Most people today accept that childhood is a big influence on adulthood, so it should come as a surprise that the “inventor” of structured childhood is all but forgotten.
The man in question is Friedrich Fröbel. He was a school teacher, and developed the Kindergarten – he founded his Play and Activity Institute in 1837 and coined the term “kindergarten” three years later.
Fröbel designed his own educational play materials called Fröbelgaben (which are known in English as Fröebel Gifts), which included geometric building blocks and pattern activity blocks. Understanding the importance of activity of the child in learning, he came up with the concept of Freiarbeit (in English, free work) establishing the educational aspect of games, and how the game is the form that life takes in childhood. Activities in the first kindergarten included singing, dancing, gardening, and self-directed play with the Fröebel Gifts. All of which may appear unexciting today, but at the time – this was a revolution.
Fröbel died in 1852 knowing his work was being trashed by his government, which banned kindergartens in 1851. What Fröbel would never know is that this ban resulted in a great many German teachers fleeing to other countries, and taking with them Fröbel’s kindergarten.
Fröebel College is now a constituent college of Roehampton University and is home to the university’s department of education. Fröbel’s ideas are now worldwide, and well established.
Fröbel influenced beyond education, naturally influencing children who would become adults in time. His building forms and movement games are accepted forerunners of what has become known as abstract art.
He is cited as a major influence in the Bauhaus movement, where Walter Gropius designed the Friedrich Fröbel Haus in his honour.
Famously, many children who grew up in kindergartens and with Fröbel’s ideas about geometry, became famous modernist architects such as Buckminster Fuller, Frank Lloyd Wright, and even Le Corbusier.
It would be difficult to find a more influential person on Western Civilisation than Friedrich Fröbel – we all live in a world of kindergartens, of modern buildings, of thinking about learning and teaching methods to make people and the built environment better. Friedrich Fröbel ought to be recognised more as the cause of all this, don’t you think?
Posted by Dave 
:: art of design :: 