Friedrich Froebel, first published in 1826
"God is the source of all things. Each things exists only because the divine spirit lives in it and this divine spirit is its essence. The destiny of every thing is to reveal its essence, that is, the divine spirit dwelling in it. It is the special function of man as an intelligent and rational being to realise his essence fully and clearly, to exercise, practise, and reveal the divine spirit in him, freely and consciously in his own life." (p. 31)
"Education, in other words, should lead man to a clear knowledge of himself, to peace with nature, to unity with God." (p. 32)
"Hence the fundamental principles of education, instruction, and teaching, should be passive and protective, not directive and interfering.
We give room and time to young plants and animals, well knowing that then they will develop and grow according to the laws inherent in them. We do not interfere, because we know that this would disturb their healthy development. But the young child is treated as wax or clay which can be moulded in any form. Why does man, wandering through gardens and fields, meadows and groves, fail to open his mind, and refuse to listen to the lesson which nature silently teaches? See how the weed, growing mind obstacles and restraints, scarcely gives a hint that it obeys an inner law. Then look at it growing in the open field, and see what conformity to law it shows, what harmonious life all its parts. So children who appear sickly and constrained because their parents have forced upon them in their tender years a form and calling opposed to they nature, might under natural conditions develop with beauty, uniformity, and harmony." (pp. 32, 33)
"It is true that nature rarely shows us its original purity intact in man. Therefore we must presuppose it in individuals until the contrary is clearly manifest. Otherwise, the original state where it might still be found intact might easily be destroyed. But if the inner spirit and its outward manifestations show unmistakably that the original state has been injured, then a strictly directive education is required." (p. 33)
"(...) all directive education must be adapted to the child's nature. This is attained when it expresses an immutable law and excludes all caprice. So all true education, teaching, and instruction, must always be two-sided. It must give and take, unite and divide, be directive and adaptable, active and passive, definitive and flexible, firm and yielding. So it is with the pupil." (pp. 34, 35)
"Certainly each race and each individual of necessity passes through all the stages already traversed. [...] So his development as a child of God shows the unity and harmony of God and nature, of the infinite and the finite. Again, his development as a member of the family exhibits the nature, capacities and tendencies of the family in purity and harmony. Lastly, his development as a member of the human race shows the nature, capacities, and tendencies, of the whole of humanity.
All these will be most completely secured if each individual develops as perfectly as possible on the lines indicated by his own individual nature." (p. 36)
"Then the life of man shows this unity of his nature of all things; his individuality manifests the unity of his inner spirit with its outer acts; the diversity of these acts exhibits the variety of his relations to the world. Only in this three-fold yet unified way can the inner nature clearly find expression.[...]
It follows that, from his very birth, this nature of the child should be recognised by allowing him freely to put forth all his activities. The exercise of one power should not hinder that of another. So he should not be fettered, bound, not wrapped in swaddling clothes, nor, after a while, put into leading strings. He should early learn that he himself is the source of all his powers, and realising this, use them freely - grasp with his hands, stand and walk on his feet, look and see with his eyes; in short, use all his powers appropriately and harmoniously. Really to be master of one's powers is the most difficult of all arts, and one only to be learnt if it be practised from the first." (p. 37)
"Far otherwise would it be if parents looked for their child to pass through all the stages of development, omitting none; especially if they bore in mind that the strong and perfect development of each successive stage is grounded in the vigour and completeness of all the preceding stages." (p. 41)
"The child, the boy, the man, should have no other purpose then to be at each stage just what that stage demands. Then, like a new shoot from a healthy bud, each stage will spring forth in its turn, and in each he will with like purpose and effort fulfil its requirements. Only thus, by adequate development in each preceding stage, can the adequate development of any of the later stages be secured.
This is particularly pertinent to the development of natural capacity for the production of material results, that is, for work and industry. The current ideas of work and industry are entirely false and deadening. They regard work as oppressive, degrading, and utterly devoid of life." (p. 42)
"So it becomes plain that from the earliest childhood the growing human being should be trained for productive activity. Both his spiritual and his bodily nature demand it; and in this matter the fulfilment of the demands of the spirit necessarily carries with it the satisfaction of those of the body. In the awakening of the senses and the spontaneous activity of the limbs of the babe we see the earliest seeds of productive impulse; in the play, building, and modelling, of early childhood the tender buds of promise; then comes the period wherein the boy should be prepared for future industry and diligent work." (p. 43)
"To sum up: man is in the child; the unity of humanity is inherent in childhood; so it follows that all that the man shall ever be or do exists in germ in him as an infant. So if we would train him aright, so as to develop both his individuality and his common human nature, we must from the first see him both as a particular human being and as in essential relations to his surroundings. But the unity of his inner life finds many and diverse manifestations, which appear successively in time. So it is in diverse particular experiences that the child learns to know both the world as related to himself and his owner inner life as related to the world. Hence it follows that his powers and tendencies, the activities of his sense and limbs, should be developed in order, each as it appears in his life." (pp. 44, 45)
"Because of this intermediate character, drawing, as we have seen, appears very early in childhood. But the impulse to representation through painting and modelling is also found in childhood, and is particulalry strong at the beginning of boyhood. This shows clearly that the artistic sense and the tendency to artistic representation are innate, and should, consequently, be carefully cultivated, at least from the early years of boyhood. Thereby the boy will be trained to understand and appreciate works of art, even though his energies are not mainly devoted to art with the view of becoming an artist. A right school of education, indeed, will save him from claiming to be an artist when he has not the true artistic soul.
Singing, painting, and modelling, then, must early be cultivated by the school as essential elements in a complete human education, and not be left to chance or fancy. This, not with the aim of making some sort of an artist out of every pupil, still less of producing artists in general - which are, indeed, mutually destructive aims, though, in a sense, the former is true of every one - but with the simple and explicit intention of securing for each pupil a complete development of his nature, that he may be conscious of its wealth of interest and energy, and, in particular, may be able to appreciate true art." (pp. 153, 154)