Properly guiding the play of puppies and kittens turns them out well. Friedrich Froebel concluded the same with children:
People think the child is only seeking amusement when it plays. That is a great error. Play is the first means of development of the human mind, its first effort to make acquaintance with the outward world, to collect original experiences from things and facts, and to exercise the powers of body and mind. The child, indeed, recognizes no purpose in it and knows nothing, in the beginning, of any end which is to be reached when it imitates the play it sees around it, but it expresses its own nature, and that is human nature, in its playful activity. The further its development proceeds the more significant are the various movements which we know as the movements of the human being, from which all human culture has originated.
But this is only the case when these movements can express themselves unhindered and unfalsified, and the child’s nature has not been perverted and led into false paths. The human instinct needs guidance by free movements, while the brute instinct finds its goal without guidance. This guidance can only be given by one who knows the goal which is to be reached by the manifold activity of the blind, natural feeling of the child. Without rational, conscious guidance, childish activity degenerates into aimless play instead of preparing for those tasks of life for which it is destined.
(Quoted from page 67 of Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel, by Baroness B. Von Mraenholz-Bülow. Translated by Mrs. Horace Mann. Lee and Shepard, 1905.)
For a brief biography of Friedrich Froebel, click here. For images of or relating to Friedrich Froebel, click here.
For the little we could find on Baroness B. Von Mraenholz-Bülow, click here.
For a brief biography of Mrs. Horace Mann, click here. For images of or relating to Mrs. Horace Mann, click here.
People think the child is only seeking amusement when it plays. That is a great error. Play is the first means of development of the human mind, its first effort to make acquaintance with the outward world, to collect original experiences from things and facts, and to exercise the powers of body and mind. The child, indeed, recognizes no purpose in it and knows nothing, in the beginning, of any end which is to be reached when it imitates the play it sees around it, but it expresses its own nature, and that is human nature, in its playful activity. The further its development proceeds the more significant are the various movements which we know as the movements of the human being, from which all human culture has originated.
But this is only the case when these movements can express themselves unhindered and unfalsified, and the child’s nature has not been perverted and led into false paths. The human instinct needs guidance by free movements, while the brute instinct finds its goal without guidance. This guidance can only be given by one who knows the goal which is to be reached by the manifold activity of the blind, natural feeling of the child. Without rational, conscious guidance, childish activity degenerates into aimless play instead of preparing for those tasks of life for which it is destined.
(Quoted from page 67 of Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel, by Baroness B. Von Mraenholz-Bülow. Translated by Mrs. Horace Mann. Lee and Shepard, 1905.)
For a brief biography of Friedrich Froebel, click here. For images of or relating to Friedrich Froebel, click here.
For the little we could find on Baroness B. Von Mraenholz-Bülow, click here.
For a brief biography of Mrs. Horace Mann, click here. For images of or relating to Mrs. Horace Mann, click here.
Comments