Little Workers of the Kindergarten

Friedrich Froebel (1772-1852) was the founder of the kindergarten, an educational philosophy and curriculum for the three- to seven-year-old child first applied in Blankenburg, Germany in 1840. His faith in the efficacy of productive manual labor to strengthen the creative and spiritual qualities of the youngest children was central to his orderly, disciplined program. Although the method did not survive intact in the many applications to which it was put, Froebelian teaching had a pervasive international influence in a century that was increasingly interested in children's training and children's culture, while simultaneously growing in nationalism and technology. Because Froebel preferred to treat children as "creative, productive being[s]" and to foster their desire for "practical usefulness" (Bowen 32), his methods naturally intersected with the interests both of technocrats and Luddites at a moment when the world of work was undergoing significant changes. On the one hand, his children developed precocious dexterity and self-discipline, characteristics that industrialists admired. On the other hand, the idea that work is by its nature infinitely satisfying to the worker was likely to be abrogated by modern production methods. But as Courthope Bowen remarks in his explanation of the Froebel method, teachers examining Froebel's philosophy will themselves be drawn to live out their lives "more wisely, more strenuously, and more fruitfully" (59).

I. "The Bridge": An Introduction to the Value of Labor

As Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856-1923), herself a slum "kindergartner" (the term used for the teacher in the Froebel schoolrooms) in the Silver Street Kindergarten in San Francisco, noted in The Story of Patsy (1889), kindergarten walls were adorned with a row of pictures out of the Froebel Mother Play book (Mutter-und-Kose-lieder [1843]) and other sources. ¹ The pictures were accompanied by stories, games, and songs and set the theme for consecutive days in the school. "The Bridge" (fig. 1) is one such picture/song combination from the book that emphasizes both the central position of work in the Froebel method and its essentially transcendent nature.

In the translation by Frances and Emily Lord, the song is equally divided between the child's desire and the carpenter's cooperation:

    By Brooklet fresh flowing,
    The Flowers are growing;
    This Child wants to cross,
    To gather green Moss.
He's longing to gather the flowers on the edge,
But deep is the water and thick is the sedge.
Please, Carpenter, build me a Bridge if you can—
I'll thank you, I'll thank you, you kind, clever man
    How nice! I can go
    Right across, to and fro.
    What lovely flowers I can find!
    Oh, Carpenter! You're good and kind.

The picture shows a time continuum from front to back. It starts with the child holding the tip of the reed that is bending over the stream in the foreground, which shows that nature contains the same pattern that will later be executed in wood—the inception of the idea of bridges and unity. The figure of the carpenter and his boards is in the middle ground, showing the importance of the worker and his vital labor. It finishes with the little footbridge in the background on which the adult and child (presumably the same couple who occupy the foreground) can be dimly seen. That the need for bridges and the importance of building a bridge is stressed more than the actual structure is entirely characteristic of Froebel's method.

Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Froebel thought that the child's first lesson should be practical work, but Froebel was not worried about the bad influence of society on the child. Indeed, the kindergarten is designed to promote early socialization outside the home. He stresses the interconnectedness of society and the mutual needs that can be satisfied by everyone's contributions to the group. He is most pleased to foster purposeful work by the children or, as in this case, to promote the child's gratitude to community workers. The adjoining songs in the collection are, for...