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Education before Froebel

Johan Amos Comenius (1592-1670)

advised in The School of Infancy that babies should have their spirits stirred up "by kisses and embraces". Comenius wrote that children need to play to learn, if children were not loved, not educated early and well, their souls could be lost.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)

advised parents to let children enjoy nature

Johann Gotlieb Fichte (1762-1814)

Stimulated the desire for improved education of the next generation in Prussia by advocating a national system that would be successful in realising three fundamental ideals. These were;

1. the development of the individual for the benefit of the community,
2. the stimulation of the individual into independent activity,
3. and the development of character and good will.

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827)

Swiss reformer whose curriculum structure and pedagogical practises were influential and seminal to the development of child-centred education. This paedocentric and liberal tradition became a dominant feature of British educational practice which, as time passed, also absorbed the influences of Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852). Fichte's aspirations were turned into practical realities through the application of the teaching methods of Pestalozzi.

Robert Owen (1741-1859)

His model school at New Lanark, Scotland provided children of the new industrial age with an education that valued the arts, especially dance and music, and which also emphasised intellectual and moral training which utilised the senses in a recreative and joyful manner.

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Inventing Kindergarten uses extraordinary visual materials to reconstruct this successful system, to teach young children about art, design, mathematics, and nature read more

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