[Sidenote: Education should be ‘following.’]
=Motor Expression as His Method.=--But Froebel also holds that, “while in every human being there lives humanity as a whole, in each one it is realized and expressed in a wholly particular, peculiar, personal, and unique manner.” Thus he maintains that there is in every person at birth a coördinated, unified plan of his mature character, and that, if it is not marred or interfered with, it will develop naturally of itself. While he is not entirely consistent, and at times implies that this natural development must be guided and even shaped, in the main he reiterates Rousseau’s doctrine that ‘nature is right,’ and clearly stands for a full and free expression of the instincts and impulses. Hence he insists that “education in instruction and training should necessarily be _passive, following; not prescriptive, categorical, interfering_.” But in his conclusion as to the proper method for accomplishing this ‘development,’ Froebel naturally holds that it “should be brought about not in the way of dead imitation or mere copying, but in the way of living, spontaneous self-activity.” By this principle of ‘self-activity’ as the method of education Froebel seeks not simply activity in response to suggestion or instruction from parents or teachers, but activity of the child in carrying out his own impulses and decisions. Individuality must be developed by such activity, and self-hood given its rightful place as the guide to the child’s powers when exercised in learning. Hence with this idea of development through ‘self-activity’ is connected his principle of ‘creativeness,’ by which new forms and combinations are made and expression is given to new images and ideas. “Plastic material representation in life and through doing, united with thought and speech,” he declares, “is by far more developing and cultivating than the merely verbal representation of ideas.”
[Sidenote: Self-realization through social participation.]
=The Social Aspect of Education.=--His emphasis upon this psychological principle of motor expression under the head of ‘self-activity’ and ‘creativeness’ is the chief characteristic of Froebel’s method. Rousseau had also recommended motor activity as a means of learning, but he had insisted upon an isolated and unsocial education for Emile, whereas Froebel stresses the social aspects of education quite as clearly as he does the principle of self-expression. In fact, he holds that increasing self-realization, or individualization through ‘self-activity,’ must come through a process of socialization. The social instinct is primal, and the individual can be truly educated only in the company of other human beings. The life of the individual is necessarily bound up with participation in institutional life. Each one of the various institutions of society in which the mentality of the race has manifested itself--the home, the school, the church, the vocation, the state--becomes a medium for the activity of the individual, and at the same time a means of social control. As far as the child enters into the surrounding life, he is to receive the development needed for the present, and thereby also to be prepared for the future. Through imitation of coöperative activities in play, he obtains not only physical, but intellectual and moral training. Such a moral and intellectual atmosphere Froebel sought to cultivate at Keilhau by coöperation in domestic labor,--‘lifting, pulling, carrying, digging, splitting,’ and through coöperative construction out of blocks of a chapel, castle, and other features of a village. Similarly, the kindergarten was intended to “represent a _miniature state_ for children, in which the young citizen can learn to move freely, but with consideration for his little fellows.”