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
In the Finger Play called “The Nest,” Froebel tells the mother:
“The way lies through our imaginative, tender and emotional
observation of Nature and of man’s life, through the child’s
taking their meaning into his own heart and expressing by
representation what he thus takes in.… The child’s sympathy
is roused by the young creatures’ necessities more than by
anything, and chiefly by their nakedness and softness.”--_M.,
p. 149._
And the action which fosters the growth of sympathy is not to be merely
representative; The Garden Song has this motto:
“If your child’s to love and cherish Life that needs him
day-by-day, Give him things to tend that perish If he ever
stays away.”--_M., p. 84._
It is because “the desire for unity is the basis of all true human
development” that the child is to be encouraged to help in the work he
sees going on around him.
“Family, family--let us say it openly and plainly--you are more
than School and Church, and therefore more than all else that
necessity may have called into being for the protection of
right and property … without you, what are Altar and Church?…
Therefore, Mother, in the little finger game, teach your
child some notion of the nature of a whole, especially of a
family-whole.”--_M., p. 159._
“We have not yet touched nor even considered an important side
of child-life, the side of association with father and mother
in their domestic duties, in the duties of their calling.…
(_E., p. 84_). Do not let the urgency of your business tempt
you to say, ‘Go away, you only hinder me.’ … After a third
rebuff of this kind scarcely any child will again propose to
help and share the work.”--_E., p. 99._
It is an essential part of the Kindergarten to consider the child as a
member of the human family. It is described in one place as:
“An establishment for training quite young children, in their
first stage of intellectual development, where their training
and instruction shall be based upon their own free action
or spontaneity, acting under proper rules … such rules as
are in fact discovered by the actual observation of children
when associated in companies. (_L., p. 251_).… Practice in
combined games for many children, which will train the child,
by his very nature eager for companionship, in the habit of
association with comrades, that is, in good fellowship and all
that this implies.”--_L., p. 252._
Among his Group Instincts Mr. Kirkpatrick mentions the Love of
Approbation, and this receives special attention from Froebel at a
surprisingly early stage. It is in the “Mother Songs,” in connection with
his adaptation of an old German nursery rhyme about knights who come to
visit “a good child,” that Froebel tells the mother that:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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