Free Play with Froebel: Use and Abuse of Progressive Pedagogy in London’s Infant Schools, 1870–c.1904

Abstract

This article explores the process by which different elements of the material culture of educational settings, including learning tools, classroom design and other aspects of the physical environment that embody a particular educational philosophy, become transmuted when taken over by those with very different pedagogical aims. The article focuses on the adaptation of Froebel’s kindergarten pedagogy for the Babies’ Classes and Infant Schools established by the London School Board from 1870 to 1904 and opens with a brief historiography of infant education in London in this period. The development of infant education in the UK was underpinned by a very different approach to the education of young children from that evident in the Froebelian kindergarten and the article identifies the role played by Samuel Wilderspin in shaping practice in London’s Infant Schools and the control exerted by the Education Department through Her Majesty’s Inspectorate. Key aspects of Froebel’s educational philosophy are described, suggesting how the physical environment, the learning materials (the Gifts and Occupations) and elements of the curriculum embodied his ideas. An account of the reception of Froebel’s kindergarten pedagogy in the UK precedes an interrogation of practice in London’s Babies’ and Infant classes, demonstrating the hiatus between the aims and intentions of Froebel and those of the School Board and central government, which funded the provision of infant education. However, tensions arose between those infant teachers seeking to introduce less rigid methods drawing on Froebel’s pedagogy and the Inspectorate. Reference to visual evidence from schools and kindergartens, together with committee minutes and logbooks, is used to support the argument. The changing emphasis in Froebel’s writings between free play and creative activity and a more prescriptive, adult‐led model of practice provided grounds for differing interpretations of his ideas, exemplified by the revisionist debate within the Froebel movement at the turn of the century, which reveals dissenting voices concerning orthodox practice within the Froebel camp itself. The conclusion suggests that, despite the limitations in the interpretation of his educational philosophy, Froebel’s pragmatism may have led him to approve the use of his materials in London’s Babies’ Classes and Infant Schools

Notes

¹ Wallas, Graham. “A Criticism of Froebelian Pedagogy.” Child Life III (1901): 184–93.

² Ronge, Johannes, and Bertha Ronge. A Practical Guide to the English Kindergarten. London, 1855. This was in its 15th edition by 1884 and was reprinted as recently as 1994; Maria & John Krause‐Boelte’s ten‐volume Kindergarten Guide (New York, 1877–1892) achieved similar success in the US.

¹² Gautrey “Lux Mihi Laus”: School Board Memories, 121.

³ Read, Jane. “Froebelian women – networking to promote professional status and educational change in the nineteenth century.” History of Education 32, no. 1 (2003); Dombkowski, Kristen. “Kindergarten teacher training in England and the United States 1850–1918.” History of Education 31, no. 5 (2002); Brehony, Kevin J. “The Froebel Movement and State Schooling, 1880–1914: A Study in Educational Ideology.” Ph.D. thesis, Open University. Milton Keynes, 1987; Collins, G. P. “The Contribution of the British & Foreign School Society to the Kindergarten Movement, 1868–1907, With Particular Reference to Stockwell & Saffron Walden Training College.” Ph.D. dissertation, Bulmershe College, 1984; Liebschner, J. Foundations of Progressive Education: The History of the National Froebel Society (Cambridge, 1991); see also articles by Jane Read on Bertha and Johannes Ronge, Beata Doreck, Caroline Bishop and Esther Lawrence in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

⁴ Final report of the School Board for London, 1870–1904. London, 1904; Maclure, Stuart. One Hundred Years of London Education 1870–1970. London, 1970; Bayley, Edric. Education in London Board Schools. London, 1888; id. The Work of the School Board for London 1888–1891. London, 1891; Morley, Charles. Studies in Board Schools. London, 1897; Spalding, Thomas. The Work of the London School Board. London, 1900; Philpott, Hugh B. London at School: The Story of the School Board, 1879–1904. London, 1904; Gautrey, Thomas. “Lux Mihi Laus”: School Board Memories. London, 193).

⁵ Bayley. Education in London Board Schools, 4–5.

⁶ Bayley. The Work of the School Board for London 1888–1891, 5.

⁷ Bayley. Education in London Board Schools, 4.

⁸ Morley. Studies in Board Schools, 107; for a full account of the school see Marsden, W. E. Educating the Respectable: A Study of Fleet Road Board School, Hampstead, 1879–1903. London, 1991.

⁹ Spalding. The Work of the London School Board, 93.

¹⁰ Philpott. London at School, 68.

¹¹ Ibid, 69.

¹⁴ Escolano. “The school in the city,” 53.

¹³ Escolano Benito, Agustin. “The school in the city: school architecture as discourse and as text.” Paedagogica Historica XXXIX, nos 1/2 (2003): 53–64; Peim, Nick. “The history of the present: towards a contemporary phenomenology of the school.” History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001): 177–90; Grosvenor, Ian, Martin Lawn, and Kate Rousmaniere, eds. Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom. New York, 1999; Rousmaniere, Kate. “Questioning the visual in the history of education,” History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001): 109–16.

¹⁶ Grosvenor, Ian, and Martin Lawn. “Ways of seeing in education and schooling: emerging historiographies.” History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001): 106; see also Rousmaniere. “Questioning the visual in the history of education.”

¹⁵ Peim. “The history of the present,” 178.

¹⁷ See Harold Silver’s account of the reworking of the history of infant schools to exclude the contribution of Owen in Education as History. London, 1983.

¹⁸ See the description of the school by Robert Dale Owen in Robert Owen on Education, edited by Harold Silver. London, 1969: 149–64.

²⁰ Wilderspin, Samuel. Early Discipline Illustrated. London, 1832: 242–3.

¹⁹ Wilderspin, Samuel. The Infant System for Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children from One to Seven Years of Age. London, 1840: frontispiece.

²¹ Board of Education. Report of the Consultative Committee on the Primary School. London, 1931: 3.

²² Wilderspin 1835, cited in Stewart, W. A. C., W. P. and McCann. The Educational Innovators. London, 1967: 257.

²³ Wilderspin 1824, cited in Stewart & McCann. The Educational Innovators, 259.

²⁴ Reproduced in McCann, Philip. Samuel Wilderspin and the Infant School Movement. London, 1982.

²⁵ Wilderspin 1823, cited in McCann. Samuel Wilderspin and the Infant School Movement, 24.

²⁶ Read. “Froebelian women”; Dombrowski. “Kindergarten teacher training in England and the United States 1850–1918”; for other references see note 3 above.

²⁷ Fretwell, J. “Johannes Ronge and the English Protestants.” Unitarian Review (1888): 3–16.

²⁹ Ibid.

²⁸ School Board for London [SBL] Minutes, vol. 1. London, 1870–1871.

³⁰ Ibid.

³² Raymont, T. A History of the Education of Young Children. London, 1937: 237–8.

³¹ Froebel, Friedrich. The Education of Man. New York, 1887.

³⁴ Spalding. The Work of the London School Board, 189.

³³ Robson, E. R. School Board Chronicle, 6 July 1872: 241.

³⁵ London Metropolitan Archive, Photographic Collection, [LMA PC] ref. 76/7165 and 74/15601.

³⁶ Froebel, Friedrich. Letters on the Kindergarten. London, 1891: 49.

³⁷ Henriette Schrader Breymann, Letter to Frau Louise Jessen, London W., 31 July 1883. Unpublished translation from Lyschinska, Mary J. Henriette Schrader Breymann. Ihr Leben. Berlin/Leipzig, 1922.

³⁸ SBL, School Management Committee [SMC], Sub‐Committee on the Kindergarten, Minutes. London, 1889.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ LMA PC, refs 67/5012, 67/5015.

⁴¹ SBL, SMC, Minutes, 16 May 1879, London, 1879: 138.

⁴² SBL, Minutes XX. London, 1883: 194.

⁴³ Spalding. The Work of the London School Board, 189.

⁴⁴ Royal Commission to Inquire into the Working of the Elementary Acts. London, 1886. PP 1886, xxv, p. 452–3.

⁴⁵ See for example LMA PC, “Old Gallery Class”, c.1900, ref. 79/1712.

⁴⁶ Morley Studies in Board Schools, 150.

⁴⁷ LMA PC, e.g. refs. 67/5013 [number work with mat‐weaving], 76/15841 [number work with sticks, 78/4507 [number work with clay], 68/4961 [copying a flower design with clay].

⁵⁰ Lyschinska, Mary. The Kindergarten Principle, 6th ed. London, 1886: 3; see LMA PC, “Old Gallery Class”, c.1900, ref. 79/1712, for an example of the kind of copying Lyschinska is referring to.

⁴⁸ SBL, Minutes. London, 1873–74: 1053, 1128.

⁴⁹ SBL, SMC. Report for the half year ended 26 September 1879. London, 1879: 156–7.

⁵¹ Committee of Council on Education. Report. London, 1897–1898: 281–2.

⁵² SBL, St Luke’s Infant School. London, 1900–1913: 14 [LMA: O/DIV3/St.LUK/LB/3].

⁵³ See, for example LMA PC, ref. 68/4961 [teacher with clay modelling class] & 69/6842 [teacher with reading class]. A contrast can be seen in an image from Southfields School in 1906, where the teacher is seated on the floor with c.50 children in a ring, each with a set of Gift Two, LMA PC, ref. 68/4956.

⁵⁴ The surviving archives of the Michaelis Free Kindergarten, including photographs, are held in the Froebel Archive for Childhood Studies, Roehampton University, London, UK.

⁵⁷ SBL, SMC. Sub‐Committee on Kindergarten, Minutes. London, 1890: 87.

⁵⁵ Lyschinska. Kindergarten Principle, 48–9.

⁵⁶ SBL. Central Street Log Book. London, 1874–1907: 8 [LMA: EO/DIV3/CEN/LB/6].

⁵⁸ Education Department, Circular 322, Instruction of Infants. London, 1892.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Read, Jane. “Fit for What? Special education in London, 1890–1914.” History of Education 33, no. 3 (2004): 283–98.

⁶¹ Wallas. “A Criticism of Froebelian Pedagogy,” 184–208.

⁶² Ibid., 184.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 208.

⁶³ Ibid., 197.

⁶⁵ Murray, Elsie Riach. “On Kindergarten Games.” Child Life III (1901): 169–84.

⁶⁶ Murray, Elsie Riach. “That Symmetrical Paper‐folding and Symmetrical Work with the Gifts are a Waste of Time for both Students and Children.” Child Life V (1903): 14–18; see also Brehony, Kevin. “English Revisionist Froebelians and the Schooling of the Urban Poor.” In Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress 1790–1930, edited by Mary Hilton and Pam Hirsch. Harlow, 2000: 183–99.

⁶⁷ Murray. “That Symmetrical Paper‐folding,” 18.