“Unlike Pestalozzi, who believed the mother to be the chief agent in directing the child’s education, Froebel considered that the mother should partially relinquish the charge of the child at three years of age, delivering him over more or less to the society of others, who would exert a somewhat different, though still beneficial influence over his character, by which means also his limited sphere of experience would be gradually extended, and scope given for daily strengthening his mental and physical powers” (1: p. 40). That both these interpretations contain a partial truth is clear from the following quotation from Froebel’s “Prospectus of an Institution for the Training of Nurses and Educators of Children.” He states: “The institution intends to render generally accessible an education in agreement with the nature of the child and of man, and satisfying the demands of the age, and to show how such an education can be carried on in the family. This can only be done by preparing young ladies for the business of nursing, developing, and educating a child from its birth until it can go to school. The course will also qualify its pupil to prepare children for the first grade of the elementary course of the public school” (8: pp. 71-72). Further, he writes: “A complete preparation for bringing up and educating children ought to make the pupil theoretically and practically conversant with all the requirements of the child concerning its bodily (dietetic) and mental (pedagogic) needs from the cradle to school age. But that is not enough: the normal school pupil ought also to be enabled to impart a good preparation for the first grade of the elementary classes of the public school” (8: p. 74). These “child nurses” and “child guides” were to go out as professional women, and “provide kindergarten training within the family” as mother’s helpers. “But since every family cannot afford to do this individually, it should be carried out as a problem of general coöperation, to be solved by and for all the people.” In his invitation to form a “General German Educational Union,” Froebel had spoken as follows: “The improvements of education ought to begin in the home circle, starting with the groundwork necessary for every education, namely, the careful development of children previous to their reception into the public school,” and “when kindergarten training is not within reach, the union ought to devise means for procuring the necessary help for the introduction of such training into the family circle or otherwise” (8: p. 39). But, under the circumstances of the age, and in the course of time, the domestic aspect of the kindergarten receded into the background, and the institutional aspect developed, with its natural consequence of systematization and formalization.