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LECTURES
IN THE
TRAINING SCHOOLS
FOR
Kindergarten Teachers.
EDUCATION
IN
THE HOME, THE KINDERGARTEN,
AND
THE PRIMARY SCHOOL.
BY
ELIZABETH P. PEABODY.
_WITH AN INTRODUCTION_
BY
E. ADELAIDE MANNING.
"Come, let us live _with_ our children."--FROEBEL.
LONDON:
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY & CO.,
PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
1887.
INTRODUCTION.
AMONG those who in the last twenty years have helped to spread a
knowledge of the educational principles of Froebel beyond the limits of
his native country, Miss Elizabeth Peabody's name deserves to be
specially remembered. It is mainly owing to her enthusiastic efforts
that the value of the Kindergarten was early recognised in the United
States, and that its first American promoters were encouraged to
maintain, amid many difficulties, a standard of real efficiency for the
teachers of Froebel's system. Miss Peabody had long occupied herself,
theoretically and practically, with educational subjects. Not satisfied
by merely intellectual methods of instruction, and impatient of the
superficiality which was too often approved, she made it her great aim
to train character, and, by a simultaneous development of children's
mental capacities and of their moral nature, to prepare them for the
responsible duties of life. It was not surprising that when Miss
Peabody, holding such views of education, came in contact with the ideas
and the work of Froebel, she at once experienced the delight always
attached to the discovery that the problems exercising our own minds
have been successfully solved by some one who has started from
principles such as ours, and who has cultivated the same ideal. She
found that Froebel had carried into practice that very kind of training
of which she had realized the immense importance, and that he had placed
in a clear light truths which she had already more dimly perceived.
Eager to inform herself about the new system, Miss Peabody travelled, in
1868, to Europe, on purpose to visit in Germany the Kindergartens
established by Froebel, who was no longer living, and by his best
pupils. On her return to America, she devoted herself for many years to
the introduction and improvement of Kindergartens and of training
institutions, and to enlightening, by her writings and addresses,
mothers and educators respecting the value and simplicity of Froebel's
methods. Miss Peabody has the satisfaction of witnessing a good measure
of success from her generous exertions, in the increasing number of
advocates of the Kindergarten in America, in its adoption as a first
department of many State primary schools, and in the numerous private
and charity Kindergartens founded from North to South, and from New York
to San Francisco. Advanced now in years, this warm-hearted lady is
engaged in other lines of philanthropic work, but she retains, and still
manifests, her earnest interest in the educational progress which she
has laboured so actively to secure.
Ever since Miss Peabody's zeal was kindled for Froebel's ideal as to
young children's education, her help and criticism have been sought by
the trainers of Kindergarten students in America, and by all who, with
serious purpose, have thus worked for the movement. Hence she has often
delivered lectures at the opening of the session at Normal Colleges, and
on other occasions when she saw an opportunity of exercising influence
in favour of rational principles of education. This book, which appeared
only lately at Boston, consists of a few of such lectures. It is now,
with Miss Peabody's consent, published in England, where many parents
and teachers will be glad to profit by the author's wise and loving
study of little children, and her sympathetic insight into Froebel's
methods for their development. During the last few years various
thoughtful writers on education have drawn attention here to the subject
of infant management, and it is remarkable how widely the principles of
Froebel and Pestalozzi are now recognised and accepted. But books are
still greatly needed which, especially addressed to those who have
charge of children, urge in a convincing manner how essential it is
that the first few years should be rightly guided, and indicate certain
defined educational aims. I think that Miss Peabody's lectures are
likely to prove very useful in this direction. Though her readers will
perhaps contest some of her psychological deductions, they cannot fail
to be impressed and benefited by the high tone of her reasoning, by her
evidently tender and reverent love of children, and by her excellent
suggestions in regard to their harmonious development.
Amongst its other merits, this book tends to correct the still too
prevalent notion, that the Kindergarten is a peculiar--an almost
magical--institution, which provides a sure remedy for children's
imperfections, apart from their home conditions. Doubtless, in the case
of poor neglected little ones, the contrast between their treatment at
the Kindergarten and their ordinary experience, is necessarily striking
and decided, because the parents are careless and ignorant. But
Froebel's view of the Kindergarten was, that it should be a
supplementary help to the loving and judicious mother, who, owing to her
many household and other duties, might be unable to give, through the
whole day, to her younger children the regular attention which their
awakening faculties need. It was to be a portion of the home pattern and
web of training, not a patch of a new texture. He saw that a child
requires to have about it, as Miss Peabody says, "love and thought in
practical operation," and this not now and then, but always. And as the
mother may have at times to transfer her children to the charge of
others, he organised the Kindergarten--a higher nursery, under refined
and motherly influences, for those that have passed out of babyhood.
There, on the same principles as at home, they may be gently tended for
two or three hours of the day, and developed in body, mind, and
character. Froebel's object also was to provide companionship for these
children, adapted to their age and attainments, which could only be done
by including some from outside the family circle. But again, he desired
to give the opportunity to inexperienced mothers of observing the
patient and resourceful guidance carried out by even young teachers, who
had been trained to study children, and had learnt how to occupy them
suitably. Here we see another link with the home. Now Miss Peabody
entered so much into Froebel's ideas that she helps to remove the
Kindergarten out of its supposed exceptional sphere, and to show that
the teachers represent temporarily the mother, doing that which the
mother also aims, or ought to aim, at doing, for the children's good.
These Lectures are also useful in presenting a high ideal of
Kindergarten teaching. Miss Peabody sees that the work of educating
requires special qualifications in those who undertake it, and that such
as are not fitted for it, had better take up a different career. At the
same time placing, as always, character above intellect, she considers
that most women, whose religious and moral nature is well cultivated,
and who take pains to develop their mental powers, may hope for success
in devoting themselves to the training of young children. Her writings
are calculated to inspire the teacher with hearty zest for her labour,
and yet with an abiding feeling that even years of practice leave her
far behind her ever advancing standard. Miss Peabody encourages no
exaggerated estimate of Froebel's thoughts and methods. She freely
recognises that he gained many truths from fellow-students of children's
nature and faculties; but she claims for him the originality which
belongs to those who with unselfish aims bestow close attention on a
subject of deep human interest. To teachers, therefore, as well as to
all who love children, she says--and with this quotation I will close my
few introductory remarks--"You will not be wise if you do not look out
of Froebel's window."
E. A. MANNING.
LECTURE I.
THE KINDERGARTNER.
WHOEVER proposes to become a kindergartner according to the idea of
Froebel, must at once dismiss from her mind the notion that it requires
less ability and culture to educate children of three, than those of ten
or fifteen years of age. It demands more; for, is it not plain that to
superintend and guide accurately the _formation_ of the human
understanding itself, requires a finer ability and a profounder insight
than to listen to recitations from books ever so learned and scientific?
To form the human understanding is a work of time, demanding a knowledge
of the laws of thought, will, and feeling, in their interaction upon the
threshold of consciousness, which can be acquired only by the study of
children themselves in their every act of life--a study to be pursued in
the spirit that reveals what Jesus Christ _meant_, when he said: "He
that receiveth a little child in my name, receiveth _me, and Him that
sent me_;" "Woe unto him who offends one of these little ones, for their
spirits behold the face of my Father who is in heaven."
Not till children who have been themselves educated according to
Froebel's principles, grow up, will there be found any adult persons who
can keep kindergartens without devoting themselves to a special study of
child-nature in the spirit of devout humility. For we are all suffering
the ignorance and injury inevitable from having begun our own lives in
the confusions of accidental and disorderly impressions, without having
had the clue of reason put into our hands by that human providence of
education, which, to be true, must reflect point by point the Divine
Providence, that according to the revelations of history is educating
the whole race, and which may find hints for its procedure in observing
the spontaneous play of children fresh from the hands of the Creator.
The education of children by a genial training of their spontaneous
playful activities to the production of order and beauty within the
humble sphere of childish fancy and affection, was a fresh idea with
Froebel; but, like every universal idea, it was not absolutely new in
the world. Plato says, in his great book on _Laws_:--
"Play has the mightiest influence on the maintenance and non-maintenance
of laws; and if children's plays are conducted according to laws and
rules, and they always pursue their amusements in conformity with order,
while finding pleasure therein, it need not be feared that when they are
grown up they will break laws whose objects are more serious."
And again, in his _Republic_, he says:--
"From their earliest years, the plays of children ought to be subject to
strict laws. For if their plays, and those who mingle with them, are
arbitrary and lawless, how can they become virtuous men, law-abiding and
obedient? On the contrary, when children are early trained to submit to
laws in their plays, love for these laws enters into their souls with
the music accompanying them, and helps their development."
You will observe Plato's association of music with the laws that are to
regulate play. Music, with the Greeks, had indeed a broader meaning than
attaches to the word with us, who confine it to that subtle expression
of the sense of law and harmony which is made in the element of sound,
and addressed to the imagination through the ear. All knowledge and art
inspired by the sacred Nine, they named _music_. Singing was no more
music than dancing, drawing, the harmonizing of colors, plastic art,
poetry, and science, which is nothing less than thinking according to
the rhythmic laws of nature. To learn to commune with the Muses,
daughters of Memory and Jove, who were led by the god Apollo,
symbolizing the moral harmony of the universe, and expressing the mind
of the Father of gods and men, by oracle, was learning _music_ or how to
live divinely; a process which may commence before children leave the
nursery, if their plays are regulated according to artistic principles.
It is common to speak of the Greeks, as if they were of exceptional
organization. I think their organization was only exceptional, because
it was more carefully treated in infancy than ours is apt to be. I do
not believe that in Greece, or anywhere in the world, there were ever
more beautiful little children than there are in America; and the beauty
would not be so transient as it unquestionably is with us, if truly
cultivated persons took our children in hand from babyhood for the care
of their bodies and minds, instead of leaving this work to the most
ignorant class of the community, such as the general run of the servants
who have the education of them during their earliest infancy. Even many
parents who take care of their own children do not make it an object to
study physiology or psychology, and seem to think that there is nothing
in little children which requires special study, except indeed at the
very first, when the child is put into the mother's arms more helpless
than the lowest form of animal life (for the very insect is endowed by
nature, as the child is not, with enough absolute knowledge--we call it
instinct--to fulfil its small circle of relations without help of its
parents). It seems mysterious, at first sight, that the child, whose
duty and whose destiny it is to have dominion over nature, should be
endowed least of all creatures with any absolute knowledge of it. But
the mystery is solved when we consider that the happiness which is
distinctively human, is only to be found in the discovery and enjoyment
of ever-widening relations to our kind, with the fulfilment of the
duties belonging to them. It is the absolute helplessness of the human
infant which challenges the maternal instinct to rush to his rescue,
lest he should die at once. And to continue to study his manifestations
of pleasure and discontent with obedient respectfulness, is the
perfection of the maternal nursing. But when the child has got on so far
as to know the simplest uses of its own body, and especially after it
has learned enough words to express its simplest wants and sensations,
even parents seem to think it can get on by itself, so that children
from about two to five years of age are left to self-education, as it
were; this virtual abandonment being crossed by a capricious and
arbitrary handling of them--mind and body--on the part of those around
them, which is even worse than the neglect; for when are children more
unable, than between three and five years old, to guide their own
thoughts and action? How would a garden of flowers fare, to be planted,
and then left to grow with so little scientific care taken by the
gardener, as is bestowed upon children between one and five years old?
Froebel, in the very word kindergarten, proclaimed that gospel for
children which holds within it the promise of the coming of the kingdom,
in which God's will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven--a
consummation which we daily pray for with our lips, but do not do the
first thing to bring about, by educating our children in the way of
order, which is no less earth's than "heaven's first law," and makes
earth heaven so far as it is fulfilled.
A kindergarten means a guarded company of children, who are to be
treated as a gardener treats his plants; that is, in the first place,
studied to see what they are, and what conditions they require for the
fullest and most beautiful growth; in the second place, put into or
supplied with these conditions, with as little handling of their
individuality as possible, but with an unceasing genial and provident
care to remove all obstructions, and favor all the circumstances of
growth. It is because they are living organisms that they are to be
_cultivated_--not _drilled_ (which is a process only appropriate to
insensate stone).
I think there is perhaps no better way of making apparent what this
kindergartning is, which makes such an importunate demand on your
consideration, than to tell you how the idea germinated and grew in the
mind of Froebel himself; for thus we shall see that it would be
unreasonable to expect that it could be improvised by every teacher; but
that here, as elsewhere in human life, God has sent into the world a
gifted person to guide his fellows, according to the law enunciated by
St. John in the 38th verse of the 4th chapter of his Gospel.
We have the materials of this history on Froebel's own authority, in an
autobiographical letter that he wrote to the Duke of Meiningen, whose
interest in him was excited by an incident so characteristic of Froebel,
that I will relate it. Having heard of a cruel and stupid opposition
made to the ardent educator by the unthinking officials of a region
where he was making a martyr of himself, the duke made inquiries, which
resulted in his offering him the situation of head-tutor to his only
son. But Froebel astonished him with a refusal of the place, sending the
duke word that it would be impossible to educate, in a perfect manner, a
child so isolated by conventional rank and circumstances that he must
inevitably conceive himself to be intrinsically superior to other
children. The duke was so much struck that a poor man, struggling with
every difficulty, should refuse one of the highest posts in a royal
household, with all its emoluments, from a purely conscientious scruple
of this kind, that his curiosity was piqued. He sent for Froebel, and
they had a conversation upon the principles and spirit of a truly human
education, by which Froebel convinced him that a noble moral
development was indispensable to a truly intellectual one, so that the
duke was actually persuaded to send his son as an equal with other boys
to a neighboring school. One day, some little time after, the boy came
home _roaring_, on account of a beating he had received from one of his
playmates. The duke, in a transport of rage, asked the name of the
offender, and said that he should be immediately expelled from the
school. Then was Froebel's advice justified. The young prince dried his
tears, refused to tell the boy's name, and declared that "the beating
was all fair!" It is quite consistent with these facts, that the duke
should ask Froebel how his idea grew in his mind. Froebel's answer is
still extant. I have not been able to get the original text, but I can
give you the substance of it, as it was given to me.
Friedrich Froebel was the son of a laborious pastor of seven villages in
Thuringia. He lost his mother before his remembrance, and fell into the
care of hard-worked domestic servants, with no light upon his infant
life except what came from the love and sympathy of two older brothers,
who cherished him when they were at home from boarding-school. The
parsonage was in the shadow of the church, and into it no ray of
sunshine ever came; and the child was kept drearily in the house. He
tells of seeing workmen building a part of the church that had become
dilapidated, and how he longed to imitate them; and traces to this
desire of employing the time that hung so heavily on his hands, his
discovery of the building instinct, so universal in childhood, and which
he thought should always have simple materials afforded it with which to
express itself. At last his father married again, and at first the
stepmother petted the young child of her husband, and awakened in him a
hope of a satisfying love, which he reciprocated with all the energies
of his long-starved heart. But when the merely instinctive woman had a
child of her own, a certain jealousy arose in her, and she repulsed poor
little Friedrich, and "no longer"--as he pathetically remarks--"called
him _thou_," (du) which is an endearing expression in German, but _he_
(er), which has a rough association. It is plain that the child was
endowed with an immense sensibility to, or more than ordinary
presentiment of the Divine Order of Nature, and with the extreme
tendency to reflection always involved in this gift. As he was so poorly
developed physically, he became in his joyless early life perhaps
morbidly nervous. Disappointed in his timid efforts to please, all the
sweet bells of his nature were jangled, and he was miserable--he knew
not why. He says he always found himself doing the wrong thing--the too
much, or the too little--and was complained of to his father, who
treated him as a naughty boy. But sometimes the pastor took him out of
his stepmother's way, to accompany himself in his parochial visits, in
which Froebel says he seemed continually to be settling family quarrels.
This made on the child's mind an impression of things that was rather
ludicrously expressed, when he one day asked of his oldest brother, who
happened to come home from boarding-school, why it was that God had not
made people all men, or all women, so that there should not be so much
quarrelling in the world. In order to divert him from such premature
consideration of social questions, the posed elder brother undertook to
teach him botany according to the sexual system, revealing to him the
law of contrasts conciliated with each other for the production of
harmony and beauty. The child was delighted with what he was shown; but
still his exceptionally moral genius importunately asked, why may not
human differences be thus harmonized, to produce happiness and goodness?
The presentiment of the great truth which was felt in his heart, though
not yet caught by his mind, was signalized by another anecdote that he
tells of himself. There was a rumor among the peasants of North Germany
(it was about the year 1792) that the world was coming to an end; but
Froebel declares that he could not make himself feel alarmed. He says
he was sure it could not be true, because the will of God had not yet
been brought about in human life. This extraordinary reflection of a
child of ten years old was preceded, probably, by a happy change that
came over him in consequence of the visit of his maternal uncle to his
father's house; who, seeing that the child was not happy, invited him to
go home with him to live with his grandmother. His uncle's house was
bright and sunny, and he was received by his grandmother with joy and
tenderness. Immediately the freedom of the fields was given him,
provided only that he should come home punctually to the meals. He soon
became so healthy and happy, that his uncle put him into a day school in
the neighborhood, to the child's great delight. The school was opened,
the first day he went into it, with a little sermon of the master's upon
the text: "Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and
all other things shall be added unto you." It must have been a wise and
good discourse, for it left a life-long impression upon the mind of the
little Froebel. There was a law then, for human beings as well as for
plants; human beings might consciously realize in happiness and virtue,
the harmony and beauty unconsciously manifested by the vegetable world.
For God was the Ever-present Friend and Lawgiver! He tells the duke how
happy he felt himself in his new circumstances and opportunities, and
blessed with this inspiring faith. After school, he went out to play
with his schoolmates; but, alas! poor starveling of nature as he was, he
found he could not play with his athletic companions, and had to sit on
one side and look on; and then and there he distinctly came to a
conclusion, which is a first principle of the kindergarten, that every
child should have free exercise of his limbs in play, in order to get
entire command of all the physical strength and agility they are capable
of.
After a few years of this happy home and school life, which he
continually reflected upon in contrast with what he had suffered for so
many years, the good grandmother died, and he was sent back to his
stepmother. The question now came up, whether he should study for the
university, where his brothers had gone; but the stepmother, in the
interest of her younger child, opposed his father's spending the money,
and he went to a farmer to learn practical agriculture. But he was
physically so incompetent to the labor of a farm life, that it did not
pay; and being sent home by the farmer, he was finally apprenticed to a
forester, where he found genial occupation in wood-lore, and in studying
geometry for the purpose of surveying. Here he became a thorough and
ardent mathematician. But his friend the forester died, or was removed,
which brought this occupation to a premature close. At that moment,
however, a maternal relation died, and left him a little money, so that
he went to the University of Jena, where he devoted himself principally
to the physical sciences; and by and by we find him curator of the
Mineralogical Museum of Berlin. Here he made a great impression on the
mind of a young lady who frequented the museum, by the "sermons" that he
found "in stones," for he read them out to her, showing that in
inorganic nature, so called, could be traced not only laws of decay,
that threw into stronger light those laws of life that he had learned to
see in vegetation, but those of crystallization. Everywhere he read
God's revelation of the processes of life and death, which also make
human development and happiness, or its deterioration and misery.
The trumpet call of patriotism, to rescue Germany from French despotism,
made by the good Queen Louise of Prussia, called him from these peaceful
studies to partake in the great national act of delivering his country;
and he obeyed it by volunteering his service. Though his regiment was
never called into battle, he always rejoiced in the effects upon himself
of learning the military drill, as well as in the life-long friendships
he made in camp. After the war was over, a legacy received at the death
of his uncle Hoffman gave him the means to enter an architect's office, to
which he had a great attraction. He was boarding at Frankfort-on-the-Main,
where Middendorf and other of his late military friends were boarding,
who had just engaged themselves as teachers in the city, waiting to
perfect this arrangement. It was a moment when there was a great
uprising of education in Germany, and that system was beginning to
germinate, which has turned out to make Prussia the effective power in
Europe that she has lately proved herself to be; and whose first
principle is, that the primary is the most important stage of education.
In connection with this general movement, there was about to be
established a new school in Frankfort; and Grüner, its principal, who
was one of the boarders, talked over with Froebel and the others the new
plan. Whatever Froebel said was so striking and vital, that Grüner at
last exclaimed: "Plainly this is your vocation! Give up the
architecture, and come in with us, and help to build men." Strange to
say, though Froebel had all his life been meditating upon the secret of
human education, this was the first time it occurred to him to make it
his own business. The more he thought of Grüner's suggestion, the more
he liked it; and the issue was, that he took one of the younger classes
in the new school. Immediately afterwards he wrote to his brother that
at last he had found his element--he "felt like a bird in air, a fish in
water." But the teachers were hampered in their action by the
proprietors of the school; and after a season Grüner said to Froebel,
"You should lead; not be led. I release you from your engagement. Set up
independently, and carry out your own ideas unhindered."
When his purpose of leaving was known, one of the parents who patronized
the school, gave him his two sons to educate, just as he should think
best; and because he now heard of Pestalozzi, he took them to Yverdun,
where he remained as pupil with them, for a season. But he was not quite
satisfied with Pestalozzi's methods. He saw there was a process to be
attended to, anterior to the observation of objects; namely, to employ
and discipline the activity of children yet too young to attend except
to what they are themselves doing. Education was to begin, as he saw, in
doing, and thence proceed to knowing. In returning from Yverdun, his
elder brother, and his younger brother's widow, offered him their
children to add to the two young Frankforters; and the widow offered,
besides, a small house that she owned in Keilhau, if he would fit it up.
He and Middendorf and another friend united together and accepted this
offer; and, with their own hands repaired the house, living in the
outbuildings meanwhile and subsisting on rations most carefully
economized. They then, for one thing, went to work on the land, which
they taught the children to cultivate, and deduced their lessons out of
the objects into which they were putting their life and labor. To these
six children three cultivated men devoted themselves; and Froebel also
wrote to the lady that used to study with him in the Mineralogical
Museum of Berlin, and she took her fortune, and left her rank, to help
the poor schoolmaster in his life work, as the most devoted of wives.
Working on the land was not all that they did. They began with it,
because the children of the city had been rather starved of the
gratification of that instinct to work in the earth, which very soon
appears in all children--though, as Froebel says, it will die out by
being left uncultivated. He found that his pupils had been already
injured by their artificial city life, and in many ways they had things
to unlearn. It was not a perfectly easy thing to determine how much
liberty to give to individual tendencies that had been exaggerated by
the reactions of disorder, or of an artificial order. Froebel thought
the educator should give full play to all that is universal in human
nature without pampering human idiosyncrasy, to do which was the vicious
point of Rousseau's system that Froebel has happily avoided. It was
natural that he should first bring before his pupils the processes of
vegetable growth, because it was in observing them that he had himself
first found the laws of God. But he was older than any child in the
kindergarten when he learned that lesson. Observation of anything
outward is not the first thing in human development, but exertion of
powers from within, which provokes the reaction of the outward and makes
it known.
I cannot follow out, in this introductory lecture, all his studies of
the nature of man in these children, and all his experiments of
cultivation. But I hope to do so in those which follow. The school
founded in Keilhau exists to this day; but Froebel ever found himself
going back till at last he came to the infant in the mother's arms. Then
he went into the huts of the peasantry to observe the mother's
instinctive ways, reason upon them, purify them of her individual
caprices and selfishness, and eliminate everything inconsistent with the
divine idea and method of procedure, indicated by the instinct to the
intelligence. He did not confine himself to Keilhau, where Middendorf
steadily lived, though always keeping in relation with it; but went at
times to other places, and once, for a year or two, left all, to go to
the University of Göttingen to study philology. There he made himself
acquainted with Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, studying out those laws of
mind exemplified in the formation and decay of languages. For it was the
secret of a perfect development that he sought, and how to keep his
pupils at the height they "were competent to gain." After half a century
of the study of childhood in the living subject, and elaboration of the
means of discipline, he settled in his old age into the conviction, that
the most important period of human education was before the child was
seven years old. And his last years were spent in preparing teachers
for kindergartens at Rudolstadt and at Hamburg--which he did by teaching
before them as well as by lecturing to them. Now it is what he
discovered and elaborated, and has left, not in logical formulas, though
he has certainly stated principles in words and embodied them in songs,
but in processes of work and play, that is to be taught in our training
schools. It took a Newton to discover gravitation and other principles
of nature, but men without genius can comprehend and apply these
principles, which they could not, like him, discover. So it took a
Froebel's genius to discover the first principles of education, and his
sensibility to apply them without mistake; but intelligent and heartful
young women can learn them and apply them, if--and only if--they will
study devoutly and faithfully what he has taught; and in doing so they
will find themselves--_not_ becoming artificial, but more profoundly
natural than ever; for the true educational process is but the mother's
instinct and method, clearly understood in all its bearings, and acted
out. To be a kindergartner is the perfect development of womanliness--a
working with God at the very fountain of artistic and intellectual power
and moral character. It is therefore the highest finish that can be
given to a woman's education, to be educated for a kindergartner; and it
is from the most advanced classes of high and normal schools, public and
private, that the pupils of our training schools should come, and from
the most refined circles of private life--remembering that these are not
identical with wealthy and fashionable ones, for in the latter we often
find the vulgar and coarse. The refinement of feeling and thought which
is always attended with gentle and courteous manners is a religious
quality, that not seldom glorifies humble homes whose inmates escape the
sometimes hardening effect of poverty by "seeing Him who is invisible,"
while those "the imagination of whose hearts are evil continually," and
even the merely frivolous, betray that they have "faculties that they
have never used" though they dwell in palaces.
Ever since the normal teaching of kindergartners was begun in America,
in 1868, letters have been received from teachers, already at work in
the old routine of primary instruction, asking for knowledge of the
plays and occupations invented by Froebel; in order that, by means of
them, they may give such prestige to their infant schools as the name of
kindergarten may. But this superficial, inappreciative use of Froebel's
processes, is as fatal to his reform as was _judaizing_ to the primitive
Christian Church. Froebel's method is a radical change of direction. It
changes the educator's point of view. Instead of looking down upon the
child, the kindergartner must clear her mind of all foregone arbitrary
conclusions, and humbly look up to the innocent soul, which in its turn
sees nothing but the face of the Father in heaven--(for thus Christ
explains children's being "of the kingdom of heaven"). This is difficult
for her to do, because--not seldom--a shadow has fallen on the original
innocence of the children confided to her care, from those human beings
in relation to them, who have not done for them what every human being
needs by reason of the essential dependence of individuals upon their
race.
The child is doubtless an embryo angel; but no less certainly a possible
devil. If the immortal will, impassioned by the heart, which never rests
permanently satisfied till the mind recognizes God, be puzzled, it may
be turned in a wrong direction by what it meets, and then the
manifestation will be ugly and more or less hateful. Evil is the
inevitable effect of an ignorant, disorderly action of the will; of its
not adopting the laws of order, by which God creates the universe, and
of which the universe is the unconscious exponent. But knowledge of the
laws of order must come to guide the will, from outside the child's
conscious individuality, _through the human providence of education_,
in which the heavenly Father veils His infinite power, in order that the
child may be free to make the choice of good, that shall lift him from
the state, of merely instinctive being, into that union of Love and
Thought, which characterizes a spirit _creative_, _i.e._, causing
effects.
Perhaps you will say that if human influence must embody Divine
Providence, in order to educate, then children never will be educated.
Well! Except in one instance I admit that children never have been
educated up to the ideal standard. But the one instance of the perfectly
Divine Son of the perfectly holy Mother; and the partial successes of
such fitful good education as history and tradition report, forbid us to
despair of making human education a worthy image of Divine Providence.
_To despair of this_ is want of the proper action of human free
will,--Faith.
The first qualification of the true kindergartner, then, is Faith, which
can be based only on the abiding conviction that God is with us "_to
will and to do_," if we will only have the courage to take for granted
that if _we are willing_, He will make of us divine guides to others.
That He is calling them to be so, whoever feels a strong love of
children, sympathy with their life, and sensibility to their beauty, may
have a reasonable assurance; and that such as shall faithfully qualify
themselves for the work will not fail of the divine help. But observe my
proviso. Their love must not be a passing emotion, grounded on the
children's superficial beauty. It must be a love that involves patience,
that can stand the manifestation of ugly temper, and perverse will, and
never lose sight of the embryo angel that wears for the moment the
devilish mask. In children, evil is actual, but always superficial and
temporary, if the educator does not become party to it by losing her own
temper and idea. Also she must have resources by means of a cultivated
understanding and imagination, to command the child's imagination and
heart.
It may be said that everybody cannot have, at will, imagination and
culture. This is true; but such persons should not undertake to keep a
kindergarten. Let them do something else; keep shop, cultivate
vegetables, work the sewing machine; even keep those schools for older
children, in which books are the main teachers. There are multitudes of
things to be done; the greatest variety of functions to be performed in
human life. But of all things to do, the cultivation of human beings at
that period of life when they are utterly at the mercy of those who
teach them, is the most sacred. Why rush into that, impelled by any
motive below the highest?
On the other hand, I do not wish to produce any artificial
sentimentality on this subject. It is my belief that the average woman
is sufficiently gifted by nature to make a good kindergartner, if she
will give her nature fair play, by cultivating religious and moral
sentiment; and will take pains to develop her intellect by the study of
nature's laws in at least one department of science--that of vegetable
physiology for instance, the materials of which are everywhere. One who
_could not_ be educated to become a kindergartner, should never dare to
become a mother; for she would not know even how to choose the
assistance necessary to her for the work that ought to be done for every
child by somebody. While I would discourage, and if possible effectually
frighten every one from professing kindergartning who is morally
disqualified by sordid aims, or by making it a means to another end than
itself, I welcome the young and ardent to this beautiful womanly work,
which, to do well, requires of them to do the very best thing for their
own intellect and heart, and which, more certainly than anything else,
will give them the secret of Power and Beauty.
It was my privilege, a year or two since, to pass a week in one of the
schools of the feeble-minded; and I there saw six women, some of them
quite young girls, devoted to the terrible work of waking up Will and
Perception in those poor prisoners of mal-organization, so many of them
frightful to look upon. They were doing their work under the strongest
sense of humanity and religion. It would have been impossible to do it
at all, as they were doing it, had they had no other inspiration than
the pay they were receiving. The main reward was in their having some
success in waking up the mind. In their countenances something angelic
was dawning; and this was not my fancy merely, for I heard the same
remark made again and again, by persons who went there as I did. I do
not think one of these women wished to leave the good work; and if
acting on a mind-cherishing principle was so interesting, and productive
of such reactive effects, in such sad circumstances, how much more may
be expected from working upon children fairly gifted! The charm of the
sadder work was, that, like kindergartning, it stimulated to profound
study of the laws of mental nature, in order to work reverently among
them, instead of arbitrarily, in defiance or irreverence of them. To do
this made these women feel that they were working with God; and this
made them practical saints. But why cannot we believe that God is
present, and acting with us, and wooing us to act with Himself, in the
joyous paradise of life, as well as in chambers of disease, and among
the wretched? Is He not the God of the living and joyful, as well as of
the dying and sad? Why is the church-yard only a grave-yard? Why should
it not always be a kindergarten?
One of the pleasantest observations that I made of the kindergartens of
Germany--and I went to the very best ones, those kept by the
kindergartners whom Froebel had trained--was the happy absorption of the
teachers in the children; their sympathy with them; the utter
companionship between them. I never saw a punishment; I never heard a
Don't (or its German equivalent); but when anything went wrong, there
was always a pause, and sometimes questions were asked; and all seemed
to wait till the inward guide had been brought out into consciousness
(whether the thing in hand was social action or artistic work). Perhaps
it might be harder work to govern American children. Their vivacious
temperament, their lively energies, need "conscious law" as a curb,
rather than as a spur. But all the more is it necessary for the American
kindergartner to vivify the invisible guide; she should present order to
the mind, by her genial questioning and conversation over the work in
hand, rather than exert an arbitrary power which might stimulate the
reaction of obstinacy or the subterfuges of cunning. To _govern_ is not
the whole thing. The question is _how_ we govern; whether we so govern
as to make a cringing slave, a cunning hypocrite, or an intelligent,
law-abiding, self-respecting, _willing_ servant of God. I have seen a
magnetic teacher produce a marvellous obedience, and apparent order, by
his imposing presence and keen satire. He imagined that he governed by
moral power; but as soon as he was out of the schoolroom, the children
were the victims of their own impulses, to which seemed given a stronger
spring by the enforced repression. There is no order which is more than
skin deep, unless it be the free, glad obedience of the child to a law,
which he perceives to be creative because it enables him to do something
real. Nothing short of the union of love and thought can produce
spiritual power, _i.e._, creativeness. It is only spiritual power that
inaugurates order--the Eternal Beauty may be inaugurated in childhood
and among childish toys.
There is reason, on their own account, why we want our pupils, in this
art of kindergartning, to be in their disposition and circumstances
above merely pecuniary motive for entering on the work; and that is,
because it will be long before the work will pay much in money. I need
not adduce any other proof of this than our experience in Boston; where,
for four years, the rarely gifted, thoroughly educated, religiously
devoted Alma Kriege poured out her young energies on classes of less
than a score of children; bringing her a pittance so small that she had
to fill up the rest of her hours, which ought to have been given to
recreation and culture, with other work, in order to pay for rent and
necessary bread. Our rich and cultivated people will not forego a little
more upholstery than is necessary, or a style of dress that makes the
laundry bill--to say nothing of the mantua-maker's and milliner's--larger
than the school bill, in order to give the required remuneration to the
kindergartner for spending herself on their children in exhausting study
and labor. But the truth is, people do not really believe that anything
better can be done for children than to kill the time between the
mother's arms and the season when they are to be taught to read; and so
this precious interval, when the habits of thought and affection are
forming, is given up to be filled by chance, risking life-long
difficulties for the child.
Now, what is to reform this state of things? Nothing but the
self-sacrificing work of kindergartners, who, for the sake of
enlightening these benighted parents, will do their work faithfully,
steadily refusing to undertake the care of those whom their parents will
not trust to Froebel's system. The refusal will not seldom force the
truth on the parents--who, when they know it, will be glad to know it. I
do not say to any particular person, it is your duty to wear yourself
out and half starve, for the sake of keeping a kindergarten. It is only
you who are sufficiently free from other obligations, to give yourselves
the privilege and luxury of working with God, on the paradisaical ground
of childhood, who should enter this field. If you can make it your
object to study how to avoid offending those who are beholding the face
of the Father in heaven, by not hindering, but bringing them to Christ,
which means helping them to grow as He did, in grace as in stature, and
in favor with God and man, till like Him they become redeemers of their
brethren from bondage, and can help to make earth the kingdom of
heaven; then you may hope, in your day and generation, to initiate
kindergartning, and make the way smooth for those that follow. When the
true thing is initiated, it will pay even in money; for parents will see
that it is invaluable.