Froebel is Dead; Long Live Froebel! The National Froebel Foundation and English Education

Abstract

The German pedagogue Friedrich Froebel lived from 1782 to 1852. The pedagogy that made Froebel famous was encompassed in his Kindergarten, a set of strictly defined methods and activities for the education of young children, which he developed and refined in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Froebel’s Kindergarten reached England in the mid‐1850s, where it attracted a small but enthusiastic group of followers and practitioners. By 1900, Froebel’s followers in England had become awakened to movements in child study and psychology and Froebel’s prescriptions did not hold up to ensuing criticism. In most histories of English education, the story of Froebelian education in England stops there, with the so‐called death of Froebelian early childhood pedagogy and its replacement with an eclectic range of pedagogies and institutions based variously on the work of Sigmund and Anna Freud, Margaret McMillan, John Dewey, Susan Isaacs, Maria Montessori and others. This article picks up this dropped thread, examining the English neo‐Froebelian movement after the death of Froebelian methods by the start of the twentieth century. Based on analysis of the organizational records and publications of the Froebel Society, National Froebel Foundation, NSA and other professional groups connected with early childhood and progressive pedagogy, this article identifies several turning points in the institutional and ideological trajectory of neo‐Froebelians in the most turbulent and decisive period of twentieth‐century English pedagogical and policy debate. More specifically, this article shows that Stuart Hall’s theories of identity politics—as well as Eric Hobsbawm’s and Terence Ranger’s concept of invented tradition—can help us make sense of the apparently paradoxical persistence of ‘Froebel’ discourse in interwar and 1940s progressive English educational discourse despite what appeared to be a complete disavowal of Friedrich Froebel, the man and his pedagogy on the part of those wielding his name.

Notes

¹ Liebschner, Joachim. Foundations of Progressive Education: The History of the National Froebel Society. Cambridge: Lutterworth, 1991: xi.

² On Eleonore Heerwart as a key English kindergarten pioneer, see Heiland, Helmut. Fröbelbewegung und Fröbelforschung; Bedeutende Persönlichkeiten der Fröbelbewegung Im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Helmut Heiland. Vol. 3, Beiträge zur Fröbelforschung. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, A.G., 1992: 147–64.

³ Dombkowski, Kristen. “Kindergarten Teacher Training in England and the United States 1850–1918.” History of Education 31, no. 5 (2002): 475–89; republished as erratum History of Education 32, no. 1, 113–27. Statistic from 125. By 1930, the NFU had awarded some 13,000 Froebel certificates in its 40+ year history. Raymont, T. “England’s Educational Debt to Froebel.” Child Life Spring, no. 42 (1928): 14.

⁴ Brehony, Kevin Joseph. “The Froebel Movement and State Schooling, 1880–1914: A Study in Educational Ideology.” PhD, Open University, 1987: 131–2.

⁵ Waldorf/Steiner Schools came to England in the mid‐1920s, with a focus on spiritual development and enriching children as they are. Like Froebelians, Steiner proponents did not believe in the early development of intellectual powers. On Steiner in England, see Steiner, Rudolf. Rudolf Steiner Speaks to the British: Lectures and Addresses in England and Wales, translated by Johanna Collis. London: Rudolf Steiner, 1998. On Froebel vs. Montessori comparisons, see Barnes, Earl. “Comparison of Froebelian and Montessori Methods.” Child Life XVI, no. 89 (1914): 156–59. Weber, Lillian. The English Infant School and Informal Education. Hillsdale, NJ: Prentice‐Hall, 1971, 170.

⁶ Susan Isaacs was head of the Department of Child Development at the Institute of Education at London University 1933–43. For a sense of the 1930s state of the art for US, English and Continental psychology, see Murchison, C., ed. A Handbook of Child Psychology. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1931. It includes chapters from authors including Anna Freud, Arnold Gesell, Susan Isaacs, Jean Piaget, Lewis Terman, Margaret Mead and many others. Piaget’s Language and Thought of the Child was first published in English in 1926. On the New Education Fellowship, see Brehony, Kevin J. “A New Education for a New Era: Creating International Fellowship through Conferences 1921–1938.” Paedagogica Historica 40, nos 5 & 6 (2004): 733–55.

⁷ Kevin Brehony was the first to publish using the term ‘revisionist’ in the Froebelian context. Brehony, Kevin J. “English Revisionist Froebelians and the Schooling of the Urban Poor.” In Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress 1790–1930, edited by Pam Hirsch and Mary Hilton. London: Longman, 200: 183–99; Brehony, Kevin J. “The Kindergarten in England, 1851–1918.” In Kindergartens and Cultures: The Global Diffusion of an Idea, edited by Roberta Wollons. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, 59–86.

⁸ “The 1927 Summer School.” Child Life, no. 141 (1927): 108.

⁹ For an overview of English progressivism, see Selleck, Richard J. W. English Primary Education and the Progressives, 1914–1939. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972; Stewart, William A. C. The Educational Innovators: Progressive Schools 1881–1967. London: Macmillan, 1968; Stewart, William A. C. Progressives and Radicals in English Education 1750–1970. London: Macmillan, 1972; Holmes, Edmond G. A. What Is and What Might Be; a Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular. 4th impression. London: Constable, 1911; Great Britain Board of Education, Office of Special Inquiries and Reports. “The Montessori System of Education.” In Educational Pamphlets, No. 24, by E. G. A. Holmes. London: HMSO, 1912. Holmes contrasted regular elementary school practice with that at a ‘progressive’ school; Liebschner insists that the pioneering progressive school Holmes describes was indeed a Froebelian kindergarten, though neither Holmes nor subsequent authors writing about Holmes seem to have acknowledged that fact. Liebschner, Foundations, 2.

¹⁰ Cunningham, Peter. “Innovators, Networks and Structures: Towards a Prosopography of Progressivism.” History of Education 30, no. 5 (2001): 433–52.

¹¹ Smart, Richard. Bedford Training College, 1882–1982: A History of a Froebel College and Its Schools. Bedford: Bedford Training College Publication Committee, Bedford College of Higher Education, 1982: 56–60.

¹² Cohen, S. “The Montessori Movement in England, 1911–1952.” History of Education 3, no. 1 (1974): 51–67.

¹³ Brehony, “Froebel Movement and State Schooling,” Ch. 11.

¹⁴ “IV. Problems for the Society as raised at the last Council Meeting. (5).” Minutes of the Propaganda, Agency and General Purposes Committee, The Froebel Society and Junior Schools’ Association. Committee Minutes, Vol. 2, 1920–1929: 134. National Froebel Foundation Archives, Templeton House, Froebel College, Roehampton University.

¹⁵ Hall, Stuart. “Introduction: Who Needs ‘Identity’?” In Questions of Cultural Identity, edited by S. Hall and P. Du Gay. London: Sage, 1996: 4.

¹⁶ For statistics of Froebel Society/Froebel Society membership and summer school attendance, see Liebschner, Foundations, 96, 99.

¹⁷ In the early 1930s the NFU had accumulated a reserve fund of at least 20,000 pounds sterling, which it had garnered from testing and certification fees over the years. For example, in 1936, the NFU tested 1215 candidates. Nuth, Margaret E. “A Hundred Years of Kindergarten Education.” Child Life III, no. 6 (1937): 89.

¹⁸ BAECE [13/4] Letter from M. C. Ostle (Froebel Society and Junior Schools Association) to Grace Owen (Nursery Schools Association) 15 May 1925, British Association for Early Childhood Education (BAECE) Archives, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Evidence for this may be found in the pleading letters sent by Froebel Society leaders to their NSA counterparts. These may be found in BAECE [13/4], BAECE Archives.

²¹ Ibid.

²² BAECE [13/4] Letter, Lillian de Lissa, Principal of Gipsy Hill Training College (London) to Grace Owen of the NSA, 18 May 1925, BAECE Archives.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ There was, eventually, a Federal Lectures Board supported by the various ECE‐related organizations. BAECE[13/4]. “Minutes of the Joint Committee Meeting Held on Tuesday 22nd September, 1925, in the offices of the Froebel Society to Consider Some Form of Federation Between: The Child Study Association; the Education Guild; The Educational Handwork Association; The Froebel Society and Junior Schools’ Association; the Nursery School Association.” These organizations did all participate in conferences together and were members of the World Federation of Educational Associations, BAECE Archives.

²⁶ Raymont, “England’s Educational Debt”, 20.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁹ Hall, “Who Needs ‘Identity’?”, 4.

²⁸ Assmann, Jan. Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und Politische Identität in Frühen Hochkulturen. Munich: Beck, 1992: 22; 30–4.

³⁰ Ibid.; Hobsbawm, Eric J. “Introduction: Inventing Tradition.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Terence Ranger and Eric J. Hobsbawm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983: 1–14.

³² Murray, E[lsie] R[iach]. “The Gospel of Play by an Unrepentant Froebelian, Presidential Address by Miss E. R. Murray at the Fifty‐Fourth Annual Meeting of the Froebel Society on Tuesday, January 1, 1929.” Child Life no. 146, Spring Term (1929): 9–10.

³¹ Raymont, “England’s Educational Debt”, 14.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Campagnac, E. T. “The Permanent Value of Froebel’s Teaching: Presidential Address to the Froebel Society, Delivered January 2, 1934.” Child Life Quarterly, no. 162 (1934): 6–11.

³⁵ Hobsbawm, “Inventing Tradition”, 5–8.

³⁶ Ibid., 12ff.

³⁸ Nuth, “A Hundred Years,” 88–90.

³⁷ Smith, H. Brown. “The Influence of Froebel in the Infant School.” Child Life III, no. 6 (1937): 86–7.

³⁹ Cavenagh, F. A. “The Place of Froebel in Modern Education.” Child Life 5, no. 2 (1939): 19–20.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 18.

⁴¹ Ibid., 18–20.

⁴² National Froebel Foundation [Froebel Society and National Froebel Union amalgamated], National Froebel Foundation Bulletin, no. 2, March (1940): 1.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Priestman, O. B. “The Organisation of Education in England, V: The National Froebel Foundation. What Is It?” National Froebel Foundation Bulletin 30, no. November (1944): 2.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 3.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 2.

⁴⁹ Gramsci, Antonio, Quintin Hoare, and Geoffrey Nowell‐Smith. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971: 355, 353.

⁵⁰ Hall, “Who Needs ‘Identity’?”, 6.