Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel | Page 3

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 h?chsten 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 h?usliche Erziehung erg?nzend 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.--B?HM's _Kurzgefasste Geschichte der P?dagogik_, 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 tache 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 reconna?tre 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 (_Selbsth?ligkeit_) 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 84
Goes to the University of G?ttingen 84, 111
Goes to Berlin 89, 111
Enters the army 91, 111, 120
Becomes curator in Berlin 96, 111, 121
Enlists in the army again 100, 121
SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS BY THE TRANSLATORS 102, 103
LETTER TO KRAUSE 104-125
Begins at Griesheim his ideal work 113, 121
Undertakes education of his nephews 121
Moves to Keilhau 122, 127
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATORS 126
CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE FROEBEL COMMUNITY 127-137
Froebel goes to the Wartensee 131
Then to Willisau 132, 136
Then to the Orphanage