Chapter VII: Play and Its Relation to Work

To write even a small book on Froebel without directly touching on the subject of play would be impossible, though in dealing with instincts and the carrying out of natural activities we have necessarily considered much that comes under this heading.

On the educative value of play, Froebel is recognizedly original, and his views have influenced and are influencing schools for young children in most civilized countries. Indeed, it would be difficult to show that modern writers on play, in spite of the scientific thoroughness of their investigations, classifications and terminology, have made much advance upon Froebel’s theories. Rather do they tend to show how remarkable was his insight, and how surprisingly well grounded his theories.

Nothing, however, has yet been said as to the relation of play to work, no direct definition has yet been given, nor has any reference been made to the now familiar theories of play.

In Froebel’s day, these, as clearly formulated theories, were non-existent. His work was that of a pioneer, and his theory might have been called that of “Preparation through Recapitulation.” He would, however, have allowed that play is sometimes, though not always, recreative, and he makes clear the necessity for what he calls “healthy vital energy” (gesunden Lebensmuthe), but he would never have called this mere “surplus energy,” because he thought it was not more than was required:

“The genuine schoolboy should be full of life and spirit,
strong in body and mind.… Would that, in judging the power of
children and boys, we might never forget the words of one of
our greatest German writers: that there is a greater advance
from the infant to the speaking child than there is from the
schoolboy to a Newton! Now, if the advance is greater, the
power, too, must be greater; this we should consider.”--_E., p.
134._

Ebers, the Egyptologist, tells us that when he was a boy at Keilhau full provision was made for this abounding energy. We read of walks long and short, of botanizing and geologizing rambles, of climbing trees and cliffs for birds’ eggs, of which only one might be taken from a nest. We hear of Indian games out of Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, of classic and other dramas on winter evenings, and of Homeric battles, which Froebel, he says, would have called “signs of creative imagination and individual life.” There was swimming and skating and coasting and “the spacious wrestling ground with the shooting stand and the gymnasium for every spare moment of the winter”; and a piece of ground “assigned to each pupil, where he could wield spade and pickaxe, roll stones, sow and reap.” But the great game was the Bergwacht, where the boys, divided into four parties that all might be active, actually constructed, and then attacked and defended stone fortresses. “How quickly,” says Ebers, “we learned to use the plummet, to take levels, hew the stone and wield the axe.” The weapons were blunted stakes. It was forbidden to touch the head, but it was a point of honour among the boys to yield as prisoner if touched by the pole, “and what self-denial it required!” These combats were held on fine Saturday evenings, and when all was over “the women,” probably the girls of the school community, had lighted fires and made supper ready, and the lads slept in their fortresses while two sentinels marched up and down, relieved every half-hour. On the Sunday following the boys were not required to go to church, “where we should merely have gone to sleep.”

It has frequently been brought as an accusation against Froebel that he makes no clear cut distinction between work and play, and that is true, but who nowadays does? Common sense would probably join hands with the philosopher in saying that the feeling of freedom is the chief distinction of play as opposed to work, and this is the definition quite distinctly given by Froebel. The definition is given in his detailed enumeration of “the various directions of an active life of instruction and education,” and after mentioning religious training, cultivation of the body as the means of expressing mind, the study of Nature, etc., etc., he comes to:

“Play, that is, spontaneous representation and exercise of
every kind.”--_E., p. 236._

Another definition given in “The First Action of a Child” is:

“Play, which is independent outward expression of what is
within.”--_P., p. 29._

It is because it is spontaneous that Froebel calls play, during the period of earliest childhood, when the child is gaining control of language, “the highest phase of human development at this stage.”

“Play and speaking form the element in which the child lives
at this time.… Play is the highest stage of child-development,
of human development at this stage, because it is spontaneous
(freithätige) representation of the inner, representation of
the inner out of the need and desire of the inner itself. This
is implied in the very word Play.”--_E., p. 34._

For modern views on play we turn to the exhaustive study made by Karl Groos in his two volumes, “The Play of Animals,” and “The Play of Man.” Here we find the writer taking “the conception of impulse life as a starting-point,” and reaching the conclusion “that among higher animals certain instincts are present which, especially in youth, but also in maturity, produce activity that is without serious intent, and so give rise to the various phenomena which we include in the word ‘play.’” In this play, Groos goes on, “opportunity is given to the animal through the exercise of inborn dispositions, to strengthen and increase his inheritance in the acquisition of adaptations to his complicated environment, an achievement which would be unattainable by mere mechanical instinct alone.” In the treatment of human play he considers “an analogous position is tenable,” but, for the word instinct, with its particular reactions, he must substitute “natural or hereditary impulse.”

We have already seen that though Froebel recognized the existence and importance of human instinct, still he distinguished between it and the “definite and strong instincts” which belong to the animals lower than man. We have seen that he regarded the play of childhood as “spontaneous self-instruction” based on the instincts of investigation and of construction or representation, action being regarded as the principal means of investigating, as well as of gaining control over the surroundings and over the self. We have noticed, too, that Groos feels inclined to assume a universal “impulse to activity,” and points out that Ribot approaches such an assumption, though for himself he can only venture to “hold fast to the fact of the primal need for activity.” Froebel does, as we have seen, attribute to the infant the one instinct of activity, which in one place he calls “the natural longing for some mode of activity inherent in all children,” and this he says becomes differentiated at a later period.

The special place given by Groos to imitation as “the link between instinctive and intelligent conduct” is also noteworthy. For we have seen that Froebel regards imitation in precisely the same light, never calling it an instinct, but saying that it is the outcome of spontaneous activity, and that it leads on to understanding.

“For what man tries to represent or do he begins to
understand.”--_E., p. 76._

“As now, habit in the child proceeds from spontaneous and
independent activity, so also does imitation; … the whole
inner life of the child shows itself as a tri-unity in the
three-#fold phenomenon of spontaneous activity, habit and
imitation.”--_P., p. 28._

It is impossible to make plain how Froebel regarded play, until it is known how he regarded work, work, too, not only for a child but for a human being. What he desired for all was work which produces joy; he calls it “a debasing illusion that man works, produces, creates, only in order to preserve his body, only to secure food, clothing and shelter.” Man, he says, works “primarily and in truth that his real essence may assume outward form,” and one of his sayings is that “the true spirit of life is the genuine spirit of play.” In an ideal state of affairs, no human being would be condemned to entirely mechanical work. Work “worthy of the nature of man” is to Froebel work which in some way expresses the man; mechanical work is dismissed as “degrading man into a beast of burden or a machine.” It is because man is of God that he must work, must produce. “Nearer we hold of God who gives, than of his tribes who take, I must believe,” is Froebel’s thought in Browning’s words:

“Each thought of God is a work, an act, a result.… God created
man in His own image. Therefore man must create and work
like God. Man’s spirit must hover over the unformed and move
it that figure and form may come forth. This is the higher
meaning, the deep significance, the great purpose of work and
industry, of working, and, as it is truly significantly called,
of creating. We become like God by diligence and industry, by
work and action, which are accompanied by the clear perception
or even the least anticipation that thereby we represent the
inner by the outer; that we give body to spirit and form to
thought, make visible the invisible, give an outward transient
existence to the eternal that lives in the spirit.… Early work,
guided in accordance with its inner meaning, confirms and
elevates religion. Religion without work is apt to become empty
dreaming.”--_E., p. 30._

“The boy is to take up his future work which now has become his
calling, not indolently in sullen gloom, but cheerfully and
joyously, trusting God, himself and Nature, rejoicing in the
manifold prosperity of his work.… Nor will the father say that
his son must take up his own business … he will see that every
business may be ennobled and made worthy of man.”--_E., p. 233._

It is too cheap a jibe to throw at Froebel and his educational theories that he makes little distinction between work and play. It ought never to come from any one who has made even a slight study of psychology. The sting is meant to lie in the suggestion that play is trifling and easy and that it requires no exertion, while work is serious and demands concentrated effort, but this view will not bear any consideration. Every one knows that the play even of an adult, where the differentiation between work and play ought to be more possible, is often most exhausting, either to body or to mind. As to the play of childhood, one of the best known passages in “The Education of Man” is the one in which Froebel protests that:

“Play at this time is not trivial, it is highly serious and of
deep significance.”--_E., p. 55._

It is in this passage, too, that he speaks of the child “wholly absorbed in play,” who after “playing enduringly even to the point of fatigue” has fallen asleep “while so absorbed,” and calls this “the most beautiful expression of child-life at this stage.”

It is Froebel’s glory that as early as 1826 he had applied the theory of development to education and, rightly or wrongly, he believed that if we could but supply to our school children material suited to their needs according to their stage of development, they would respond with the same eagerness that the younger child shows in what we call his play, but what Froebel called his “self-culture and self-education.” He states this view quite distinctly:

“We have considered the object and aim of human life in
general.… It now remains to show in what sequence and
connection the life impulses of the boy develop at this stage,
how and in what order and form, the school should work in order
to satisfy human instincts in general, and especially the
instincts of the boy at this stage of school-life.

“From a consideration of _the means of instruction and manner
of teaching thereby conditioned, which necessarily coincide
with the striving of man toward development_, what is necessary
for the knowledge of number, of space, of form, of exercises
in speech, of writing and of reading comes out clearly and
definitely.”--_E., p. 229._

The view that “the material of instruction and the manner of teaching” are necessarily conditioned by the child’s stage of development is a view that has rapidly gained ground. Froebel did his best to apply it, and it had a partial application in the “culture epochs” theory of the Herbartians. It has received a stronger impetus into what seems at present a much truer direction, from the experimental work carried out at Chicago, under the auspices of Professor Dewey. Froebel maintained that it was a condition of satisfactory work in every subject. For example, in connection with the teaching of writing he says:

“Here, as in all instruction, we should start from a definite
need of the boy, a need, which must, to a certain extent,
have been previously developed, if he is to be taught with
profit and success. This is the source of a multitude of
imperfections in our schools, that we teach without having
awakened any need for it, nay even after having repressed what
need was already there! How can instruction and the school
prosper?”--_E., p. 223._

Froebel speaks in the same way of work in colours, saying “children feel the need of a knowledge of colours.” Of poetry in general, including religious verses and prayers, he says “these must be given according to the requirements of the development of the child’s mind, and must give expression to what is already there.”

Returning now to the subject of play as such, we find that Groos retains as “general psychological criteria of play,” but two “of the elements popularly regarded as essential--namely, its pleasurableness, and the actual severance from life’s serious aims.” Of these he says: “Both are included in activity performed for its own sake.”

It is in connection with very young children that Froebel speaks of activity for its own sake, and here he does not differentiate between work and play. He is true to his theory that in all things capable of development, “what is definite proceeds everywhere from what is indefinite.” So he says that:

“Play is at first just natural life.”--_E., p. 54._

He maintains that:

“The activity of the senses and limbs is the first germ or bud,
and play, building and shaping (Gestalten) the first tender
blossoms of the formative instinct, and that this is the point
of time, at which man is to be prepared for future industry,
diligence, and productive activity.”--_E., p. 34._

But, in the case of the boy a little older, though still only seven or eight, Froebel does distinctly differentiate, giving the definition of play already quoted, “spontaneous expression and practice of every kind,” and saying of work, that:

“Boys of this age should have definite domestic occupations,
indeed they could be actually instructed by mechanics and
farmers as has already been done by many a father with active
natural insight. Boys of a somewhat advanced age should be
often placed in a position to accomplish something with their
own hands and their own judgment … should devote daily at
least one or two hours to an occupation with outward results
… after such a refreshing _work bath_, I cannot better
designate it, the mind goes with new life to its intellectual
employments.”--_E., p. 236._

Of the infant, Froebel writes:

“At this stage of development the man-to-be (dem erschienenen
werdenden Menschen) _uses his body, his senses, his limbs,
entirely for that use, practice and exercise, not at all for
its results_, to which he is quite indifferent, or, to speak
more correctly, of which he has as yet no idea. Out of this
comes what begins at this stage, the child’s play with his
limbs; with his hands, fingers, lips, tongue and feet, and also
with the movements of his eyes and of his face.”--_E., p. 48._

Of the older child Froebel very distinctly insists that he wants more than the activity, that he wants outward result. But the result of which he speaks is one which Groos himself would not disallow. It is only the outward product of the impulse which has been gratified, a result which is present to the mind of the older child, while to the infant no such consciousness is possible.

“What at an earlier stage of childhood was action for the
sake of the activity, is now, in the boy, activity for the
sake of the visible result; the child’s instinct of activity
has developed into an instinct for shaping or giving form,
and herein lies the solution of the whole outer life or outer
manifestation of boy life at this stage.”--_E., p. 99._

Inquiring into the kind of pleasure derived from play, Groos finds that it rests primarily on the satisfaction of inborn impulses, which press for discharge, and he gives three special “inborn necessities which ground our pleasure in play--namely, the exercise of attention, the demand to be an efficient cause, and imagination.”

As to attention, he suggests that it lends a meaning to the vague idea of a general need for activity, speaking of “the pitiable condition of boredom” if opportunity is withheld.

Froebel, of course, has much to say about the instinct of activity, or, as he usually calls it in “The First Action of a Child,” the instinct of employment (Beschäftigungstrieb), which is noticeable “even when the so-called three months’ slumber has just ended.” He, too, frequently refers to “the ennui and pernicious lack of occupation,” to the “mischievous idleness which results from our not satisfying or misdirecting the natural longing for activity inherent in all children.” It is because Froebel’s thoughts always run on conscious revelation of the self within as the explanation of human life, that he makes so much of “the child’s instinct to employ itself” (Triebe des Kindes, sich zu beschäftigen). This also explains how so much that he says corresponds with what Groos brings forward with regard to “the joy in being a cause,” and its modifications. These modifications are (_a_) pleasure in the mere possession of power, (_b_) emulation, when a model is copied, and (_c_) in the case of imitative competition there is pleasure in surpassing others as well as the enjoyment of success resulting from that pleasure of overcoming difficulties which comes under the combative instinct.

Froebel is warning parents that they must provide for their children opportunity for the exercise of the impulse to formative activity by letting them help, even if their help is really a hindrance, and he says:

“If his earlier activity was only imitation of what he saw
around him, now it is sharing in the business of the house,
lifting, pulling, carrying, digging, and wood-splitting. In
everything the boy will exercise, measure and compare his
strength that his body may grow stronger, _that his power may
increase, and that he may know its measure_.… At this age the
healthy boy, brought up simply and naturally, never avoids a
difficulty, never goes round a hindrance: no, he seeks it out
and overcomes it. ‘Let it lie,’ calls the vigorous youngster
to the father, who offers to remove an obstacle; ‘Let it lie:
I can get over it.’ … As activity gave pleasure to the child,
so work gives pleasure to the boy. Hence the daring feats of
boyhood.… Easy is the most difficult, without peril the most
adventurous, for the impulse comes from the innermost nature,
from his heart and will.”--_E., p. 101._

“But it is not only the impulse to use and to measure his
power that urges the boy to roam and to climb--it is the need
to widen his mental horizon.… The same desire holds him to
the plain … he occupies himself with water and with plastic
materials. For he seeks now _because of the feeling of power
over material already gained_ to master these. Everything
must serve his impulse towards construction.… And so each
forms for himself his own world, _for the feeling of his own
power demands his own space and his own material_.…”--_E., pp.
102-107._

“But all the plays and occupations of boys do not by any means
aim at representing objects and things. On the contrary, _in
many pure exercise of strength and measuring of strength
predominate_, and many have no further aim than the display
of strength. Yet the play of this age has always its peculiar
characteristic, namely, as during the period of childhood,
the aim of play consisted simply in activity as such, so
now its aim is always a definite conscious purpose, which
characteristic develops more and more as the boys increase in
age. This is observable even with all games of bodily movement,
of running, boxing, wrestling, with ball-games, goal, hunting,
and war games, etc.”

“_It is the sense of sure and reliable power, the sense of its
increase_ both as an individual and as a member of the group
_that fills the boy with all-pervading jubilant joy_ during
these games.”--_E., p. 113._

It is evidently difficult even for practised thinkers to grasp the importance of what we so glibly call play in the case of the young child. Mr. Kirkpatrick, for instance, fully recognizes its importance in regard to children somewhat older, and he makes a suggestive distinction between play and amusement, calling play active, while amusement is passive. Others, he says, work for our amusement. But when he speaks of the infant, he slips into the mistake of saying that the infant, even though active, “amuses” itself. To the ordinary observer the whole life of a young child is play, but it would be as correct to say that it is all work.

Professor Stout, true to what he calls the tendency of the moderns to see in the little child what is writ large in the adult, allows “purely intellectual curiosity” on the part of the infant. We have no right to call an infant passive and therefore amused even when the mother shakes the rattle for his edification. He may be striving hard to accommodate his organs of sight, he may be recalling previous sounds similar and dissimilar, he may be watching and comparing different movements and different positions. He has so much to learn “with the world so new and all,” and, to judge from his seriousness, it is at times a most momentous inquiry. The baby to whom the activity of throwing is new, and who spends full twenty minutes in throwing a tram ticket on the floor of the car--which the patient mother restores each time--throwing, too, with such force and evident purpose, cannot properly be said to be playing. Nor can the infant who stares with such concentration at the lighted lamp and who, when the mother moves out of the direct range of the light, strives with all its feeble strength to readjust its position to that entrancing brightness.

Of the very young child, Froebel writes:

“The first voluntary employments of the child are observation
of its surroundings, spontaneous taking in of the outer world,
and play, which is independent outward expression … it is
evident therefore how important is the training … and also
the kind of voluntary playful occupation of the child.… For as
the life of man is continuous one can recognize even in the
first baby life, though only in the slightest traces and most
delicate germs, all the mental activities which in later life
become predominant.”--_P., p. 29._

When Groos reaches the pedagogical standpoint, he says:

“We have repeatedly found in the course of this inquiry that even the most serious work may include a certain playfulness, especially when enjoyment of being a cause and of conquest are prominent. Between flippant trifling, and conscientious study there is a wide chasm which nothing can bridge, but not all play is such trifling. Who would forbid the teacher’s making the effort to induce in his pupils a psychological condition like that of the adult worker, who is not oppressed by the _shall_ and _must_ in the pursuit of his calling, because the very exertion of his physical and mental powers in work, involving all his capabilities, fills his soul with joy? Since play thus approaches work, when pleasure in the activity as such, as well as its practical aim, becomes a motive power (as in the gymnastic games of adults), so may work become like play, when its real aim is superseded by enjoyment of the activity itself. And it can hardly be doubted that this is the highest and noblest form of work.”[37]

It is beyond dispute that this is the kind of work that Froebel desired for all humanity, so it is not surprising if he drew no hard and fast line between work and the “_play_” which he insists “_is not trivial_,” and which he urges parents to protect and guide. Of play at the stage of boyhood he writes:

“Joy is the soul of every activity at this period.”--_E., p.
304._

And in reference to the right kind of instruction he says:

“The union of school and life is the first and indispensable
requirement … if men are ever to free themselves from the
oppressive burden and emptiness of merely extraneously
communicated knowledge, heaped up in memory, if they would ever
rise to the joy and vigour of a knowledge of the real nature
of things, to a living knowledge of things.… Mankind is meant
to enjoy a degree of knowledge and insight, of energy and
efficiency, of which at present we have no conception; for who
has measured the limits of God-born mankind! The boy is to take
up his work which has now become his calling, not indolently in
sullen gloom, but cheerfully and joyously.”--_E., pp. 230-233._

One distinct line of division is that drawn by Groos when he says that with young animals and probably with children “their first manifestation of what is afterwards experimentation, fighting and imitative play, etc., is rarely conscious, and therefore we cannot assert with assurance that it is pleasurable.”[38] In this case he says the biological but not the psychological germ of play is present. Froebel never lost sight of the psychological point of view in so far as his desire always was to see what the action meant to the actor, what the child’s play meant to the child, and also in that he desired all the activity to be joyous, to be performed for its own sake. But it was really the biological view that he endeavoured to reach and to set forth.

Coming now to the Theories of Play, it seems clear that, if he had ever heard of them, Froebel would have endeavoured to combine those of Recapitulation and Preparation. He states quite plainly that these are not incompatible, recognizing that in any work or play, by which the child retraces past stages of human development, he gains what is most necessary for his own future life, control over his surroundings as well as over himself, something after the manner in which these have been gained by the race.

“The observation of the development of individual man and its
comparison with the general development of the human race
show plainly that, in the development of the inner life of
the individual man, the history of the mental development of
the race is repeated, and that the race in its totality may
be viewed as one human being, in whom there will be found the
necessary steps in the development of individual man.”--_E., p.
160._

“Indeed each successive generation and each successive
individual human being, inasmuch as he would understand the
past and present, must pass through all preceding phases of
human development and culture, and this should not be done in
the way of dead imitation, or mere copying, but in the way of
spontaneous self-activity.”--_E., p. 18._

“Man should, at least mentally, repeat the achievements of
mankind, that they may not be to him empty dead masses, that
his judgment of them may not be external and spiritless; he
should mentally go over the ways of mankind, that he may learn
to understand them. However it may be said of this growing
activity of boyhood, which by spirit and law are destined for
a conscious aim, ‘My son does not require this.’ Perhaps you
are right, I do not know, but you do know that your sons need
energy, judgment, perseverance, prudence, etc., and that these
things are indispensable to them; and all these things they are
sure to get in the course indicated.…”--_E., p. 282._

It is often said that traditional games are mere survivals, degenerate imitations of ancient customs, and therefore not worth encouraging. But children are not bound by tradition, and Froebel is probably right when he says:

“It is my firm conviction that whenever you find anything that
gives children lastingly and ever freshly a joy belonging
to a true pure life--anything where innocence and mirth
predominate--you have found something which has at the bottom
of it a higher and more important meaning for a child’s
life.”--_M., p. 172._

We cannot always tell why children enjoy the game, or what they gain from it. Such games are at least the earliest and simplest introduction to “the rules of the game,” and they contain the elements of choosing sides and of whispered secrets. These things may seem small to the ordinary onlooker, but not to the real observer, who sees the amount of self-control required by a child of four or five, that he may not proclaim the secret aloud, the difficulty he has in whispering, and the importance to him of the choice between oranges and lemons or whatever it may be. There are certainly some which most thinking persons, Froebelian or otherwise, would wish to discourage. As Froebel himself said of some that he found in use:

“I thought some were too empty and silly and some said a great
deal that I would not willingly have said to children. Yet the
counting games themselves seemed to me important in many ways,
as I hope will appear from comparing the way I have dealt with
them, and above all, as the mottoes are meant to point out. I
even wished to keep the sound of the well-known popular words,
at least in the opening words.…”--_M., p. 157._

Certainly, Froebel would have had no dealings with either work or play which would interfere with progressive development, he wanted recapitulation because he regarded that “great necessary highway” as the road to sure progress.

“Only if in each particular we tread again the great necessary
highway of humanity as a whole, does the great and vigorous
early life of humanity come back to us in and through the
children.”--_E., p. 222._

“Education must be much more tolerating[39] and following than
predetermining and prescribing, for by the full application of
the latter method of instruction we should entirely lose the
characteristic, the sure and steady progressive development of
mankind.”--_E., p. 10._

Some educators who have made much of the “culture epochs” might have avoided mistakes and exaggerations if they had taken to heart Froebel’s repeated warning that the child has “living relations” not only with the past, but with the future, besides being at the same time the child of the present generation.

“Parents should view their child in his necessary connection,
in his obvious and living relations to the past, present,
and future development of humanity, in order to bring the
education of the child into harmony with the past, present and
future requirements of the development of humanity and of the
race.… Man, humanity in man, as an external manifestation,
should therefore be looked upon not as perfectly developed,
not as fixed and stationary, but as steadily and progressively
growing, in a state of ever-living development, ever ascending
from one stage of culture to another toward its aim, which
partakes of the infinite and eternal.

“It is unspeakably pernicious to look upon the development of
humanity as stationary and completed and to see in its present
phases only repetitions and greater generalizations of itself.
For the child, as well as every successive generation, becomes
thereby exclusively imitative, an external dead copy--a cast,
as it were, of the preceding, and not a living ideal of the
stage which it has attained in human development considered
as a whole, to serve future generations in all time to
come.”--_E., p. 17._

Underlying all that Froebel has to say of play, is the idea that it is a preparation for future life activities. This is implied even in the definition given of the play of the child of three years old, viz. that it is “spontaneous self-instruction”; it is most evident in the passage:

“Play, building and modelling are the first tender blossoms,
and this is the period when man is to be prepared for future
industry, diligence and productive activity.”--_E., p. 34._

“The whole later life of man has its source in the period of
childhood, be this later life bright or gloomy, gentle or
violent, industrious or lazy, rich or poor in action, passed
in dull stupor or in keen creativeness, in stupid wonder or in
intelligent insight, productive or destructive.”--_E., p. 55._

Of his later institution, the Kindergarten, Froebel says:

“The great end and aim of the whole undertaking is the
Education of Man from its earliest beginning, by means of
action, feeling, and thought, in accordance with his own
inward being and outward relations, … _this to be attained by_
the right care of child-life, _the encouragement of childish
activities_.”--_L., p. 164._

“For the object is twofold: Firstly the realization in as
clear and perfect a manner as possible, of _the fundamental
conception of a mode of education_ based upon the early and
complete training of human life, and _satisfying the needs
of children by a genuine encouragement of their spontaneous
activity_ through the medium of a normal institution which we
have symbolically named a Kindergarten.”--_L., p. 166._

About the play of boyhood Froebel says:

“Play to the boy is a mirror of the combat of life awaiting him
in the future: therefore, in order to strengthen himself for
the combat, the human being both in early and later boyhood
seeks out obstacles, difficulty and combat in his play.… Many
of his actions have an inner significance.… How wholesome it
would be if parents and child, for their present and future,
if parents believed in this, if they would observe the life of
their children in this respect, what a new living bond would
unite parents and child, what a new thread of life would be
drawn between their present and their future life!”--_E., p.
118._

Of his own Keilhau boys he writes:

“One thing is certain, these plays are the outcome of the
spirit of boyhood. And the boys who played thus were good
scholars, intelligent, and willing to learn, seeing and
expressing clearly, diligent and full of zeal. Some are now
capable young men with well trained heads and hearts, quick
in expedients and dexterous in action; some are capable,
clear-sighted men, and others will become so.”--_E., p. 111._

In America at least the authorities are beginning to realize the truth of Froebel’s words as to the importance of playgrounds, and actual experiment has shown that he was right in saying that “even the plays should be under right guidance,” not for purposes of repression, but for the encouragement of real play which “must necessarily break forth in joy from within.”

“Justice, moderation, self-control, truthfulness, loyalty,
brotherly feeling and again, strict impartiality--who, when
he approaches a group of boys engaged in such games, could
fail to catch the fragrance of these delicious blossomings
of the heart and mind and of a firm will; not to mention the
beautiful, though perhaps less fragrant, blossoms of courage,
perseverance, resolution, prudence, together with the severe
elimination of indolent indulgence? Flowers of still more
delicate fragrance bloom … forbearance, consideration, sympathy
and encouragement for the weaker, younger and more delicate;
fairness to those who are as yet unfamiliar with the game.

“Would that all who, in the education of boys, barely tolerate
playgrounds might consider these things! There are, indeed,
many harsh words and many rude deeds, but the sense of power
must needs precede its cultivation. Keen, clear and penetrating
are the boy’s eyes; keen and decided therefore, even harsh and
severe is his judgment of those who are his equals, or who
claim equality with him in judgment and power.

“Every place should have its own common playground for the
boys. Glorious results would come from this for the entire
community. For at this period, games, whenever it is feasible,
are common, and thus develop the feeling and desire for
community and the laws and requirements of community.

“The boy tries to see himself in his companions, to feel
himself in them, to weigh and measure himself by them, to know
and find himself with their help. Thus the games directly
influence and educate the boy for life, awaken and cultivate
many civil and moral virtues.”--_E., p. 113._

It was in watching boys one day--“boys,” he says, “of the right age for these plays, but whose life is not awakened, or has been dulled, and who now idly lounge around, getting in their own way, as it were”--that a friend said to him, “I do not understand how these boys cannot play, how many plays we had at their age!” And it is here that Froebel gives his version of the “surplus energy” theory when he writes:

“In every case the plays of this age are or should be pure
manifestations of strength and vitality, they are the product
of fullness of life, and of pleasure in life. They presuppose
actual vigour of life, both inner and outer. Where these are
lacking, there cannot be true play, which, bearing life in
itself, awakens, nourishes and heightens life.… This shows
clearly that even the plays at this age should be under
guidance[40], and the boy made ready for them, i.e. his life,
his experience both in school and out of it, must be made so
rich that it must necessarily break forth in joy from within,
like the blossom from the swelling bud. Joy is the soul of
every activity of boyhood at this period.”--_E., p. 303._

It is here, too, in the section entitled, “Play or Spontaneous Expression and Practice of Every Kind” that Froebel begins a general classification of boy’s play:

“The plays, or spontaneous occupations, of this age are of
three kinds, they are either (_a_) imitations of life, or (_b_)
spontaneous applications of what has been learned, or they
are (_c_) perfectly spontaneous expression with all kinds of
material. These last are either governed by the material, or by
the thought and feeling of the human being.… They may be and
are either Physical plays, exercising strength and dexterity,
or else mere buoyancy of life; or Sense plays exercising the
hearing, e.g. in hiding games, etc., or the sight, as in
shooting plays or colour plays, etc.; or Intellectual plays,
games of reflection and judgment, e.g. draughts, etc. As such
they are already arranged, but the true aim and spirit of the
play is rarely understood and the games are seldom managed
according to the needs of the boy.”--_E., p. 304._

This general classification is very much the same as that of Groos, who divides Play first into two main classes, viz. Playful Experimentation and Playful Exercise of the Second or Socionomic Order. Under the first heading come I. Playful Activity of the Sensory Apparatus; II. Playful Use of the Motor Apparatus; and III. Playful Exercise of the Higher Mental Powers. The first two correspond to Froebel’s Sense Plays and Physical Plays, and the third to his Intellectual Plays. Under the second heading, Groos brings Fighting Plays, which as we have seen Froebel attributes to the unconscious desire to measure and increase strength; Imitative Play, which to Froebel is the child’s way of learning by action; Love Plays of which Froebel takes no notice at all, and Social Play. Under this comes what has been given as to the importance of Playgrounds, and much of what Froebel wrote as to the Kindergarten Games. For instance, as part of the work of the students in his Training Course comes:

“The acquisition of little games arranged to exercise the
limbs and senses of the child.… The acquisition of other games
arranged to suit special ends and suited to varied grades of
development.… Practice in combined games for many children, and
particularly action games, which will, from the first, train
the child (by his very nature eager for companionship) in the
habit of association with comrades, that is, in good fellowship
and all that this implies.… To games for individual children
succeed games for the whole Kindergarten together. The child in
these associated games alternately appears first as taking some
individual or separate part, and then as merely one of several
closely knit and equally important members of a greater whole,
so that he becomes familiar with both the strongly opposed
elements of his life; namely the individual determining and
directing side, and the general ordered and subordinated
side.”--_L., p. 253._

Games of this kind have been much misused, especially by being given a rigidity of form which, Froebel wrote:

“Would quite destroy that fresh merry life which should animate
the games … the games would cease to be games and lose their
full educational power. The main thought must be held fast; but
the precise form and style in which the games are played must
be the outcome of the moment. The freer and more spontaneous
the arrangement, the more excellent is the effect of the
game.”--_L., p. 85._

The number and variety of plays and games noted by Froebel is quite surprising. Of the long list given by Groos there are few indeed which he does not mention.[41] The plays for older children are given in “The Education of Man,” but other games encouraged at Keilhau are to be found in the accounts given by Ebers. Even in his earlier work Froebel shows how closely he had been observing the play of little children, but this he worked out later in his Mother Songs, in the papers on his various “Gifts,” and in that on Movement Play. These later books were written and the play material was planned because Froebel saw that the children who do not play are those “in whom life has not awakened or has been dulled,” just because “the true aim and the spirit of play is rarely understood and the games are seldom managed according to the needs of the boy.”