Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on Froebelian ideas on moral education as transmitted to colonial India through the London-based Froebel Society itself, but also through its links with some newly founded pressure groups concerned with Indian education, notably Mary Carpenter’s National Indian Association.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1860s and 1870s several movements recently founded in Britain and India had among their objectives the improvement of Indian education, especially for girls. That the Froebel Society for the Promotion of the Kindergarten System (formed in London in 1874) shared these 'Indian' interests has so far received little attention. The paper traces some links between advocacy of Froebelian ideas on the nurturing of morality during early childhood and some wider debates on female education in which some new discussion groups, founded shortly before or after the Froebel Society itself, were currently engaging. These included the Kensington Society (urging women's suffrage and access to higher education), some Social Science societies (both in Britain and Bengal), and most significant and long-lived in the context of Indian education, the National Indian Association (NIA), founded by Mary Carpenter in 1870. Unsurprisingly, the same names reoccur among the early activists of these education-orientated groups and much information on both the adaptation of Froebelian ideas to India and on the agendas of the National Indian Association for female education is found in the administrative correspondence and conference papers of one Adelaide Manning (Carpenter's successor as secretary of the NIA until 1905, and also the Froebel Society's first secretary and later vice-president). Attention is paid too to some British females who lectured on Froebelian principles and practices while teaching in India, and to some Indians (the most well-known being Ramabai), who introduced Froebelian methods into Indian kindergartens.