Education in The Home, The Kindergarten, and The Primary School

I think there is perhaps no better way of making apparent what this kindergartning is, which makes such an importunate demand on your consideration, than to tell you how the idea germinated and grew in the mind of Froebel himself; for thus we shall see that it would be unreasonable to expect that it could be improvised by every teacher; but that here, as elsewhere in human life, God has sent into the world a gifted person to guide his fellows, according to the law enunciated by St. John in the 38th verse of the 4th chapter of his Gospel.

We have the materials of this history on Froebel's own authority, in an autobiographical letter that he wrote to the Duke of Meiningen, whose interest in him was excited by an incident so characteristic of Froebel, that I will relate it. Having heard of a cruel and stupid opposition made to the ardent educator by the unthinking officials of a region where he was making a martyr of himself, the duke m