Read Ebook: Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology by Murray E R Elsie Riach

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CHAP. PAGE

INDEX 225

EXPLANATION OF REFERENCES

To the Works of Froebel quoted in the text

FROEBEL'S ANTICIPATION OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

The purpose of this little book is to show that Froebel's educational theories were based on psychological views of a type much more modern than is at all generally understood. It is frequently stated that Froebel's psychology is conspicuous by its absence, but in a somewhat close study of Froebel's writings I have been again and again surprised to find how much Froebel seems to have anticipated modern psychology.

A probable reason for the overlooking of so much sound psychological truth is to be found in the fact that much of it is obscured by details which seem to us trivial, but which Froebel meant as applications of the theories he was endeavouring to make clear to minds not only innocent of, but incapable of, psychology.

Most educationists have read "The Education of Man," but few outside the Kindergarten world are likely to have bestowed much thought on Froebel's later writings. It is in these, however, that we see Froebel watching with earnest attention that earliest mental development which is now regarded as a distinct chapter in mental science, but which was then largely if not entirely ignored.

With the same spirit of inquiry and the same field for investigation--for children acted and thought then as they act and think now--it is only natural that Froebel should have made at least some of the same discoveries as the genetic psychologist of to-day.

It would be unfair at any date to expect a complete psychology from a writer whose subject is not mental science, but education. Mistakes, too, one must expect, and these are not to be ignored. Still there remains a solid amount of psychological discovery for which Froebel has had as yet but little credit.

Indeed, just as his disciples have been inclined, like all disciples, to think that their master has said the last word on his own subject, so have opponents of Froebelian doctrines, irritated perhaps by these pretensions, made direct attacks on somewhat insufficient grounds. In a later chapter, an attempt has been made to deal with what seems unfounded in such attacks.

The major part of the book, however, is intended to show the correctness of Froebel's views on points now regarded as of fundamental importance, and generally recognized as modern theories. For this purpose passages from Froebel's writings are here compared with similar passages from such undoubted authorities as Dr. James Ward, Professor Stout, Professor Lloyd Morgan, Mr. W. Macdougall, Mr. J. Irving King, and others.

In the first place, it should be noted that Froebel was fully aware of the necessity for a psychological basis for his educational theories.

Writing in 1841, he says:

Nor was Froebel in any doubt as to how these laws are to be discovered, and his order of investigation is very similar to that prescribed by Professor Stout. The latter, though regarding genetic psychology as "the most important and most interesting," considers that it should be preceded by:--1, A general analysis of consciousness, analytic and largely introspective; 2, An investigation of the laws of mental process, "analytic also, inasmuch as we endeavour to ascertain the general laws of mental process by analysis of the fully developed mind."

Froebel, too, regards the analytic as a necessary preparation for the genetic, and says that parents and teachers, who wish to supply the needs of the child at different stages of development:

Professor Stout adds later that anthropology and philology may ultimately yield results as important as those yielded by physiology. Froebel could have no idea of the physiological parallel to mental process, but he did not omit the anthropological inquiry, for in another passage he enlarges his first point, declaring that:

Even his detractors generally allow that Froebel had a wonderful insight into child-nature, but this is too often spoken of as if it were due to some specialized faculty of intuition, not known to psychology.

In another letter to this cousin he says:

To another friend he writes:

Froebel made these requests, as he made his own observations, as the result of the conviction with which he declares himself "thoroughly penetrated,"

Professor Dewey, one of the few important educational writers who do justice to Froebel as a pioneer, gives as a general summary of his educational principles:

"1. That the primary business of school is to train children in co-operative and mutually helpful living; to foster in them the consciousness of mutual interdependence, and to help them practically in making the adjustments that will carry this spirit into overt deeds.

"2. That the primary root of all educative activity is in the instinctive, impulsive attitudes and activities of the child, and not in the presentation and application of external material, whether through the ideas of others or through the senses; and that, accordingly, numberless spontaneous activities of children, plays, games, mimic efforts, even the apparently meaningless motions of infants--exhibitions previously ignored as trivial, futile, or even condemned as positively evil--are capable of educational use, nay, are the foundation-stones of educational effort.

"3. That these individual tendencies and activities are organized and directed through the uses made of them in keeping up the co-operative living already spoken of; taking advantage of them to reproduce on the child's plane the typical doings and occupations of the larger maturer society into which he is finally to go forth; and that it is through production and creative use that valuable knowledge is secured and clinched."

So little, however, are these principles understood as Froebel's, that in the Pedagogical Seminary for July, 1900, a paper was published on "The Reconstruction of the Kindergarten," wherein it was maintained that the basis of reconstruction must be the child's natural instincts. The writer, Mr. Eby, had apparently no idea that the Kindergarten was originally based on this very foundation. He evidently did not know that Froebel has given, in his "Education of Man," a very fair account of these instincts, omitting nothing of great importance, and pointing, at least, to a better principle of classification than that adopted by Mr. Eby. It is, however, only fair to Froebel to mention that he himself regarded his own account as far from being commensurate with the importance of the subject, for the year following that of the publication of "The Education of Man" he writes:

The problems Froebel endeavoured to solve are precisely those which are absorbing the genetic psychologist of the present day, as stated, for example, in Mr. Irving King's "Psychology of Child Development," viz.: "to examine the various forms of the child's activity, to get some insight into the nature of the child himself"--"to get at the meaning of child-life in terms of itself."

Every reader of "The Education of Man" will remember how Froebel uses his own boyish reminiscences to help others to understand childish actions often utterly misunderstood. In his paper on "Movement Plays" he writes:

Just as Mr. Irving King, writing in 1904, says that we must take as our starting-point the child's bodily activities, so did Froebel too declare, that:

To this first action, Froebel devotes a whole paper, "Das erste Kindesthun," the opening sentence of which contains the words:

Writing in 1847, Froebel says that "decision, zeal, and perseverance" must be brought to bear upon his plan, in order that:

" More careful observation of the child, his relationships and his line of development, may become general amongst us; and thereby

Justice has already been done to Froebel's philosophy by Dr. John Angus MacVannel, who says in his closing paragraph:

"Froebel's system has that unmistakable mark of greatness about it that makes it worth our faithful effort to understand it, and turn its conclusions to our advantage.... His philosophy of education taken as a whole seems, perhaps, the most satisfactory we have yet had. One cannot but believe, however, that the candid reader will at times find conclusions in his writings sustained by reasonings, that are inadequately developed and important questions by no means satisfactorily answered.... On the other hand we must not forget that it is insight, rather than exactitude, that is the life of a philosophy; herein lies the secret of Froebel's lasting influence and power."

FROEBEL'S ANALYSIS OF MIND

It is probably due to the emphasis which Froebel laid upon the careful observation and equally careful interpretation of the very earliest manifestations of mental activity, that his views as to mental analysis approach so closely to more modern ideas. His psychology cannot possibly be dismissed as "faculty psychology" in which the mind of a child is regarded as a smaller and weaker replica of the mind of an adult. The older psychologies, Professor Stout points out, are based chiefly, if not entirely, on introspection alone, while Froebel, as we have already seen, demanded close observation of children in general, and of "each separate child," as well as consideration of mental development in the race, in addition to introspection.

He speaks of:

And in his "Education of Man," in a long and eloquent passage on the need for continuity of training from the tiniest of beginnings, he says:

The analysis of mind which Froebel recognizes, is the still commonly accepted "tri-partite," but he never fails to refer to this as a unity or a tri-unity. Indeed, his constant harping upon this string becomes almost wearisome, in spite of the ingenuity with which he continually varies his terms.

Disguised as Love, Life, and Light, this trinity is made the connection of man, on the one side with Nature, on the other side with God. God--who is Life, Love, and Light, the All--shows Himself in Nature, in the universe as life , in humanity as love, and in wisdom or in the spirit as light. Energy or life man shares with Nature; by love he is united with humanity; and by light or wisdom he is at one with God.

For his "gift plays" Froebel claims that they "take hold of the child in the tri-unity of his nature":

And a forcible passage runs:

The first part of the following quotation from a letter written in 1851 towards the close of Froebel's life might almost be taken from a text-book of the present day:

"We find also three attitudes, spheres of work, and regions of mind in man:

" the region of the soul, the heart, Feeling;

" the region of the mind, the head, Intellect;

" the region of the active life, the putting forth to actual deed, Will.

In this connection it can again be shown that Froebel was in advance of the old psychologists. In the first of the two games in the Mother-Play book dealing with sense-training--two out of forty-nine, the remainder dealing chiefly with action--he makes it very clear that he draws no hard and fast line between sense and understanding. He tells the mother that Nature speaks to the child through the senses, which act as gateways to the world within, but that light comes from the mind:

"Durch die Sinne, schliesst sich auf des Innern Thor Doch der Geist ist's der dies zieht ans Licht hervor."

And when he says that the baby in the cradle should not be left unoccupied if it wakes, he uses a pronoun in the singular in referring to "the activity of sense and mind." He suggests hanging a cage containing a lively bird in the child's line of vision and adds:

The faculty psychology and the formal discipline theory that came from it, says Professor Horne, did not admit the possibility of training one faculty, e.g. perception, by training another, e.g. reason, "it was not the mind that was trained, but its faculties."

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