Friedrich Froebel

Friedrich Froebel (born April 21, 1782, Oberweissbach, Thuringia, Ernestine Saxony [now in Germany]—died June 21, 1852, Marienthal, near Bad Liebenstein, Thuringia) was a German educator who was the founder of the kindergarten and one of the most influential educational reformers of the 19th century.

Froebel was the fifth child in a clergyman’s family. His mother died when he was only nine months old, and he was neglected as a child until an uncle gave him a home and sent him to school. Froebel acquired a thorough knowledge of plants and natural phenomena while at the same time beginning the study of mathematics and languages. After apprenticeship to a forester, he pursued some informal university courses at Jena until he was jailed for an unpaid debt. He tried various kinds of employment until he impulsively took a teaching appointment at a progressive model school in Frankfurt run by Anton Gruner on lines advocated by the Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Froebel became convinced of his vocation as a teacher at the school.

After two years as assistant to Gruner, Froebel went to Yverdon, Switz., where he came into close contact with Pestalozzi. Though he learned much at Yverdon, he quickly discovered the weakness of organization that characterized Pestalozzi’s work. In 1811 Froebel entered the University of Göttingen, where military service in the Napoleonic Wars soon interrupted his studies. During the campaign of 1813 he formed a lasting friendship with H. Langenthal and W. Middendorff, who became his devoted followers and who joined him at a school he opened at Griesheim in Thuringia in 1816. Two years later the school moved to Keilhau, also in Thuringia, and it was there that Froebel put into practice his educational theories. He and his friends and their wives became a kind of educational community, and the school expanded into a flourishing institution. During this time Froebel wrote numerous articles and in 1826 published his most important treatise, Menschenerziehung (The Education of Man), a philosophical presentation of principles and methods pursued at Keilhau.

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In 1831 Froebel left Keilhau to his partner and accepted the Swiss government’s invitation to train elementary school teachers. His experiences at Keilhau and as head of a new orphan asylum at Burgdorf in Switzerland impressed him with the importance of the early stages of education. On returning to Keilhau in 1837 he opened an infant school in Blankenburg, Prussia, that he originally called the Child Nurture and Activity Institute, and which by happy inspiration he later renamed the Kindergarten, or “garden of children.” He also started a publishing firm for play and other educational materials, including a collection of Mother-Play and Nursery Songs, with lengthy explanations of their meaning and use. This immensely popular book was translated into many foreign languages. Froebel insisted that improvement of infant education was a vital preliminary to comprehensive educational and social reform. His experiments at the Kindergarten attracted widespread interest, and other kindergartens were started. Unfortunately, because of a confusion with the socialist views of Froebel’s nephew, the Prussian government proscribed the kindergarten movement in 1851. The ban was not removed until after 1860, several years after Froebel’s death in 1852.

One of Froebel’s most enthusiastic disciples, the Baroness of Marenholtz-Bülow, was largely responsible for bringing his ideas to the notice of educators in England, France, and the Netherlands. Later they were introduced into other countries, including the United States, where the Froebelian movement achieved its greatest success. There John Dewey adopted Froebel’s principles in his experimental school at the University of Chicago. Kindergartens were established throughout Europe and North America and became a standard educational institution for children of four to six years of age.

Froebel was influenced by the outstanding German idealist philosophers of his time and by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Pestalozzi. He was a sincerely religious man who, because of his belief in the underlying unity of all things, tended toward pantheism and has been called a nature mystic. His most important contribution to educational theory was his belief in “self-activity” and play as essential factors in child education. The teacher’s role was not to drill or indoctrinate the children but rather to encourage their self-expression through play, both individually and in group activities. Froebel devised circles, spheres, and other toys—all of which he referred to as “gifts” or “occupations”—that were designed to stimulate learning through play activities accompanied by songs and music. Modern educational techniques in kindergarten and preschool are much indebted to him.