Nursery World - EYFS Best Practice: Learning from Froebel… Nurture, family and community

The importance of family and genuine links to the community and beyond. By Professor Tina Bruce and Yellow Dot’s Jane Dyke

Human beings are social beings. We need other people in order to survive, but we also need each other in order to flourish by living worthwhile lives. The pioneer educator Friedrich Froebel understood this in deep and far reaching ways.

His mother had died when he was a toddler, and his father was a strict disciplinarian. His stepmother neglected to give him love and attention once her own baby was born. He later went to live with his uncle, a gentler Lutheran pastor, where he experienced a kinder, more loving family.

It is interesting to note that key contributors to our thinking about how to nurture young children have experienced loss of family and key people themselves. Elinor Goldschmied, who pioneered the concept of the key person, was one. John Bowlby, the Nobel prize-winner who deepened our understanding of the importance of attachment, was another.

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