NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

Froebel Society Conference

Emily D. Cahan, Wheelock College

Boston’s Wheelock College hosted the third biennial International Froebel Society Conference this summer marked by the theme “Learning to Play – Playing to Learn.” Scattered amongst presentations that advocated play as the central activity of the kindergarten and warnings about the threats to childhood by the new emphasis on early literary and testing were a good number of historical pieces.  One symposium entitled “Whose Play is this Anyway?  Adult Perceptions of Risk, Danger, and ‘Appropriate’ Outdoor Play: A View from the 1910s and 2010s” explored changing conceptions and perceptions of risk, challenge, and dangers of children’s outdoor play.

 Another symposium explored the rich heritage of Froebel, the “father” of the kindergarten, Froebel’s gifts as they represent his views on play and learning, and the historical movement from Froebel’s gifts to contemporary block systems for classroom play. 

Still other papers explored G.S. Hall on early reading and the dangers of precocity, the doctrines of recapitulation and cultural epochs in America, Froebel and Vygotsky on work and play, Froebel and Jung, the debate between Siegfried Engelmann and Constance Kamii over whether development can to “taught,” the Froebelian kindergarten in Brooklyn, New York, circa 1900, and New Zealand in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. 

The International Froebel Society was formed in 2002, at a conference in Dresden, Germany. As the Society’s website states, the organization’s principal purpose is to “provide an international forum for the development of the principles of educational theory and practice associated with the child-centred philosophy of Friedrich Froebel  (1782-1852).” The next IFS conference will be held at the University of Jena, Germany, in early July, 2010.  For more information see, http://www.intfroebelsoc.org/