Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel (Froebel)

Finger-painting and sand-trays are just part of what the world owes to Friedrich Fröbel (1782 - 1852). From 1808 to 1810, he trained with Johann Pestalozzi at the latter's school at Yverdon les Bains in Switzerland. But it was Fröbel who managed to get the idea of active learning taken up across the world and established the idea that children under 7 were ready to learn. Fröbel reasoned that "Because learning begins when consciousness erupts, education must also."

"A child's play is his work," Fröbel wrote. He saw play as "the highest expression of human development in childhood." It should never be hurried. It was an organised system. "In the treatment of the things of nature we very often take the right road, whereas in the treatment of man we go astray; and yet the forces that act in both proceed from the same source and obey the same law."

The grandson of a forester, the sixth son of a Lutheran pastor, Fröbel's mother died when he was nine months old. Fröbel was then left to what he later called 'the dark and ghastly dawning of my early life'. As a small child he rambled through the forests around his home, famous throughout Germany for its herbs and plants. He never lost his love of nature. But as soon as he was able to do so, he became a teacher.

His most famous book was Die Menschenerziehung (Human Education) in 1826. It was translated into English in 1885 under the title The Education of Man.

He wrote, "We grant space and time to young plants and animals because we know that, in accordance with the laws that live in them, they will develop properly and grow well. Young animals and plants are given rest, and arbitrary interference with their growth is avoided, because it is known that the opposite practice would disturb their pure unfolding and sound development; but the young human being is looked upon as a piece of wax or a lump of clay which man can mould into what he pleases."

Going beyond Pestalozzi's idea of observation, Fröbel devised what he called 'gifts' - undecorated balls, blocks, tiles, sticks and rings. The blocks would be in sets of twelve, from a cube, one unit in size, to a cylinder, twelve units long, in boxes of 500. Decoration would obsure the mathematical and geometrical logic of the shapes, and discourage creativity and imagination. "The importance of the vertical, the horizontal, and the rectangular is the first experience which the child gathers from building. Then come equilibrium and symmetry. Thus the child ascends from the construction of the simplest wall, with or without cement, to the more complex, and even to the invention of every architectural structure, lying within the possibilities of the given material." Fröbel's thinking on this has since inspired any number of toys from Meccano to Lego.

Fröbel's motto was "Kommt, lasst uns unsern Kindern leben" - not easy to translate, but more or less "Come, let us live with and for our children." He saw children as "tiny flowers... beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers." This idea quickly led to the catchy 'Kindergarten' (children's garden).

During the 1840's, the Kindergarten idea spread across Germany. Many kindergartens were non-denominational. Then it came to the attention of the King of Prussia that Fröbel's nephew was active in liberal politics. In 1851, the Prussian authorities ordered the closure of every kindergarten. Kindergarterners, as they called themselves, just exported the idea. Charles Dickens attended lectures in London, and wrote favourably about what he heard. Kindergartens were soon established in Britain, the USA and other countries.

Real-world experience is sometimes set against use of new-technology. Pigeon Post has many, useful, Fröbel-type properties. It goes beyond anything available in Fröbel's day. Once something has been experienced, it can be painted, talked about, and written about, and sent to friends or family, as a pigeon post.