QOTD: Froebel Has Plenty to Say

This past Friday I turned my thesis in - more on that later! Although certainly a relief, I have a storehouse of quotations just waiting to be shared.

Friedrich Froebel has quite a few things to say about education, but here is a fascinating goal he had for his educational system:

“I desire to educate men whose feet shall stand on God’s earth, rooted fast in Nature, while their head towers up to heaven, and read its secrets with a steady gaze, whose heart shall embrace both heaven and earth, shall enjoy the life of earth and nature with all its wealth of forms, and at the same time shall recognize the purity and peace of heaven, that unites in its love God’s earth and God’s heaven.”

What a nose.

Kindergarten & Liberal Arts | Connecting the Dots

My current working thesis statement is as follows: 

"Women’s growth in educational authority outside the home, permitted under the umbrella of “reproductive labor,” expanded through their work in establishing the kindergarten in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. That work in the kindergarten was an important precursor to the expansion of their authority, expanding from their domestic voice at home to civil voice through suffrage."

Now, if you have made it to this paragraph, you have my admiration.  Talk about throwing you into the deep end without even so much as a "How are you?"  But I felt it was necessary to rip off the band-aid as quickly as possible.  I'm sure that not everyone finds this to be an interesting field of study, but I do not fall into that group.  This is primarily a historical thesis, but it includes education, the women's movement, and politics in a post-civil war America, to name a few.

I am currently researching people such as Friedrich Froebel, Elizabeth Peabody, and Susan Blow, and cannot tell you how much I admire the thought and the energy they put into their work.  (Side note: it is my hope to imitate them in this course of study.) And the revolution of education that they began, really fanned a flame of change that Western Civilization was not ready for.  

These philosophers and teachers all had the same change in mind: stop trying to fit the student into a one-size-fits-all program.  Friedrich Froebel's common critique of child education was that it was too rigid, and didn't allow the child to actually discover, process, and eventually understand information or lessons.  Education often created within the child a passive observer instead of an active participant.  

Studying the history of kindergarten reminds me of the Liberal Arts Education that I received in high school and then continued in at New Saint Andrews College.  There is a need for more and more outside-the-box thinking (combined with stem skills) that a good Liberal Arts training ought to provide.  It makes sense, education should be tailored to the student, not vice-versa.

After all, we are in the business of developing human beings, not robots.