Froebel and the teaching of botany: the garden in the Kindergarten Model School of Madrid

ABSTRACT

This contribution looks at the garden that Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852) founded in Bad Blankenburg in 1838 in order to understand the proposal presented at the Kindergarten Model School of Madrid for training teachers in 1879 (the Schools introduced new teaching methods or systems and, at the same time, trained the teachers in their application). Based on a description of the garden we analyse, from a botanical standpoint, the educational intentions of the original garden for children in the Kindergarten of Blankenburg and the modifications made to fit it to a Spanish context. Among other things, we study the introduction of productive work into the education curriculum of the youngest pupils, together with the floristic configuration and composition of the garden. The initial Froebel model in Spain underwent several modifications and adaptations, and, in the case of the garden itself, these modifications were reflected in the form, composition, and therefore didactic intention of the proposal. Its reception in Spain shows similarities and differences with respect to the original concept, which must be analysed in the context in which they were produced. Moreover, the differences in interpreting the method underscore its application in Spain and subsequent reinterpretations over the years.

KEYWORDS:

• Froebel
• botany
• history of education
• kindergartens
• scholar gardens

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Friedrich Froebel, Autobiography, trans. Emilie Michaelis and H. Keatley Moore (Syracuse, NY: CW Baarden, 1889), 6.

² Ibid., 12.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid., 29.

⁵ August Johann Georg Karl Batsch (1761–1802) was professor of natural history and the founder of the Botanical Garden of Jena in 1790. He was a prominent botanist in the study of fungi and also advised Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his work on the metamorphosis of plants. See in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen, ed. Rudolf Steiner (Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 1992), 18.

⁶ August Johann Georg Carl Batsch, Nachricht von der Gründung einer naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Jena am 14ten July 1793 (Jena, 1793).

⁷ His book, Genera plantarum (1779) was the basis for amplifying the natural system of classification of plants. It influenced several researchers, including De-Candolle, who in 1813 proposed his series of natural families.

⁸ August Johann Georg Carl Batsch, Botanische Unterhaltungen für Naturfreunde: zu eigner Belehrung über die Verhältnisse der Pflanzenbildung entworfen (Jena: Cröcker, 1793).

⁹ August Johann Georg Carl Batsch, Botanik für Frauenzimmer und Pflanzenliebhaber welche keine Gelehrten sind (Weimar: Industrie-Comptoir, 1798).

¹⁰ Froebel, Autobiography, 31.

¹¹ In botany, the Naturphilosophen were post-Linnaeans. They rejected the project of mapping new species onto artificial taxonomy. Instead, they hoped to identify a natural taxonomy with an understanding of the natural world: see Lisbet Koerner, “Goethe’s Botany: Lessons of a Feminine Science,” Isis, Journal of the History of Sciences Society 84, no. 3 (1993): 470–95.

¹² Daniel Tröhler, “Truffle Pigs, Research Questions, and Histories of Education,” in Rethinking the History of Education Transnational Perspectives on Its Questions, Methods, and Knowledge, ed. Thomas S. Popkewitz (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 75–92.

¹³ According to Lê Thành Khôi, comparative education can be defined as the science that aims to extract, analyse, and explain the similarities and differences between educational facts and/or their relationships with the political, economic, social, and cultural environment and seek the provisional laws that regulate different societies and different moments of human history: Lê Thành Khôi, L’éducation comparée (Paris: Ed. Armand Collin, 1981), 42.

¹⁴ Gary McCulloc, “Comparative Approaches of the History of Education. Introduction: Theory, Methodology and the History of Education” History of Education 31, no. 5 (2002): 395–400.

¹⁵ Robert Cowen, “Moments of Time: A Comparative Note,” History of Education 31, no. 5 (2002): 413–24.

¹⁶ Antonio Viñao and María José Martínez Ruiz-Funes, “Tradición y modernidad: el programa iconográfico del Colegio Nuestra Señora de la Bonanova de Barcelona (1900–1956) [Tradition and Modernity: The Iconographic Programme of the Colegio Nuestra Señora de la Bonanova in Barcelona],” Rivista di storia dell’educazione 1 (2018): 17–40.

¹⁷ Cowen, “Moments of Time.”

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Thöhler, “Truffle Pigs,” 70.

²⁰ Carmen Sanchidrián, “El uso de imágenes en la investigación histórico-educativa [The Use of Images in Historical-Educational Research],” Revista de Investigación Educativa 29, no. 2 (2011): 295–309.

²¹ Several publications specialising in the History of Education have been published over the last two decades, including monographs dedicated to the subject of visual resources and their use in this field: Marc Depaepe and Bregt Henkens, eds., The Challenge of the Visual in the History of Education. Paedagogica Historica Supplementary Series 6 (Ghent: CSHP, 2000); Ian Grosvenor, “From the ‘Eye of History’ to ‘a Second Gaze’: The Visual Archive and the Marginalized History of Education,” History of Education 36 (4-5), (2007): 607–22; Francesa Comás Rubí, ed., “Photography and the History of Education,” special issue, Educació i História. Revista d’Historia de l’Educació 15 (2010); Carlos Martínez Valle, ed., “Photography and School Cultures,” Encounters in Theory and History of Education 17 (2016).

²² Inés Dussel, “The Visual Turn in the History of Education: Four Comments for a Historiographical Discussion,” in Rethinking History of Education: Transnational Perspectives, ed. Thomas S. Popkewitz (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2013), 29–49.

²³ Ibid., 32.

²⁴ The great variety of plant species that a botanical garden or a small garden or orchard could contain required the use of geometric divisions to maintain an order, squares and rectangles being the most commonly used: Fabio Garbari, “From the Garden of Simples to the Botanical Garden of Pisa University: History, Roles and Perspectives,” Atti Della Società Toscana di Scienze Naturali, Memorie 113 (2006): 91–3.

²⁵ Diego Rivera, Concepción Obón, Segundo Ríos, and Francisco Alcaraz, “The Origin of Cultivation and Wild Ancestors of Daffodils (Narcissus subgenus Ajax) (Amaryllidaceae) from an Analysis of Early Illustrations,” Scientia Horticulturae 98 (2003): 307–30.

²⁶ Roberta Wollons, “Introduction: On the International Diffusion, Politics, and Transformation of the Kindergarten,” in Kindergarten and Cultures: The Global Diffusion of an Idea, ed. Roberta Wollons (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 1–15.

²⁷ Ibid., 26.

²⁸ Fernando de Castro (1814–1874), Professor of History, Philosophy, and Letters and Rector of the Central University of Madrid. As rector, in 1868 he organised Sunday lectures for women and a year later, in 1869, he founded the School Governesses in Madrid.

²⁹ Friedrich Froebel, Education of Man, trans. William Nicholas Hailmann (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1908).

³⁰ Friedrich Froebel, Froebel’s Letters on the Kindergarten, trans. Emilie Michaelis, and H. Keatley Moore (London: Swan Sonnerschein & Co., 1891).

³¹ Wichard Lange, Friedrich Fröbel’s gesammelte pädagogische Schriften. Erste Abteilung: Friedrich Fröbel in seiner Entwicklung als Mensch und Pädagoge (Berlin: Adolphf Enslin, 1863).

³² Ann Taylor, “Children between Public and Private Worlds: The Kindergarten and Public Policy in Germany, 1840,” in Wollons, Kindergarten and Cultures, 27.

³³ Purificación Lahoz Abad, “El modelo froebeliano de espacio escuela. Su introducción en España [The Froebelian model of school space. Its introduction in Spain],” Historia de la educación 10 (1991): 107–34.

³⁴ Susan Herrington, “The Garden in Fröbel’s Kindergarten: Beyond the Metaphor,” Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 18, no. 4 (1998): 326–38.

³⁵ Jane Read, “Free Play with Froebel: Use and Abuse of Progressive Pedagogy in London’s Infant Schools, 1870–c.1904,” Paedagogica Historica 42, no. 3 (2006): 299–323.

³⁶ Wichard Lange, Friedrich Fröbel’s gesammelte pädagogische Schriften. Zweite Abteilung: Friedrich Fröbel als Begründer der Kindergärten (Berlin: Adolphf Enslin, 1862), 271.

³⁷ Ibid., 272.

³⁸ Günther Dietel, Kinder, Garten, Natur. Anregungen zum Gärtnern mit Kindern (Berlin: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag GmdH, 1994), 4.

³⁹ Froebel, Education of Man, 111–12.

⁴⁰ Lange, Friedrich Fröbel’s gesammelte pädagogische Schriften. Zweite Abteilung, 273.

⁴¹ Manfred Berger, “Friedrich Fröbels Konzeption einer Pädagogik der frühen Kindheit,” in Pädagogische Ansätze im Kindergarten, ed. W.E. Fthenakis and M.R. Textor (Weinheim: Basel: Beltz, 2000), 10–22.

⁴² Lange, Friedrich Fröbel’s gesammelte pädagogische Schriften. Zweite Abteilung, 274.

⁴³ Berger, “Friedrich Fröbels Konzeption einer Pädagogik der frühen Kindheit.

⁴⁴ Peter Becker, “To be in the garden or not to be in the garden – that is the question here: some aspects of the educational chances that are inherent in tamed and untamed nature,” Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 15, no. 1 (2015): 79–92.

⁴⁵ Froebel, Froebel’s Letters on the Kindergarten, 115.

⁴⁶ Mariano Carderera Poto (1815–1893), Director of the Normal School of Barcelona. His pedagogical production can be considered one of the most extensive of the time. Between 1855 and 1858, he published a dictionary of education and teaching methods. It was the first time that the concept of kindergarten was heard in Spain.

⁴⁷ Julián Sanz del Río (1814–1869), Professor of Law at the University of Granada and Professor of the History of Philosophy at the Central University of Madrid. Introduced Krausism into Spain, teacher of Francisco Giner de los Ríos, and colleague of Fernando de Castro.

⁴⁸ Ramón Chacón Godás, Don Fernando de Castro y el problema del catolicismo liberal español [Don Fernando de Castro and the problem of Spanish liberal Catholicism] (Madrid: Fundación Fernando de Castro, 2006).

⁴⁹ Lahoz Abad, “El modelo froebeliano de espacio escuela,” 125.

⁵⁰ Mariano Carderera, “Jardines de la Infancia [Kindergardens],” in Mariano Carcedera, ed., Diccionario de educación y métodos de enseñanza, 4 Vols. (Madrid: Librería de G. Hernando, 1854–1856), vol. 3.

⁵¹ María José Martínez, “La cultura material y la educación infantil en España. El método Froebel (1850–1939) [Material culture and early childhood education in Spain. The Froebel method (1850–1939)]” (PhD diss., Murcia University, 2013), 246.

⁵² Jean François Jacobs, Manuel Pratique des Jardins d’enfants, (Bruxelles: F. Claxen-C. Borrani, 1859).

⁵³ Mariano Carderera, “Jardines de infancia [Kindergardens],” Anales de Primera Enseñanza. Periódico de las escuelas y de los maestros 17 (1859): 515–19.

⁵⁴ Mariano Carderera, “Jardines de infancia,” Anales de Primera Enseñanza 30 (1859): 865–69.

⁵⁵ Mariano Carderera, La exposición universal de Londres [The Great Exhibition of London] (Madrid: Imprenta de D. Victoriano Hernando, 1862), 185.

⁵⁶ Lahoz Abad, “El modelo froebeliano de espacio escuela,” 124.

⁵⁷ Francisco Jareño Alarcón (1818–1892), professor of the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid and member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.

⁵⁸ Pedro de Alcantara García Navarro, Estudios pedagógicos. Froebel y los jardines de infancia [Pedagogical studies. Froebel and kindergartens] (Madrid: Imprenta y estereotipia Aribau, 1874), 72.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 258.

⁶⁰ An object lesson is a teaching method that consists of using a physical object or visual aid as a discussion piece for a lesson. It has been usual to include in the lists of such lessons some whose titles at least had relation to natural history: James Welton, Principles and Methods of Teaching (London: W.B. Clive, 1909), 358.

⁶¹ Pedro de Alcántara and García Navarro, Manual teórico- práctico de enseñanza de escuelas de párvulos según el método de los jardines de la infancia de F. Froebel [Theoretical-practical manual for teaching in kindergartens according to F. Froebel’s kindergarten method] (Madrid: Colegio nacional de Sordo Mudos y Ciegos, 1879), 82.

⁶² Ibid., 85.

⁶³ Dietel, Kinder, Garten, Natur, 4.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

José Pedro Marín Murcia

José Pedro Marín Murcia has a BA in Biology specialised in Botany and has a PhD from the Department of Science Education (University of Murcia, 2014). He is a member of the scientific team of the Centre for the Study of Educational Memory (CEME). His research deals with natural history collections and our scientific heritage, both for educational purposes. His research interests include history of science education, and history of science, especially the flow of educational materials between Central Europe and Spain.

María José Martínez Ruiz-Funes

María José Martínez Ruiz-Funes is Associate Lecturer in the Department of Theory and History of Education at the University of Murcia (Spain) and a member of the scientific team of the Centre for the Study of Educational Memory (CEME). She holds a BA in Pedagogy. Her PhD thesis was entitled “School Culture and Pre-school Education in Spain: The Froebel Method (1850–1939)”, and her current research continues to focus on school culture. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Historia y Memoria de la Educación. She is currently working in a research project on the recovery of educational memory from the nineteenth century to the present day.