Comparison of the Educational Philosophy

The common beliefs between Froebel’s and Montessori’s education philosophies are that both philosophers believe in the child's right to be active, explore and develop their own knowledge through investigation seeing activity as a guide to education and do not believe in repressing it. Both philosophers believe that the environment cannot create a human being, but it does give them scope, material, direction, and purpose. Both philosophers believe that it is the teacher's task to nurture, assist, watch, encourage, guide, and induce, rather than to interfere, prescribe, or restrict.

Montessori children spend most of their time working with materials under the individual guidance, while kindergarten children are usually engaged in group work or games with an imaginative background. Both agree on needing to train the senses, but Montessori's curriculum is more elaborate and direct than Froebel's. Froebel designed a series of objects (Called "The Gifts" or "Occupations") for creative use, but these materials were not designed specifically for or adapted to the training of sensory discrimination. Instead, sense training can be a side effect of the activity in which they are used.

Both systems believe in the need for free bodily activity, rhythmic exercises, and the development of muscular control; but Froebel’s philosophy seeks this through group games with an imaginative or social content, while the Montessori philosophy places an emphasis on special exercises designed to give formal training in separate physical functions.

Both philosophies believe in teaching children social skills and empathy. In Froebel’s philosophy this training is done primarily through imaginative and symbolic group games. The social training involved in these games is formal only in the sense that the children are not engaged in an actual activity. In the Montessori philosophy children often are in real social situations. This is one of the main places the Montessori philosophy’s