Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychologyMurray, E. R. (Elsie Riach)
Science
Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology
Murray, E. R. (Elsie Riach)
Fröbel, Friedrich, 1782-1852; Psychology
“The man, advanced in insight, should be as clear as possible
in his own mind about all this before he introduces his
child into the outer world. Even when he gives the child a
plaything, he must make clear to himself its purpose, and the
purpose of playthings and occupation material in general. This
purpose is, to aid the child freely to express what is in
him and to bring the phenomena of the outer world nearer to
him.”--_P., p. 171._
“To realize his aims, man, and more particularly the child,
requires material, if it be only a bit of wood or a pebble with
which he makes something or which he makes into something. In
order to lead the child to the handling of material, we gave
him the soft ball, the wooden sphere and cube, etc., discussed
in the chapters on the Kindergarten Gifts. Each of these gifts
incites the child to free spontaneous activity, to independent
movement.”[34]--_P., p. 237._
As the child grows older his constructions advance, but still they
connect themselves with investigating:
“Here he makes a little garden under the hedge; there he
represents the course of the river in his furrow and in his
ditch; there he studies the effects of the fall or pressure of
water upon his little water-wheel.”--_E., p. 105._
Investigating naturally leads to exploring, “external objects invite him
who would bring them nearer to move toward them,” and so the child once
he is able to stand begins to travel:
“When the child makes his first attempts at walking he
frequently tries to go to some particular object. This effort
may have its source in the child’s desire to hold himself
firm and upright by it, but we also observe that it gives him
pleasure to be near the object, to touch it, to feel it, and
perhaps also--a new phase of activity--to be able to move it.
Hence we see the child hops up and down before it and beats
on it with his little hands, in order to assure himself of
the reality of the object, and to notice its qualities.… Each
new phenomenon is a discovery in the child’s small and yet
rich world--e.g. one can go round the chair, one can stand
before, behind, beside it, but one cannot go behind the bench
or the wall. He likes to change his relationship to different
objects, and through these changes he seeks self-recognition
and self-comprehension, as well as recognition of the different
objects which surround him, and recognition of his environment
as a whole. Each little walk is a tour of discovery; each
object is an America--a new world, which he either goes around
to see if it be an island, or whose coast he follows to
discover if it be a continent.”--_P., p. 243._
The boy has lost none of this tendency to explore, but he goes further
afield, and it is worth noting that because the boy has a distinct
purpose in view his exploring is distinctly called work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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