Abstract
With as much justification as Herbart, Froebel might have claimed that his educational principles were nothing apart from his philosophy;2 in fact, when von Raumer issued his rescript in 1851 prohibiting the establishment of kindergartens in Prussia as dangerous to society — with their ‘three-year-old demagogues’, as a comic paper of the day commented — he did so on the ground that the principle consisted in laying at the foundation of the education of children a highly intricate theory.3
1782–1852. For life, see Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel, translated by E. Michaclis and H. K. Moore (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1886); Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel, by Baroness B. von Marcnholz-Bülow, translated by Mrs Horace Mann (Boston: Lee & Shepherd, 1895); Irene M. Lilley, Friedrich Froebel: A Selection from his Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1967).
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Footnotes
J. Watson, Schelling’s Transcendental Idealism (Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co., 1882), pp. 95–96.
1770–1831. J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1958).
Ibid., p. 11: ‘The sphere of education is the individual’s only; and its aim is to bring the universal mind to exist in them.’ For Hegel’s views on education see F. L. Luqueer, Hegel as Educator (London: Macmillan & Co., 1896).
F. Froebel, The Education of Man, translated by W. N. Hailman (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1909).
Bertrand Russell in History of Western Philosophy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1946), p. 456, enumerates the defects of the scholastic dialectic: indifference to facts and science, belief in reasoning in matters which only observation can decide, and an undue emphasis on verbal distinctions and subtleties. 2 Cf. Findlay, op. cit., pp. 68–71.
The dialectical method has apparently an attraction for some modern writers on education who would not care to be aligned with Hegel or Karl Marx. Cf. Sir Richard Livingstone, Education for a World Adrift (Cambridge University Press, 1943), p. 118
Basil A. Fletcher, Education and Crisis (University of London Press, 1946).
K. C. F. Krause, The Ideal of Humanity and Universal Federation, translated by W. Hastie (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1900), translator’s Preface.
Pp. 5, 6. This is a biological formulation of predetermined development, the psychological equivalent of which is maturation; for criticism of predetermined development see J. McV. Hunt, Intelligence and Experience (New York: The Ronald Press, 1961).
For the distinction between playing at teaching and teaching by play see Herbert Read, Education Through Art (London: Faber & Faber, 1943), p. 219
J. Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1916), p. 230.
For the fallacies in the sharp opposition of play and work see J. Dewey, How We Think (London: D. C. Heath & Co., 1909), pp. 213–14.
The name ‘Kindergarten’ came to Froebel one spring day in 1840 as with some friends he was proceeding from Keilhau to Blankenburg when from a hill he saw the valley of the Rinne, a tributary of the Saale, stretching out before him like a great garden and exclaimed, ‘I have found it. Kindergarten shall the name be.’ J. Prüfer, Friedrich Fräbel: sein Leben und Schaffen (Leipzig, 1927), p. 92. Prüfer also argues that it was not till 1843 that the institution of the Kindergarten, as we now know it, was founded, the date usually given — 1840 — being ‘durchaus unrichtig’. P. 89.
For criticism of Froebel’s use of symbolism see W. H. Kilpatrick, Froebel’s Kindergarten Principles Critically Examined (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1916).
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© 1969 R. R. Rusk
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Rusk, R.R. (1969). Froebel. In: The Doctrines of the Great Educators. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15372-5_11
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