Robert Owen Importance Of Education

I have written a portfolio on Robert Owen the philanthropist, I believe Robert Owen to be one of the most influential social reformers and thinkers from his time during the industrial revolution. I believe Owen to be an educational pioneer because of the contribution to the advancement of educational thought and practice he offered. Owen is widely acknowledged and appreciated throughout educational, historical literature, and this is because he established dramatic changes and offered an enlightened way of life, within his factories for his employees and their families. He tried to eliminate the social deprivation that came from the Industrial revolution and believed he could change the vice and badness in people and create good and hardworking happy communities (Harrison, J.F.C. 1969, pp. 152-155) Many of Owen’s ideas were taken and followed by people known as ‘Owenities’ they believed, if they lived in the way he suggested they would live socially and economically equal lives. His introduction of the first Infant school into the British schooling system, have lead researchers to understand the true importance of early year’s education we now provide today …show more content…
I believe Owen’s thinking about early years’ education was radical for that particular period of time, just as Frobel’s introduction of kindergartens meaning ‘child garden’ in 1817(K, M. 2012), He believed that ‘play, truly recognized and rightly fostered…the ripe life of experiences of the adult and this fosters the one through the other’(Matheson, D. 2004, pp. 164). However, Dearden would disagree in he says ‘It is doubtful whether much of substantial educational value could be learned by a process of unconscious ‘picking up’ during play activities’ (Peters, R.S. 2010, pp.