EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION : FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF FROEBEL’S LIFE

 Friedrich Froebel, a complex and eccentric personality, was born in 1782 in the small town of
Oberweissbach in the German state of Thuringia. The political weakness and disunity of the
various German states had an impact on Froebel as well as on many young people who believed
that Germans should be united in one nation.

 Although Froebel was an educational rather than a political theorist, his philosophy of
education, stressing themes of interrelationship and interconnection, reflected his wish for
German unification.

 In 1806, Napoleon defeated Prussia and its kindred German allies. Froebel, then age 24, served
with the German army that was soundly defeated at the battles of Jena and Auerstadt.

 After the 1806 defeat, the Prussian set to work rebuilding their military forces and recouping
their fortunes. These military events shaped the context in which Froebel developed his
educational ideas.

 Froebel’s life coincided with a period of rich intellectual development in Germany. In addition to
the idealist philosophical milieu in Germany, Froebel’s formative years, especially as a university
student, coincided with new scientific discoveries and theories.

 Just as Froebel was influenced by philosophical idealism, so were his ideas shaped by the
dominant trends in science. When he developed his educational theory, Froebel continually
referred to doctrines of interconnectedness in which all creatures and all ideas was part of a
grand, ordered, and systematic universe.

 Such a universal design had no room for change or accident. Everything had a place and
everything was to be in its place. Froebel’s philosophy of early childhood education was filled
with religious language, symbolism, and meaning.

 Froebel’s kindergarten used a great deal of semireligious symbolism. It is believed his tendency
to express himself through symbolic language and metaphors was influenced by Jacob Bohme, a
17th century Silesian mystic.

 It was this combination of political, philosophical, scientific, and religious events and movements
that formed the historical context in which Froebel lived and that influenced his formation of a
philosophy of early childhood education.