Friedrich Froebel and Marie Clay

Friedrich Froebel and Marie Clay

Friedrich August Wilhelm Froebel was born in Oberweissback, Germany in April 21, 1782 (Ransbury, 1995). He was the sixth child of a Lutheran Minister, but lost his mother before his first birthday. As a young boy, he played and explored in the gardens surrounding his home most of the time. His deep love of nature would later influence his educational philosophy. He did not become educated until age eleven. When he was fifteen years old, he was apprenticed to a Forester. He then studied at the University of Jena. He accepted a teaching position at the Frankfurt Model School in Yverdon, Switzerland. This school was based on the teachings of Johann Heirnrich Pestalozzi. Froebel embraced Pestalozzi’s philosophy that children need to be active learners. He left the school to be a private tutor where the children’s parents offered him a small patch of the property to use as a garden. The learning experiences that the children had there made Froebel realize that “action and direct observation were the best ways to educate” (“Friedrich Froebel,” 2000). Froebel continued his education at the Universities of Berlin and Gottingen. In 1813 he served in the Prussian Army against Napoleon. His invention of Gifts might have been shaped while he was an assistant in the Mineralogical Museum in Berlin. His first book, The Education of Man, was published in 1826.

In 1837, at the age of fifty-five, Froebel founded his own school in Blankenburg. It was called “Kindergarten,” a garden of children. This would be a place to cultivate a child’s development and socialization because prior to Froebel’s Kindergarten children under the age of seven did not attend school (Sadker and Sadker, 2000). People believed that young children did not have the ability to focus or to develop cognitive and emotional skills, but Froebel stated, “because learning begins when consciousness erupts, education must also” (“Friedrich Froebel”, 2000). Kindergarten acts as a bridge between home play and school life. Froebel expanded on Pestalozzi’s philosophy that school should be an emotionally secure environment. He said the teacher should act as a moral and cultural model for children, a model worthy of emulation. Before this time teachers were considered a disciplinarian.

The early years in education are the most critical for forming a foundation ...

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