educate his son. "The son
accompanies his father everywhere, to the field and to the garden, to
the shop and to the counting house, to the forest and to the meadow; in
the care of domestic animals and in the making of small articles of
household furniture; in the splitting, sawing, and piling up of wood; in
all the work his father's trade or calling involves."[17] In another
passage he calls upon parents, "more particularly fathers (for to their
special care and guidance the child ripening into boyhood is confided),"
to contemplate "their parental duties in child guidance;"[18] and he
prefaces this exhortation with a long list of illustrations, suggesting
the methods which may be pursued by the farm laborer, the goose-herd,
the gardener, the forester, the blacksmith, and other tradesmen and
craftsmen, in the education of their sons. Any such man, Froebel points
out, may take his child at the age of two or three and teach him some of
the simple rules of his trade. How different is the position of the son
of a workman in a modern American city! An American city dweller reading
Froebel's discussion would not conceive of it as applying in any sense
to him, or to his life.

V City Life and the New Basis for Education

The very thought of city life precludes the possibility of home work.
The narrow house, the tenement, the great shop or factory, on the one
hand, prevent the mechanic from carrying on his trade near his family;
and on the other hand, make it impossible for the father whose work
lies far from his home to give his boys the "special care and guidance"
about which Froebel writes.

The system of industry which was established in England during the
closing decades of the eighteenth century, and which secured a foothold
in both Germany and the United States during the first half of the
nineteenth century, has revolutionized the basis of our lives. The
workshop has been transplanted from the home to the factory; both men
and women leave their homes for ten, eleven, or even twelve hours a day
to carry on their industrial activities; great centers of population
collect about the centers of industry; the farm, the flock of geese, the
garden, the forest, and the blacksmith shop disappear; food, clothing,
and other necessaries of life--formerly the product of home
industry--are produced in great factories; and the city home, stripped
of its industrial functions, restricted in scope, robbed of its adults,
presents littl