Froebel’s View of Education
Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) followed Pestalozzi and further systematized Pestalozzi’s view of education. According to Froebel, nature and human beings are unified by God and move according to God’s law. Divine nature constitutes the essence of all things, and the mission of all things is to express, reveal, and develop such a nature.
Therefore, people should manifest in their lives the divine nature inherent within them, and education should guide people in that direction. He wrote, “The free and spontaneous representation of the divine in man … is the ultimate aim and object of all education, as well as the ultimate destiny of man.” 6
Froebel especially emphasized the importance of the education of children and family education. Froebel’s basic position concerning education was that the place to develop children in a natural way is at home, where the parents are the teachers. Like Pestalozzi, he emphasized the role of the mother. He asserted that kindergarten is necessary as a supplement to family education and became the founder of the kindergarten.
The “natural man” with good nature, advocated by Rousseau was, for Pestalozzi, a “whole man” with noble human nature, and, for Froebel, the image of the ideal person was that of a “whole man with a divine nature.”