"Silently cherish your Baby's dim thought,
That Life in itself is as unity wrought."
Nothing is more evident in all his writings, in his more formal works
as well as in his autobiography, his volumes of letters and his
reminiscences, than that his lifelong struggle was for unity in all
things. He would have this unity expressed in simple concrete form in
the kindergarten by a complete interrelation of all the activities of
the child; and the gifts as "outward representations of his internal
mental world" may be trusted to furnish us with an absolute test as to
how far we are carrying out this principle in our teaching.
Whether or not the necessity of correlation decreases as age increases
we need not discuss here, but that there is absolute need of it in the
kindergarten probably no one will deny. If a single aim does not unify
the kindergarten day, (or month, or season), it will be a succession
of scrappy experiences, of surface impressions, no one of which can be
permanent, because it was slight by itself and received no
reinforcement from others. Such instruction only serves to dissipate
the mind, to blot out the dim feeling of unity inscribed there by its
maker, and to render the child incapable and undesirous of binding his
thoughts into a whole.[87]
[87] "In the broad view we are safe in affirming that all
truth is congruous, and that truth in one department of human
knowledge will always reinforce truth in any other
department. There is a unity in all truth. While it is true,
as Dr. Harris affirms in his Report on the Correlation of
Studies, that the student does not come into the full
consciousness of this fact before he attains the university,
is it not also true that he can be so taught that he will
_feel_ this unity before he can think it, and that his
feeling it will hasten the development of the power to think
it?"--Geo. P. Brown, "Congruence in Teaching," _Public School
Journal_, Sept., 1895.
What the subjects should be, around which the child's mental,
physical, and spiritual activities may crystallize, furnishes a
fruitful field for discussion; but, above all, they should be vital
ones, for, as Miss Blow says, "Serious injury may be done the mind by
developing concentric exercises which belong not to the centre, but
the circumference of thought."
It would be fruitless to suggest suitable subjects here, for if they
do not, on the one hand, conform to the growing mind of the particular
child or class of children, they may either arrest or overtax
development, and if, on the other hand, they do not proceed from the
kindergartner's insight into principle, it would be but "superstitious
imitation" for her to follow them out. No manual, no guide-book, no
treatise, no lecture, can supply the want of fine intelligence and
judgment in all these matters, and not until the teacher "comprehends
the genesis of any principle from deeper principles can she emancipate
herself from even the hypnotic suggestion of the principle itself, and
convert external authority into inward freedom."[88]
[88] W. T. Harris.
Effect of Froebel's Gifts on the Kindergartner.
Although uninterested and uninitiated persons doubtless regard the
various gifts of Froebel as very ordinary objects, made from
commonplace materials, yet that this view of the matter is only a peep
through a pin-hole is abundantly proven by their effect on the
kindergartner. Those of us who have seen successive groups of young
women in training-classes approach the first few gifts have noted that
interest is commonly mingled at first with a slight surprise that the
objects should be considered worthy of so much study, while underneath
lies a half-concealed amusement at the simple forms produced. Yet this
attitude of mind endures but for a season, for as soon as the gifts
are studied and used practically, it is seen that they contain
possibilities of indefinite expansion. When they are looked at through
the glasses of imagination, it is wonderful how large they appear, and
when one has toiled long hours to invent some sequence with them, one
wonders at the reality and fascination of the forms produced.
The outsider who glanced at the materials hastily would undoubtedly
suppose them capable of only a limited number of changes and
combinations, but the fact remains that every year kindergarten
students invent hundreds of new forms with these simple, insignificant
blocks and sticks and beans.
How, then, does this change come about? How is it that the same
student who once half-scorned the gifts, now, upon the completion of
her course of training, looks upon them with affection, admiration,
and respect? It is that her eyes have been opened, and whereas she was
blind, now she sees. Her imagination has been awakened, her literary
instinct has been stirred, and she has come to look at things in the
child way, which is always the poetic way.
Effect of Froebel's Gifts upon the Child.
The effect of Froebel's gifts upon the child has been shown directly
and indirectly through the entire series of talks, and need not now be
recapitulated. If they are wisely presented and wisely conducted,
"inward and outward, the limits of their influence and scope lie in
infinity."
Froebel says in one of his letters: "No one would believe, without
seeing it, how the child-soul--the child-life--develops when treated
as a whole, and in the sense of forming a part of the great connected
life of the world, by some skilled kindergartner,--nay, even by one
who is only simple-hearted, thoughtful, and attentive; nor how it
blooms into delicious harmonies like a beautifully tinted flower.
Oh, if I could only shout aloud with ten thousand lung-power the
truth that I now tell you in silence. Then would I make the ears
of a hundred thousand men ring with it! What keenness of sensation,
what a soul, what a mind, what force of will and active energy,
what dexterity and skill of muscular movement and of perception,
and what calm and patience will not all these things call out in
the children."[89]
[89] Froebel's _Letters on the Kindergarten_, page 145.
It is not that we regard the connected series of gifts as inspired,
nor as incapable of improvement, for it may be that as our
psychological observations of children grow wiser, more sympathetic,
and more subtle, we shall see cause to make radical changes in the
objects which are Froebel's legacy to the kindergarten. This we may
do, but we can never improve upon the motherly tenderness of spirit
with which they were devised by the great pioneer of child-study, nor
upon the philosophic insight which based them on the universal
instincts of childhood.
By Mrs. Wiggin.
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