon it as one of the greatest and deepest conceptions of human life and spirit when in holy scripture the comparison of good and evil is drawn from a tree. Nature, as a whole, even the realms of crystals and stones, teaches us to discriminate good from evil; but, for me, not so powerfully, quietly, clearly, and openly as the plant and flower kingdom. (2: 25.)

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Believed a study of nature developed a moral insight. — The discovery and statement of analogies between physical and mental or social phenomena is a favorite pastime of poets and is to be distinguished from the contention of Froebel, that a knowledge of one will make one wise about the other; for example, that a study of the laws of crystallization will teach one the laws of psychology and sociology. This position, however, is also often maintained by poets, notably by Wordsworth.

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