Froebel’s Educational Laws for All Teachers

Froebel’s work was to relate grand ideals to each other and to co-ordinate the theoretical and the practical. He transformed abstract principles into realities with consummate skill, and systematized the use of material things as agencies in the spiritual growth of the child to a degree never dreamed of by even the greatest educators who preceded him. He made valuable discoveries in education, but his grandest work was the crystallization of true ideals into a system. By doing so he made it possible for all honest, unprejudiced teachers, not blinded by presumptuous ignorance, to see what had hitherto been revealed only to the few whose free minds had swept beyond the range of fettered’ thought. He reduced to organized objective form theoretical truths which would have remained incomprehensible to the vast majority of teachers if he had not made them realities in the kindergarten. He wrote very wisely, but his profound writings would not have disseminated truth as clearly in centuries as his system in practice has done in a few years. The aim of this book is to give a simple exposition of the most important principles of Froebel’s educational philosophy, and to make suggestions regarding the application of these principles to the work of the schoolroom in teaching and training.