As we close the series of talks upon Froebel's gifts and look back
over the ground that has been covered, we see that a number of
important subjects have been only lightly touched upon, while we have
been altogether silent regarding others equally as vital. This is
doubtless inevitable in any work upon the kindergarten which does not
aim to be encyclopaedic in character, but a few of the more serious
omissions may be supplied before we close our consideration of the
gifts and enter upon that of the occupations.
First, then, a word on the subject of attention.
Difficulty of holding Child's Attention.
It is not uncommon, when discussing any exercises with kindergarten
materials which require dictation or guidance, to hear complaints of
the difficulty of holding the children's attention. It may generally
be said, doubtless, that when little children fail to give attention
it is because they are not interested, and if the teacher finds the
majority of her pupils listless, indifferent, and vagrant-minded, she
may reasonably conclude that something is amiss either with the
subject or with her presentation of it. The child is as yet too young
to command his mental powers and "drive himself on by his own
self-determination," and if we enforce an attention which he gives
through fear, we lose the motive power of interest which Froebel
sought to utilize in the plays of the kindergarten.
Dr. George P. Brown in a late article on "Metaphysics and
Pedagogics"[81] says, "Every one admits that there is much that must
be done by the child in his elementary education which is a task, for
the reason that his ideas of its worth to himself cannot be
sufficiently appreciated to arouse a lively and impelling interest in
the doing of it," and he adds, "Garfield once complained that he had
done so long those things in which he was interested that he was
losing his power to do that which did not interest him, which suggests
the danger of relying entirely upon interest as an incentive to
learn."
[81] _Public School Journal_, July, 1895.
That there is a danger here cannot be denied, but it is one which need
hardly be considered at the kindergarten age, when that interest which
comes from continued agreement between the work in hand and the
child's inner wants is absolutely essential to the gaining of
knowledge. Mr. W. N. Hailmann puts the whole matter in a nutshell when
he says: "If the kindergartner has the penetration to discover these
inner wants, and the skill to adapt the circumstances and her own
purposes to these, she will find it easy to secure and hold the
child's attention. Without this penetration and skill, all else is
unavailing. She may sing and cajole herself into hoarseness, she
may smile and gesticulate herself into a mild sort of tarantism, or
freeze herself at one end of the table into a statue of Suppressed
Reproach,--if the instruction or dictation has no natural connection
with the purposes of the children, these will remain uninterested or
bored victims of her ill-directed enthusiasm."
Language Teaching.
The plays with the gifts open wide avenues for language teaching if
conducted as Froebel intended. He says many wise things on this
subject in his "Education of Man," and the following is of absolute
application.
"Our children will attain," he says, "to a far more fundamental
insight into language, if we, when teaching them, connect the words
more with the actual perception of the thing and the object.... Our
language would then again become a true language of life, that is,
born of life and producing life; while it threatens otherwise, by
merely outward consideration, to become more and more dead."[82]
[82] _Education of Man_, page 145.
From the first the child should be led to voice his small observations
on the gifts in clear language and in approximately complete
sentences, brief though they be. He can as easily say, "I would like a
blue ball, please," if asked what color he prefers, as to jerk out a
monosyllabic "Blue!"
After a little practice he will use a short sentence when comparing
two objects, for instance, but as he naturally moves along the line of
least resistance it is hardly to be expected that he will take the
trouble to form complete sentences unless gently stimulated to do so.
The stimulus must be gentle, however, and given at the right time, for
any feeling that his words are criticised will lead him to
self-repression, not expression.
In gift work, too, he explains to the kindergartner what he is
inventing, and for what purpose; he weaves gossamer threads of fancy
about the objects constructed, or describes the forms of beauty and
knowledge he has built by dictation.
There is and should be constant interchange of conversation during the
gift plays, and the kindergartner who directs them like a
drill-sergeant, requiring her recruits only to be silent and obey, has
entirely misconceived Froebel's idea.[83]
[83] It is a difficult thing to find the _via media_ between
complete silence on the part of the children save when
answering questions and a confusion of tongues like that at
the building of Babel, but there is such a _via media_, and
it can be found by those who seek it diligently.
It is undeniably much easier for the teacher to do all the talking,
the children serving as audience, but the ideal to be reached is that
she shall be the audience herself, or rather the chairman of the
meeting, guiding the conversation, asking suggestive questions, and
making wise comments.
Our language teaching, however, is not confined to the cultivation of
greater powers of expression, for there is a direct gain in the
child's vocabulary consequent upon his kindergarten experience. He
absorbs many new words from his teachers, but many others he learns
through his daily work and play, and these are his absolute
possession,--the thing and the word together. An interesting series of
experiments was once made in the San Francisco free kindergartens
relative to the number of new words which the child had mastered and
used easily and freely after three years in the child-garden. These
included terms of dictation, geometrical terms, names of tools,
colors, materials, plants, animals, buildings, and places, new and
poetic words of songs, games, and stories, etc., and the experiments
established the fact that the child's vocabulary was fully as great as
that of his parents and decidedly more choice.
Relation of Word to Object.
It should be said here that there is great value to the child in
learning to name things correctly from the very beginning. If the new
word is a simple one, he can learn it with perfect ease, and then the
object is properly labeled, so to speak, for future use.[84] Familiar
names are sometimes used in the kindergarten when the correct term
would be quite as easy to pronounce. This practice often arises from a
false conception of symbolism, and is continued with an idea that it
is pleasing to the child. Sometimes the pseudonyms are absolutely
misleading, as in the frequent speaking of squares as _boxes_, which
must, of course, confuse the child as to the real nature of a plane.
There are many cases where the geometrical name of a form can easily
be taught if it is given _after_ the object is clearly understood.[85]
[84] "At all stages of learning the mother tongue, the purely
verbal exercises are more or less accompanied with the
occupation of the mind upon things. If we suppose the child
to become acquainted, in the first instance, with a variety
of objects, the imparting of the names is a welcome
operation, and the mental fusion of each name and thing is
rapidly brought about. If the objects are in any way
interesting, if they arouse or excite attention, their names
are eagerly embraced. On the other hand, if objects are but
languidly cared for, or if they are inconspicuous or confused
with other things, we are indifferent both to the things
themselves and to their designations." (Alexander Bain.)
[85] "Language is the necessary tool of thought used in the
conduct of the analysis and synthesis of investigation." (W.
T. Harris.)
"What we are really seeking is the meaning _and_ the word.
One is of no value without the other in the education of the
child. There is no such thing as a valuable observation and
investigation of natural objects without language in which to
embody the results at every step." (Geo. P. Brown.) _Report
on Correlation of Studies by Committee of Fifteen_. With
annotations by Geo. P. Brown.
There is a distinction here as to age, which should be noted. Though
with babies of three years it is not only delightful, but necessary,
to use objects symbolically, to give play-names to the lines they
make, etc., with older children who are nearing the age of school
instruction and therefore passing away from the "sense relations
of things," it is just as essential to begin a more scientific
nomenclature.
Value of Knowledge Gained by Individual Effort.
One of the commonest errors in the kindergarten, as well as one of the
most pernicious, is that of assisting the child too much in all his
work. This is perhaps more universally true of the plays with the
occupations than with the gifts, but even in the latter direction
the practice is far too widespread.[86]
[86] "Of course, there is great difference between the
disciplinary value of that study in which the pupil solves
his own difficulties and that teaching in which the teacher
accompanies the pupil, supplying the needed information or
suggestion at every step of his progress. The latter is not
worth much for character building for the reason that it is
not apt to become a part of the organized self.... The school
cannot afford to expend much energy in acquiring such
knowledge." (Geo. P. Brown.) _Report on Correlation of
Studies by Committee of Fifteen_. With annotations by Geo. P.
Brown.
The kindergartner often forms his sentences for the child,
over-directs him when he is matching colors, gives names to the
objects he constructs without waiting for him to do so, moves his
blocks, sticks, tablets, rings into more accurate position, changes
his spacing when incorrect, rearranges his inventions, selects the
colors for his parquetry work,--and all for what reasons? Primarily,
to produce a better effect, it is probable, glorying in the
consciousness that the work on every child's table is exactly right,
and blind to the truth that uniformity must always be mechanical; and
secondarily, to quiet her own feeling of impatience, which sometimes
comes from nervous exhaustion and sometimes from an over-eagerness to
get a quantity of work done regardless of the method by which it is
obtained.
There is a thirdly, too, which is that the inaccurate work, the
awkward designs, the unfortunate blending of colors which the little
one inevitably makes at first, so offend her artistic eye that she
trembles with eagerness to set them right, forgetting that by so doing
she is imposing her superior taste upon the child and thereby failing
to develop his. We shall never see this matter clearly, nor know how
to bear with the crudity of the child's work, until we learn that the
crudity is natural and therefore to be respected, and that it is in a
sense beautiful after all, for it is a stage of being.
This vice, for it is a vice, of assisting the child too much causes
him to lose his own power of bravely and persistently overcoming
difficulties, and makes him weak and dependent. It gives occasion for
teachers to say, and apparently with justice, that kindergarten
children need constant assistance in their school work, that they are
always crying out for help, and seem incapable of taking a step alone.
That this is not true of all kindergarten children we know, but that
it should be true of any is a disgrace to our interpretation of
Froebel's system, which is, in reality, a very treasure-house of
self-reliance, of self-development, and of independence of thought and
action.
Value of Interrelation in Kindergarten Work.
One of the highest essentials of gift work is that it should not be
isolated from other experiences of the child and concern itself merely
with first principles of mathematics, with elements of construction,
reproduction, and design, and with unrelated bits of knowledge.
Froebel says in the motto to one of the poems in the "Mutter-Spiel und
Kose-Lieder,"--
"Whatever singly with a child you've played,
Weave it together till a whole you've made.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Thus it will dawn upon his childish soul:
The smallest thing belongs to some great whole."