Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel | Page 3

chaleur du
sentiment, la vie intime et profonde de l'âme, qui respectait la liberté et
la spontanéité de l'enfant, qui enfin s'efforçait d'écarter de lui les
mauvaises influences et de faire à son innocence un milieu digne
d'elle--COMPAYRÉ's _Histoire Critique des Doctrines de l'Éducation
en France depuis le XVIme Siécle_, Paris, 1879, ii. 125.
We might say that his effort in pedagogy consists chiefly in organizing
into a system the sense intuitions which Pestalozzi proposed to the
child somewhat at random and without direct plan.--COMPAYRÉ's
History of Pedagogy, Payne's translation, Boston, 1886, p. 449.
Er war gleich Pestalozzi von den höchsten Ideen der Zeit getragen und
suchte die Erziehung an diese Ideen anzuknüpfen. So lange die Mutter
nicht nach den Gesetzen der Natur ihr Kind erzieht und bildet und dafür
nicht ihr Leben einsetst, so lange--davon geht er aus--sind alle
Reformen der Schule auf Sand gebaut. Trotsdem verlegt er einen Theil
der mütterlichen Aufgabe in den Kindergarten, in welchem er die
Kinder vor ihre Schulpflichtigkeit vereinigt wissen will, (1) um auf die
häusliche Erziehung ergänzend und verbessernd einzuwirken, (2) um
das Kind aus dem Einzelleben heraus Zum Verkehr mil seinesgleichen
zu führen, und (3) um dem weiblichen Geschlechte Gelegenheit zu
geben, sich auf seinen erzieherischen Beruf vorzubereiten.--BÖHM's
_Kurzgefasste Geschichte der Pädagogik_, Nürnberg, 1880, p. 134.
Le jardin d'enfants est évidemment en opposition avec l'idée
fondamentale de Pestalozzi; car celui-ci avait confié entièrement à la
mère et au foyer domestique la tâche que Froebel remet, en grande

partie, aux jardins d'enfants et à sa directrice. A l'égard des rapports de
l'éducation domestique, telle qui elle est à l'heure qu'il est, on doit
reconnaître que Froebel avait un coup-d'oeil plus juste que
Pestalozzi.--_Histoire d'Éducation_, FREDERICK DITTES, Redolfi's
French translation, Paris, 1880, p. 258.
While others have taken to the work of education their own
pre-conceived notions of what that work should be, Froebel stands
consistently alone in seeking in the nature of the child the laws of
educational action--in ascertaining from the child himself how we are
to educate him.--JOSEPH PAYNE, Lectures on the Science and Art of
Education, Syracuse, 1885, p. 254.
Years afterwards, the celebrated Jahn (the "Father Jahn" of the German
gymnastics) told a Berlin student of a queer fellow he had met, who
made all sorts of wonderful things from stones and cobwebs. This
queer fellow was Froebel; and the habit of making out general truths
from the observation of nature, especially from plants and trees, dated
from the solitary rambles in the Forest.
As the cultivator creates nothing in the trees and plants, so the educator
creates nothing in the children,--he merely superintends the
development of inborn faculties. So far Froebel agrees with Pestalozzi;
but in one respect he was beyond him, and has thus become, according
to Michelet, the greatest of educational reformers. Pestalozzi said that
the faculties were developed by exercise. Froebel added that the
function of education was to develop the faculties by arousing
voluntary activity. Action proceeding from inner impulse
(_Selbsthäligkeit_) was the one thing needful, and here Froebel as
usual refers to God: "God's every thought is a work, a deed." As God is
the Creator, so must man be a creator also. Living acting,
conceiving,--these must form a triple cord within every child of man,
though the sound now of this string, now of that may preponderate, and
then again of two together.
Pestalozzi held that the child belonged to the family; Fichte on the
other hand, claimed it for society and the State. Froebel, whose mind,
like that of Frederick Maurice, delighted in harmonizing apparent

contradictions, and who taught that "all progress lay through opposites
to their reconciliations," maintained that the child belonged both to the
family and to society, and he would therefore have children spend some
hours of the day in a common life and in well-organized common
employments. These assemblies of children he would not call schools,
for the children in them ought not to be old enough for schooling. So he
invented the term Kindergarten, garden of children, and called the
superintendents "children's gardeners."--R.H. QUICK, in
Encyclopaedia Britannica, xix edition.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1, 2
LETTER TO THE DUKE OF MEININGEN 3-101
Birth and early life 3, 104
Enters the girls' school 9
Goes away from home to Stadt-Ihm 15
Is apprenticed to a forester 24
Returns to his father's house 27
Goes to the University of Jena 28, 105
Returns home again 35
Goes to Bamberg as clerk 33
Becomes land-surveyor 39
Goes to the Oberfalz as accountant 42

Soon after to Mecklenberg 42
Gets small inheritance from his uncle 43
Goes to Frankfurt 48, 107
Becomes teacher in the Model School 31, 109
Visits Pestalozzi 52
Resigns to become a private tutor 65, 110
Takes his three pupils to Yverdon 77
Returns to Frankfurt