The Spirit of Bowen does not go far before we encounter a towering and resplendent fir, filtering golden rays of sunlight. Its boughs are evenly arrayed, as if by intention, about a stout cylindrical trunk. There is a look of purpose to this venerable tree, as well as a spiritual quality pervading the spaces within and about its limbs. Gazing into its rising cone of branches, one senses new heights of perception, as well as of altitude and a childish desire to scale it suddenly takes hold. “Hey, can we climb this one?” asks The Critic flashing an odd and rather annoying grin. Ignoring the question, Bowen continues with his presentation. Here is Froebel, he explains, the crystallographer turned pedagogue, inventor of kindergarten and one-time disciple of Pestalozzi.
Froebel, while a great admirer of Pestalozzi, wanted “to present a more scientific development of Pestalozzian ideas. He plunged into this during the ensuing decade, propagating…articles, and traveling around Germany urging the replacement of the school by the kindergarten.”
“Oh yes, I seem to recall reading something about this.” Says the Critic. “Kindergarten was originally meant to extend from early childhood into youth.”
Bowen nods, “Froebel saw the kindergarten as an institution offering the totality of educational experience....From a beginning in spatial relationships and sensory experience the child was to be brought to a cognizance of coherence in the world and to comprehend the integrality of the material and spiritual worlds by means of mathematics and language as the instruments of assisting an intuitive awareness of the essence of nature” (Bowen, vol. 3, p. 341).
“Oh…,I see.” Replies the Critic, now a little downcast. “I just wanted to climb the tree.”
“And that’s exactly what Froebel would have wanted you to do!” responds a young woman near the back of the group. He was famous for taking kids on walks through the forest, singing songs with them and engaging them in structured play. That kind of thing just wasn’t done in his day. He understood that kids learn best by playing and from direct contact with nature. He was a fun guy, albeit a little rigid at times.”
“But in Froebel we discover the seed of a problem that over the past two centuries has developed into a problem of arboreal proportions.” counters the Young Man.
“Really?” asks the Critic, now perking up.
“Yes, Froebel and others—I’m thinking about Kant for starters--didn’t like the loose, non-systematic approach of Pestalozzi. Too much of his instructional technique was based on his direct relationship with his students. In one way or another Kant, Froebel and others were trying to figure out a way to take the magic they saw happening in Pestalozzi’s classroom and make it reproduce-able, you know, put it in a can.”
“Yeah,” says the Veteran throwing in his two cents, “Rousseau and Pestalozzi were okay with letting kids run around in the woods and explore, but these later guys wanted to structure it better while somehow keeping the fun parts.”
“I don’t think it was quite that simple,” replies the Young Man, “but I think you’re getting the gist of it.”
Bowen now steps forward to explain Kant’s position on Rousseau, noting that he attempted to “give greater philosophical coherence” to the latter’s ideas. “Kant saw as ‘one of the greatest problems of education, how to unite submission to the necessary restraint with the child’s capability of exercising freewill’” (Bowen, vol. 3, p. 212).
“Well isn’t that the eternal problem when it comes to raising kids?” asks the Critic.
“Kant…considered childhood, the years from five or six to puberty, as the stage requiring discipline. Consequently his advice departed markedly from that of Émile [Rousseau’s treatise on education] in that he urged careful and continued control of the child’s experiences” (Bowen, vol. 3, p. 214).
“That’s rather harsh isn’t it?” asks the Veteran.
“It was 18th century Prussia!” replies the Young Man.
“And now it’s 21st century neoconservative America!” retorts the Critic, “So…where is this all heading?”
“I think we’re about to find out”, replies the Young Woman.
Bowen continues, “He [Kant] remained, however, within the realm of organic thinking by accepting natural stages of unfolding…. Somewhat following Rousseau’s notion…, Kant extended the organic analogy to argue that ‘a tree which stands in a field alone grows crooked and spreads wider its branches, while a tree which stands in the middle of a forest, with the pressure of other trees around, grows tall and straight’” (Bowen, vol 3, p. 213).
“Then are you slowly building an argument that Rousseau and Pestalozzi were a couple of loosey-goosey humanitarians who couldn’t market their programs all that well, so more practical minds had to take over?” asks the Veteran.
“I don’t think that’s what he’s saying at all,” interjects the Young Woman. “I think Mr. Bowen is showing us that humanistic philosophies of education, learning that frees people rather than constrains them, inevitably gets systematized for any variety of reasons.”
“Hmm…wow. Okay. Well, then where does that lead us?” asks the Critic.
“Apparently a little further down the path.” Says the Veteran. And sure enough, Bowen is already making his way toward a rather shadowy, ominous looking spruce.
