Froebel: The Kindergarten Movement
Froebel: The Kindergarten Movement
Froebel: The Kindergarten Movement
The German educator Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852) is renowned for his pioneering work in developing a
school for early childhood education—the kindergarten, or children’s garden. A visionary educator, Froebel’s
educational philosophy was eclectic in that it was based on a variety of ideas. Froebel, an idealist, believed that
spirituality was at the core of human nature. (For more on idealism, see the chapter on Philosophical Roots of
Education). Every child, he believed, possessed an interior spiritual power, a soul, striving to be externalized.
Froebel constructed the kindergarten as an educational environment in which children’s inherent but latent
spirituality could be brought to the surface. A German nationalist, he believed that the people of each country,
including his native land, shared a common folk spirit that manifested itself in the nation’s stories, songs, and
fables. Thus, storytelling and singing had an important place in the kindergarten program. Froebel’s desire to
become a teacher took him to Pestalozzi’s institute at Yverdon, where from 1808 to 1810, he interned in the
teacher-training program. Pestalozzi served as a mentor for Froebel. Just as Pestalozzi had revised Rousseau’s
method, Froebel revised Pestalozzi’s method. Froebel endorsed selected aspects of Pestalozzi’s method, such as
using sensation and objects in a permissive school atmosphere, but he believed that Pestalozzi’s process needed
a more philosophical foundation. Froebel gave Pestalozzi’s object lesson a more symbolic meaning by asserting
that the concrete object would stimulate recall of a corresponding concept in the child’s mind. He readily
accepted Pestalozzi’s vision of schools as emotionally secure places for children but redefined the child’s
growth in spiritual terms. Like Comenius, Rousseau, and Pestalozzi, Froebel wanted teachers to be sensitive to
children’s readiness and needs rather than taskmasters who heard preset recitations and forced children to
memorize words they did not understand.
A philosophical idealist, Froebel believed that every child’s inner self contained a spiritual essence that
stimulated self-active learning. He therefore designed the kindergarten as a “prepared environment” in which
children could externalize their interior spirituality through self-activity. Froebel’s kindergarten, first founded in
1837 in Blankenburg, was a permissive environment featuring games, play, songs, stories, and crafts. The
kindergarten’s songs, stories, and games, now a standard part of early childhood education, stimulated
children’s imaginations and introduced them to the culture’s folk heroes and heroines and values. The games
socialized children and developed their physical and motor skills. As the boys and girls played with other
children, they became part of the group and were prepared for further socialized learning activities. The
curriculum also included “gifts,” objects with fixed form, such as spheres, cubes, and cylinders, which were
intended to bring to full consciousness the underlying concept represented by the object. In addition, Froebel’s
kindergarten featured “occupations,” which consisted of materials children could shape and use in design and
construction activities. For example, clay, sand, cardboard, and sticks could be manipulated and shaped into
castles, cities, and mountains.
We form our first impressions of schools and teachers in kindergarten and carry these impressions with us
throughout our lives. Froebel believed the kindergarten teacher’s personality to be of paramount importance.
Did the teacher really understand the child’s nature and respect the dignity of the child’s human personality?
Did the teacher personify the highest cultural values so that children could imitate those values? Pre service
experiences should help teachers become sensitive to children’s needs and give them the knowledge and skills
required to create caring and wholesome learning environments. Froebel would encourage kindergarten
teachers to resist the contemporary pressures to introduce academic subjects into kindergartens as a
premature pressure that comes from adults, often parents, rather than from the children’s needs and
readiness.
Kindergarten education grew into an international movement. German immigrants brought the kindergarten
to the United States, where it became part of the American school system. Elizabeth Peabody, who founded
an English-language kindergarten, worked to make the kindergarten part of the American school system.