Friedrich Froebel was a German educator who focused on children's learning. During his lifetime, he worked in both Germany and Switzerland and was strongly influenced by Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who helped Switzerland become one of the first nations in Europe to achieve nearly 100% literacy.
Froebel's childhood was the primary influence on his desire to see the establishing of a place for young children to play and grow. As a young boy, poor Froebel had great difficulty with languages and writing but excelled at math, especially geometry. That inspired him to find employment first as a forest land surveyor and later in the field of architecture, but, in 1805, he abruptly decided to switch careers and accepted a teaching position in Frankfurt.
Fortunately for Froebel, the school at which he was employed was one of the first outside Switzerland to adopt the methods of Pestalozzi, who believed that children had an enormous capacity and desire to learn. His style allowed children to explore their natural curiosity rather than having them sit for hours while listening to lectures and learning. There, Froebel came up with the theory that all children needed to play so that they could be educated by using physical movements and imaginative powers.
In 1816, he opened a school to put his theory into practice. At that time, there was no formal education for German children younger than seven, so Froebel's school was revolutionary. At Froebel's school, singing and dancing were used to encourage healthy activities in children. He also developed a series of geometric building blocks—today called Froebel Gifts—that the children played with and used to understand geometry and to develop spatial awareness. A third aspect of his educational style was to allow the children to work in a garden, where they could watch plants grow and learn to care for them.
In 1837, Froebel created a new school, which, in 1840, he began calling a kindergarten, or children's garden. The success of Froebel's school won him countless admirers, who spread his ideas following his death in 1852. Today, the necessity of early childhood education is accepted by people throughout the world, thereby showing how influential Froebel's theories have become over time.
