Pestalozzi-Fröbel Haus
The Pestalozzi-Fröbel-Haus was founded in 1874 to train nursery school teachers about kindergarten techniques. The organisation believes in teaching children as individuals.
History
The institution was founded in 1874 by Henriette Schrader-Breymann who was the great niece of Friedrich Froebel. The house was named after him and another pedagogue Johann Pestalozzi. Surprisingly Schader-Breymann was a critic of her great uncle. She believed that young children needed much more practical activities. She advocated field trips, housework, craftwork and horticulture. This influence came from her belief that nature was essential to a child's development and to her respect for the work of Pestalozzi and his idea of "learning by doing". When it was first started the house had a kindergarten for the children but the emphasis changed to domestic and nursery training and a creche.[1]
Its influence in America began in 1880 when the American Journal of Education included a complimentary report. However these German ideas complemented the growing influence of American approaches suggested by G. Stanley Hall and Kate Douglas Wiggin. Elizabeth Harrison of Chicago travelled to Berlin in 1889 to find out for herself about ideas she had seen practised by a German teacher. She used this trip to transform her nursery into the Chicago Kindergarten training College.[1] In 1893 Americans saw these ideas when Annette Hamminck-Schepel supervised an exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair sponsored by the Berlin institution.
The institution's influence spread to the United Kingdom when Caroline Bishop and Julia Lloyd both trained here. Lloyd was intermittently there from 1888 to 1896.[2]
Today
Today the organisation continues to train nursery school teachers.[3]
References
- 1 2 Henry Geitz; Jürgen Heideking; Jurgen Herbst; German Histo<rical Institute (Washington, D.C.) (31 March 1995). German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917. Cambridge University Press. pp. 95–98. ISBN 978-0-521-47083-4. Cite uses deprecated parameter
|coauthors=(help) - ↑ Ruth Watts, ‘Lloyd, Julia (1867–1955)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2013 accessed 2 Aug 2015
- ↑ Pestalozzi Froebel Haus, retrieved 2 August 2015