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Finally, it examines brick form in Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture as part of
the tradition of the masonry, part of the Modern Architecture and part of the
abstract Froebel training.
2. FROEBEL’S GIFTS: THE KINDERGARTEN METHOD
The idea of kindergarten “garden of children” as a locus of human education
was developed by a German educator and a crystallographer Friedrich Froebel
(1782-1852) around the early 1800s. Froebel’s teaching is based on natural law.
It is based on the idea that a child’s activities should not be left vague and
purposeless. How the child exercises its sense of touch by grasping things, how
it watches, and listens should be directed under the aid of an educator. (Bates,
2009, 2-3) As argued by Harris,
Froebel has investigated the relation of child ‘s activities in play
to the growth of his mind… in play the child ascertains what he
can do, and discovers his possibilities of will and thought by
exerting his power spontaneously. In work he follows a task
prescribed for him by another, and does not reveal his own
proclivities and inclinations, but another’s. in play he reveals his
own original power…[In such a system] the pupil unfolds his
will-power quite as much as his sense perception, and by this
arrives in the surest way a thinking reason, which is the
culmination of self-activity (Harris, 1970 vi.)
Froebel’s pupils are nurtured by the kindergartners “gardeners of children”
whose role is to “promote natural development with the help of the gifts rather
than to force growth by injecting or grafting information” (Rubin, 1989, 25.) In
his article “Kindergarten Grammars: Designing with Froebel’s Building Gifts,”
George Stiny points out that “in the kindergarten, the child plays with one or
another gifts to discover its properties and possibilities for design. When the
child reaches an impasse, kindergartners suggest a new avenue or direction of
play. The child is thus encouraged to think about certain kinds of designs that
can be made with the gifts (Stiny, 1980, 409.) Unlike we use today,
kindergartens were not limited in the preschool education. As pointed out by
Jeanne Rubin “they provided training through different age levels; virtually all
formal kindergartens dispensed training through the age of seven-and-a-half,
many through the age of ten, some to the university level” (Rubin, 1989,25.)
The goal of the kindergarten method was to “stir up, to awaken, and to
strengthen, the pleasure and power of the human being to labour
uninterruptedly at his own education.” (Froebel, 2009, 11) Froebel states that
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4. ULUSLARARASI ESKİŞEHİR PİŞMİŞ TOPRAK SEMPOZYUMU 439