The Education of Man

Friedrich Froebel, W. N. Hailmann

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN:
  9780486145303
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

In this classic of childhood education, Friedrich Froebel identifies the fundamental principles upon which he based his now-ubiquitous kindergarten system. Froebel demonstrates how to channel child's play and integrate it into the development of intelligence and social skills, explaining the vital inner connection between the pupil's mind and the subject of study.
Impressed by the theories of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Froebel developed an approach to early childhood education that exercised enormous influence over modern techniques, particularly those of John Dewey. Froebel espoused "self-activity" and play as essential factors in preschool education, maintaining that the teacher's role is not to drill or indoctrinate but to encourage self-expression through play. His method banishes mechanical and rote activities in favor of creative play, which fosters the growth of artistic capacity.
Originally published in Germany in 1826 as Die Menschenerziehung, this volume constitutes one of the most important books on education ever written.

VI.

CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY AND THE SUBJECTS OF INSTRUCTION IT IMPLIES.

A. General Considerations.

§ 86. In the family the child grows up to boyhood and pupilage; therefore, the school must link itself to the family. The union of the school and of life, of domestic and scholastic life, is the first and indispensable requisite of a perfect human education of this period. The union of family and school life is the indispensable requisite of the education of this period, if men, indeed, are ever to free themselves from the oppressive burden and emptiness of merely extraneously communicated knowledge, heaped up in memory ; if they would ever rise to the joy and vigor of a knowledge of the inner nature and essence of things, to a living knowledge of things—a knowledge which, like a sound, vigorous tree, like a family or generation full of the joy and consciousness of life, is spontaneously developed from within ; if they would cease at last to play in word and deed with the valueless shadows of things, and to go through life in a mask.

It would prove a boon to our children and a blessing to coming generations if we could but come to see that we possess a great oppressive load of extraneous and merely external information and culture, that we foolishly seek to increase this from day to day, and that we are very poor in inner knowledge, in information evolved from our own soul and grown up with it.

We should at last cease making a vain display of the thoughts, the knowledge, and even the feelings of others. We should no longer seek the highest glory of our education and of our schools in efforts to garnish the minds of our children with foreign knowledge and skill.

This is, indeed, an old disease; for, if we inquire how the German people has obtained the first principles of its present knowledge, we discover unequivocally that those first principles always came from a distance, from foreign parts, or were even forced upon it from without. Therefore, we have not even a generally accepted term in our mother-tongue for these first principles, elements, or rudiments.

The strong German mind, it is true, digested this foreign acquisition and assimilated it, but it nevertheless continued to wear the character of its extraneous origin. For thousands of years we have worn these fetters. Shall we, therefore, never begin to plant in our own minds a tree of life and knowledge, and let it germinate and nurse it, that it may unfold in beauty, put out vigorous and sound blossoms, and ripen delicious fruit, which may fall from the tree in this world and yield a new harvest in the world beyond ?

Shall we never cease stamping our children like coins and adorning them with foreign inscriptions and foreign portraits, instead of enabling them to walk among us as the images of God, as developments of the law and life implanted in them by God and graced with the expression of the divine ?

Are we afraid that our children might excel us ? What people and what time will be high-minded enough to deny itself for the sake of its children and in the interest of a pure humanity ? Nay, what father and what family will allow its soul to be filled with this thought, and thus multiply and enhance its inner power manifold ?

Only the quiet, secluded sanctuary of the family can give back to us the welfare of mankind. In the foundation of every new family, the Heavenly Father, eternally working the welfare of the human race, speaks to man through the heaven he has opened in the heart of its founders. With the foundation of every new family there is issued to mankind and to each individual human being the call to represent humanity in pure development, to represent man in his ideal purity (see § 48).

It is sufficiently clear, too, that the German mind can no longer be satisfied with the lifeless extraneous knowledge and insight of the time; that a culture of mere external polish can no longer suffice, if, indeed, we are to become self-centered, worthy children of God. Therefore, we need and seek knowledge and insight that have sprung into vigorous and healthy life in our own minds and grown strong in the sunshine and conditions of our own life.

Or would we ever again cover with rubbish the source of life which God has opened in the heart and mind of every human being ? Would we deprive our children and pupils of the unspeakable joy of finding in their souls the source of everlasting life? Would you, parents and teachers, continue to compel your children to stop up this source of life with valueless waste and to hedge it with thorns ?

You say: “ Only thus can they get along in the world. Children will soon be grown up. Who will then take care of them ? What will they eat ? Wherewith will they be clothed ?”

Ye fools ! I shall not answer you by saying, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” etc. ; for in your estrangement from God and from yourself you could not understand this. But again and again I shall say unto you, that we are not here concerned with a dull, brooding life, empty of knowledge and works (see § 23).

Mankind is meant to enjoy a degree of knowledge and insight, of energy and efficiency of which at present we have no conception ; for who has fathomed the destiny of heaven-born mankind ? But these things are to be developed in each individual, growing forth in each one in the vigor and might of youth, as newly created self-productions.

The boy is to take up his future work, which now has become his calling, not indolently, in sullen gloom, but cheerfully and joyously, trusting God and nature, rejoicing in the manifold prosperity of his work. Peace, harmony, moderation, and all the high civil and human virtues will dwell in his soul and in his house, and he will secure through and in the circle of his activity the contentment for which all strive.

Neither will he say that his son may take up any business but his own, the most ungrateful of all ; nor will he insist that his son shall take up this business which he himself carries on profitably and with satisfaction to himself. He will see that the smallest business may be carried on in a great way, that every business may be ennobled and made worthy of man. He will see that the smallest power, cheerfully and rightly applied to any work, will secure bread, clothing, and shelter, as well as respect ; he will, therefore, feel no anxiety concerning the future welfare of his children, whose soul-development has been his chief care.

§ 87. The various directions of this unified school and family life, of this active educational life, are indicated by the degree of developments man has attained at this stage, by the inner and outer needs of the boy entering upon this stage of pupilage. They are, of necessity, the following :

a. The arousing, strengthening, and cultivation of the religious sense; the sense that brings the soul of man into ever-more living unity with God; the sense that feels and holds fast the unity in all the apparent diversity of things, and by whose vigor and activity the boy’s life and actions are brought into harmony with this unity. For this purpose we have the memorizing of religious utterances concerning nature, man, and their relation to God, and particularly for prayer; furnishing him a mirror, as it were, in which the boy may see, as in a picture, his feelings, intuitions, and tendencies in their original unity with God, and thus become conscious of them and hold them fast in this aspect.

b. Consideration, knowledge, and cultivation of the body as the servant of the mind and the medium for the representation of its being, to be developed in orderly graded exercises.

c. Observation and study of nature and the external world, proceeding from the nearest surroundings to the more remote.

d. Memorizing of short poetical representations of nature and life, particularly of short poems that impart life to the objects of nature in the nearest surroundings, and significance to the incidents of home-life, showing them, as in a mirror, in their pure and deep meaning. This is to be done particularly for the purposes of song and in song.

e. Exercises in language starting with the study of nature and the external world and passing over to the inner world, but always with strict reference to language as the audible medium of representation.

f. Exercises in systematic outward corporeal representation, proceeding from the simple to the complex. Here are included representations by means of more or less prepared material (building, paper, card-board, wood-work, etc.), as well as modeling with plastic material.

g. Exercises in representation with lines on a plane, and in constant, visible relation to the vertical and horizontal direction, the media for the apprehension of all external shapes. These directions in their repetitions constitute a net-work of lines, which is to be the outer law for these drawing exercises.

h. Study of colors in their differences and resemblances, and representation of these in prescribed outlines, with special reference to the form of the outline (coloring of outline pictures) or to the color-relations (painting in the square net-work).

i. Play, or representations and exercises of all kinds in free activity.

j. Narration of stories and legends, fables and fairy-tales, with reference to the incidents of the day, of the seasons, of life, etc.

All this is interspersed in the ordinary school and family life, with the ordinary occupations of home and school.

For boys of this age should have some definite domestic duties to perform. They might even receive regular instruction from mechanics or farmers, such as has been frequently given by fathers inspired by vigorous and active natural insight. Especially should older boys frequently be set by parents and teachers to doing things independently and alone (i. e., errands), so that they may attain firmness and the art of self-examination in their actions. It is very desirable that such boys should devote daily at least one or two hours to some definite external pursuit, some externally productive work. It is surely one of the greatest faults of our current school arrangements, especially of the so-called Latin and high schools, that the pupils are wholly debarred from outwardly productive work. It is futile to object that the boy at this age, if he is to reach a certain degree of skill and insight, ought to direct his whole strength to the learning of words, to verbal instruction, to intellectual culture. On the contrary, genuine experience shows that external, physical, productive activity interspersed in intellectual work strengthens not only the body but in a very marked degree the mind in its various phases of development, so that the mind, after such a refreshing work-bath (I can find no better name), enters upon its intellectual pursuits with new vigor and life (see § 23).

If we compare the just enumerated subjects of the educational life of home and school, they appear grouped in accordance with the inner needs of boyhood into subjects (a) of the more quiet, calm, inner life ; (b) of the more receptive, intro-active life ; (c) of the more expressive outwardly formative life. They completely meet the needs, therefore, of man in general.

Furthermore, it will be noticed that they develop, exercise, and cultivate all the senses, all the inner and outer powers of man, and thus meet the requirements of human life in general.

Lastly, it will be seen that a simple, orderly home and school life can easily meet the requirements of all these subjects, and, consequently, the requirements of human development at this stage.

Let us now examine these subjects in their particulars.

B. Particular Consideration of the Different Subjects of Instruction.

A. AROUSING AND CULTIVATION OF THE RELIGIOUS SENSE.

§ 88. If the child has grown up in unity of life and soul with his parents, this unity will not only be maintained but strengthened and intensified during the period of boyhood, provided no disturbing and obstructing causes intervene.

The question here is not of that vague and indefinite unity of feeling which makes one body of two bodies, not uncommon between parents and child, but of that living soul-unity, that clear oneness of mind, which sees life as an unbroken whole in all its operations and phenomena.

This living unity of soul, this clear oneness of mind—which is not a mere external community of life—is the unshakable foundation of genuine religious feeling. For this spiritual unity between parent and child, the inner life, the pure outward representation of inner spiritual life of man is a common concern. What the father and mother because of the hindrances of life could not attain, they seek to accomplish in and through their child—the representation of pure humanity as such.

Dearly, and often painfully, the father has purchased clear and sure results from his experience in the development and cultivation of his own innermost life. His loss of strength prevents him from applying these results in his own life, but he communicates them to his son ; and the son profits by this experience and applies it in his own life with the unbroken and full energy and vigor of his youth.

Where the life of parent and child has not been an unbroken whole from the earliest beginning, these communications have no effect ; apparently the experiences of two different worlds are opposed to each other with different wants and different forces, and the connecting link is missing. Only he who has tried to secure them can appreciate the results of that spiritual unity between parent and child, which is based on the common purpose of cultivating and representing highest and purest humanity.

Such a spiritual union necessarily implies the observation of individual and common life in their inner cause and purpose, in their inner and living connection. From this the soul of man, even in boyhood, obtains the most unequivocal proofs and conviction that, to speak humanly, God continues uninterruptedly to guide mankind in its development and cultivation with fatherly protection and care, and follows each individual as an essential member of the whole in all the events of life with fatherly aid and solicitude.

How could man better express the fact that the events of life, truly seen and understood in their causes, their nature and significance, are always for the best of the individual and of the whole ? Thus, we ever speak of the divine most clearly and comprehensibly for ourselves in human terms.

The boy’s mind thus steadily grows in clearness and purity, his powers are ever enhanced and increased, his courage and perseverance strengthened by thus finding the confirmations of these truths in his own life and in that of others, in individual and common life, in experience and revelation; by thus finding the harmony and unity of revelation in scripture, nature, and life; by thus seeing himself the member of a whole unfolding from the small domestic circle into ever wider and higher realms, of a whole whose common purpose he recognizes, amid the most positive evidences of divine guidance and care, in the representation of the spiritual in and by the corporeal, of the divine in and by the human.

The life of such a family, of such a boy, will necessarily be a prayer of Jesus expressed in conduct and in deeds, a living prayer of Jesus; a rich and efficient

Christian life, trusting in God, loving God and man, spontaneously active in childlike obedience to God. Thus, the teachings of Jesus will be interpreted in their own life, and the application of these teachings in life will become possible.

Religious instruction, resting on such spiritual union between parent and child, stands on firm ground and is rich in blessings. It is fruitful and rich in blessings only in the measure in which fortunate circumstances of life have aroused in the boy at an early period a living sense, a quick and clear eye for inner spiritual life (see § 21).

There is no danger that any subject of inner spiritual life will prove in its nature too high and unintelligible for the boy’s inner spiritual sense ; let him simply receive the facts, his inner power will soon find the inner meaning in forms accessible and intelligible to him.

We do not give early boyhood enough credit for religious power as well as for mental power generally. For this reason, in later boyhood, life...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• EDITOR’S PREFACE.
• TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
• ANALYTICAL INDEX.
• I. - GROUNDWORK OF THE WHOLE.
• II. - MAN IN THE PERIOD OF EARLIEST CHILDHOOD.
• III. - THE BOYHOOD OF MAN.
• IV. - MAN AS A SCHOLAR OR PUPIL.
• V. - THE CHIEF GROUPS OF SUBJECTS OF INSTRUCTION.
• VI. - CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY AND THE SUBJECTS OF INSTRUCTION IT IMPLIES.
• VII. - CONCLUSION.
• SYLLABUS OF FROEBEL’S EDUCATION OF MAN.