WEAK POINTS CONSIDERED
An honest attempt to show what credit is due to Froebel, for the
remarkable anticipations of modern theories on which he based his
pedagogy, seems to involve the opposite process of inquiring whether or
not any of his practices can be shown to have an unsound basis.
The modern boys’ school, with a few, and a very few exceptions, does not
even approach the school at Keilhau as a place of real education, as any
one may see who reads the account given of it by Georg Ebers. On the
other hand, the modern Kindergarten is probably in many ways an advance
upon the original attempts. Many practices of which Froebel approved
are now discarded, some no doubt because of progress in physiological
discovery; we know now that a child is not fitted as regards nervous
development and muscular control to deal with fine pricking or drawing in
chequers.
But a better knowledge of physiology does not account for all the
changes that have taken place. Important as they undoubtedly were in
Froebel’s eyes, the modern Kindergartener is inclined to smile over
her predecessors’ “worship of the ‘Gifts’”; and, though we are agreed
as to the importance of games, the modern teacher chooses from a wide,
perhaps too wide a range, and no longer reposes blind faith in certain
circle-games with their supposed “symbolic” virtue.
To some, the word symbolic will at once suggest Froebel’s weakest point,
others will resent any such idea, for symbolism appeals strongly to one
and repels another. For Froebel himself, undoubtedly the whole world was
symbolic, in so far as he regarded the universe as one expression of the
Divine. To him, as to Browning:
“The earth has speech of God’s writ down, no matter if
In cursive script or hieroglyph.”
But this has not affected his educational practice to the extent
generally supposed.
At the same time it does seem as if one, if not two, psychological errors
lie at the root of certain practices which the modern Froebelian has
discarded.
It would be most unfair to Froebel not to emphasize what is often
overlooked, viz. that the “Gifts” were important in his eyes
solely because he believed that in them he was presenting toys, or
“play-material,” exactly suited to the succeeding stages of the child’s
development, bodily and mental. “The new gift,” he says, “corresponds
both to the child’s increasing constructive ability, and to his growing
capacity to comprehend the external world.” And he writes:
“But such a course of training and occupations for children
answering to the laws of development and the laws of life,
demanded a thoroughly expressive medium in the shape of
materials for these occupations and games for the child:
therefore to meet this point I have arranged a series of play
materials under the title of: ‘A complete series of gifts for
play.’”--_P., p. 250._
It should also be noted that Froebel did not commit the mistake of
inventing new toys. What he attempted to do was what we are all
attempting now, viz. to use what natural instinct has already selected,
as a basis for conscious educational work. Balls and building blocks,
coloured tablets and papers, sand and clay, are all spontaneously
appropriated by normal children. Even these materials which seem to us
unchildlike are not so in different surroundings. For instance, in the
Black Forest, one may watch children playing with long slivers of wood
exactly like Froebel’s laths, and these they take from the cut logs which
are being hauled up for winter storage.
Again, it is only fair to point out that Froebel’s followers have
appropriated material which he suggested as suited to children aged from
three months to five or six years, and have used them with children from
four or five to six or seven and even older.[45] Teachers have also found
it convenient to disregard Froebel’s frequent warnings not to interfere,
to let the child “bang and pound” when he wants to, to let him “play
quietly and thoughtfully by himself as long as he will,” to give him
“the greatest possible freedom of expression.” In some, at least, of the
original text-books on Kindergarten practice, written by Froebel’s early
disciples, this advice is totally disregarded, and we find prescribed the
most formal of object lessons, dealing with the properties of the ball in
set questions and answers; only at the end comes “If there is time, the
children may be allowed to roll the ball.”
Still, when all due allowance is made, there remains the fact that
Froebel attributed far too much importance to the series of toys he
arranged, and in addition to this he must be held in large measure
responsible for the extraordinary amount of mathematical perceptions of
which young children have been considered capable, and beneath which many
gleams of intelligence may have been extinguished.
The psychological error which seems to underlie both these mistakes in
pedagogy seems to have been that of making too much of the outer factor
in the process of perception. Froebel was quite right and quite modern
in refusing to draw any hard and fast line between sense perception and
thinking, in saying that the child moves “from perception of a thing,
joined with thought about it, up to pure thought.” But he must have
failed somehow, sufficiently to grasp the fact that all that is present
to sense is not necessarily perceived, that perception depends not
merely upon what is presented, but upon previous mind content. The word
“apperception,” though apparently somewhat fallen into disfavour of late,
has certainly been of service in emphasizing this point.
What seems strange is that in the very book, in which we find the theory
disregarded in practice, we find Froebel stating the theory itself in the
plainest of terms:
“The properties and nature of the outer world unfold themselves
in exact proportion to the capacities of the child.”--_P., p.
120._
“The child creates his own world for himself; it is at once
the expression of his inward realization of the external world
and its surroundings, and also the outward representation
of his internal mental world, the world of his own
subjectivity.”--_L., p. 141._
“Above all, it is the old within the new, which clarifies,
unfolds and transmutes itself, thus developing what is new.… We
must not require of the child anything not conditioned by his
previous achievements.”--_P., p. 169._
No one, surely, can maintain that these words are carried into effect in
e.g.:
“Could forms of knowledge (mathematical forms) be, for a
child of one to three, play forms, and thus forms produced
by spontaneous activity? Well, why not? Arrange the eight
part-cubes together, and say, ‘One whole.’ But divide it
immediately and say, ‘Two halves.’… Or, comparing and
connecting and describing by song at the same time that the
objects are manipulated:
‘Look here and see! One whole two halves.
One half two fourths, two halves four fourths.
One whole four fourths.
Four fourths eight eighths.
Eight eighths one whole.’”--_P., p. 138._
There is certainly no “old within the child” of one to three, which can
condition this achievement, nor is there any spontaneity. For the child a
little older we have:
“The hints that are here given suffice to show that the
knowledge forms are adapted to children of three and four years
of age, and that they incite plays which are both spontaneous
and nourishing to heart and intellect.… These few indications
for the use of these forms must suffice; they already show
sufficiently clearly that the observation and comprehension
of them are perfectly suited to the active, intellectual and
emotional sides of children three and four years of age,
and to actual free play which strengthens intellect and
feeling.”--_P., p. 185._
Now the “hints” refer to making clear to the child, always in justice, be
it remembered, in the concrete, “as perceptible facts only,” such points
as “similarity of size with dissimilarity of shape and position, in such
words as:
“Twice as long and half as wide,
Half as long and twice as wide,
The same size are we two.”
Certainly children differ very much, and some have a special aptitude for
mathematical relations, but to most children under five these words would
convey nothing. _Half_ may have a meaning, though at that age and for
some time after we hear of “a fair half” and “quarter” is generally used
as a name for any fraction recognized as not a half, even if it should
be greater. Such words as _fourth_ and _eighth_ can have no meaning for
a child who shows no consciousness of difference when shown six, seven
or eight objects. At the age of three, an average child recognizes three
objects, but when a fourth is added, he proceeds to count one by one, he
does not recognize three plus one.
Again, we must repeat that Froebel never intended any mathematical ideas
to be forced upon unwilling children. He constantly tells the mother not
to force, and he frequently speaks of the child’s “accidental productions
which will become a point of departure for his self-development,” through
the explanatory rhymes, to be sung by the mother in order to call the
child’s attention to the results of his own action. It is true, too, that
it is in connection with this kind of work, or play, that Froebel writes
of “the knowledge-acquiring side of the game, which is the quickly tiring
side.”
But the fact remains that either Froebel made a miscalculation as to
what mathematical ideas are within the grasp of children of tender age,
or else he attributed too much consequence to what is outside. It is
indeed quite possible to present to a child of any age, by means of the
cubes of his Fifth Gift, several particular instances of the Theorem of
Pythagoras, as Froebel suggests. But though the construction is present
to the sense of both child and adult, the career of the child of five
or six, who perceives or apperceives the relationship of the squares so
presented, may be watched with interest. He is likely to distinguish
himself in mathematical research, should he live long enough. Froebel
ought to have known, indeed he did know, for he taught it to others,
that the child does not “quickly tire” of acquiring knowledge suited to
his stage of development by methods equally suitable. From the houses
and railway trains, of which at this stage they seem never to tire,
children probably gain as much knowledge as Nature means them to absorb
by such means. In Froebel’s own hands, with his real and sympathetic
understanding of the need for freedom of action, probably no harm was
done, but it is easy to see how the ordinary teacher would grasp at the
possibility of producing mathematical prodigies through what was supposed
to be play.
The same error seems to show itself in various ways, e.g., in some of
the reasons Froebel gives for choosing his First Gift, though there is
no fault to be found with the choice. He was right in saying that the
child first takes in a whole, not a variety of elements, to be combined
later. Because of this fact, the ordinary coral and bells, with all its
complexity, is just as much a whole to the infant as the woollen ball.
But Froebel does seem to have thought that he must make the “outer
objects,” or toys from which the child is to gain his earliest ideas,
as simple as these ideas, and this certainly implies a wrong view of
perception. The same objection might be taken to Froebel’s directions as
to how the Third Gift--an 8-inch cube, cut once in each direction--is
to be presented; how in order “to furnish to the child clearly and
definitely the impression of the whole, of the self-contained, from
which fundamental perception everything must proceed,” the box is to be
reversed, the lid slipped out and the box is to be lifted “that the play
thing may appear as a cube closely united.” But in this case Froebel is
“presenting” the first divided unit, “something which may be taken to
pieces, arranged and re-arranged and finally re-constructed,” for it is
“by this dismembering and re-constructing, and perception of real objects
that true knowledge and especially self-knowledge comes to the child.”
A second psychological error, or at least an inconsistency, seems to lie
at the root of certain practical directions Froebel gives with regard
to the use of his toys. In spite of his iteration and re-iteration that
the child’s mind is a unity, that though separation is “permitted for
the thinking mind,” there is none in reality, yet in his anxiety for the
due fostering of the whole, of the “doing, feeling and thinking” his
harmonious development, in actual practice he has an attempted separation
which has had bad results. A Kindergarten practice, now discontinued,
was to make the children build, either on different occasions, or during
different parts of one lesson, what Froebel called (_a_) Life-forms or
Objects (Lebens oder Sachformen), i.e. houses, churches, etc.; (_b_)
Beauty or Picture forms (Schönheits oder Bildformen), i.e. symmetrical
designs; and (_c_) Knowledge or Instruction forms (Erkenntniss oder
Lernformen), i.e. squares, triangles, etc. Though this classification is
based on the familiar and important “knowing, willing and feeling,” yet
it is plain that a child may experience quite as much emotion, probably
more, in building a house as in making a star pattern, and that the
active side is involved in every kind of construction. Froebel draws
a parallel, legitimate to a certain extent, between intellect, feeling
and will on the one hand, and truth, beauty and usefulness on the other.
Here, however, we can quote him against himself; “Separation is only
permitted for the thinking mind.” The useful ought to be beautiful, there
is beauty in all truth, and the æsthetic revelation of the world is the
world in order. Beauty degenerates into mere ornament and artificiality,
when separated from life and use. “Mathematics,” as Froebel wrote
himself, “is neither foreign to life, nor deduced from life; it is the
expression of life as such: its nature may be studied in life, and
life may be studied with its help.… Mathematics should be studied more
physically and dynamically as the outcome of nature and energy.”--_E., p.
206-7._
The result of this suggested separation has in past times been
disastrous. Failing to recognize that a young child is of necessity
exercising his intellectual power in constructing his castle or bridge
of blocks, and failing still more to realize that ornament is far from
synonymous with beauty, teachers have wearied and stupefied children
with mathematical forms for which they were not ready, and have forced
upon them symmetrical designs when their souls hungered for “puffer
trains.”[46]
It is easy to show that what Froebel wanted was only due attention
to what we now call the affective and conative as well as to the
intellectual. From the very first he insists on this, and justly, though
his way of doing it may seem to us quaint. About the child’s imitation
of the clock he writes:
“As soon as the child’s first capacity for speech is somewhat
developed, we notice how he tries, in and by the movement,
to listen to the tone and to imitate it with the tone of his
own voice. _Tic tac_, we hear him say, imitating the movement
of the pendulum; _pim paum_ (ding dong?) he says when the
sound is more noticed.… So we must observe that even when
he first begins to speak the child expresses and retains
the physical part of the movement by _tic tac_, but by _pim
paum_ he perceives the movement more, if one may say so,
from the feeling in the mind, and if I may be allowed so to
express myself, by the ‘here and there’ which comes later,
the child catches hold (festhalten) of the movement more as
a thing of comparison, of recognition, and in his dawning
thought, more intellectually.… It is most important that the
mother should observe the first and slightest traces of the
articulation (Gliederung) of the child as an active, emotional
and intellectual being, and watch it in his development from
existence to experience and thought, so that in his development
no side of his nature should be cultivated at the cost of
the others, nor should any be repressed or neglected for the
sake of the others. It seems important, and we believe that
all who quietly observe the child have remarked, or will yet
remark, that from the first the child expresses the swinging
movement in a singing tone, in a tone which approaches song and
so serves the emotional nature. Thus early is it shown that
the real foundation, the starting-point for the education of
humanity and so of the child, is the heart and the emotions
(das Gemüth u. die Gemüthliche), but that training to
action and thought (zur That u. zum Denken), the physical
and the intellectual goes with it side by side constantly
and inseparably. Thought forms itself in action, and action
clears itself in thought, but both must have their roots in the
emotions.”--_P., p. 41._
Two further reasons may be given for Froebel’s belief in his selected
series of toys: (_a_) his delight in the theory of development, and
(_b_) his eagerness to bring the child as soon as possible to that
consciousness of self which differentiates man from the lower animals.
Every sign of unity of plan within the universe gave Froebel real joy,
and he traces development from the simple to the complex, from the
undifferentiated to the differentiated, not only in plant and animal
life, but also in the inorganic. Much of what he says on crystals may be
fanciful, but much is beautiful and suggestive. “Chemical combination” is
to him “the life of the inorganic world,” and he writes:
“We have in this a new confirmation of the law of development
in crystals, the passing from special-sidedness to
all-sidedness, from imperfection to perfection as the law of
all development in nature. Man, then, appears as the most
perfect earthly being, in whom all that is corporeal appears
in highest equilibrium and in whom the primordial force is
fully spiritualized, so that man feels, understands, and knows
his own power. But while man externally and corporeally has
attained equilibrium and symmetry of form, there heave and
surge in him, viewed as a spiritual being, appetites, desires
and passions.
“As in the world of crystals we noticed the heaving and surging
of simple energy, and in the vegetable and animal worlds, the
heaving and surging of living forces, so here the heaving and
surging of spiritual forces. Therefore man with reference to
spiritual development has returned to a first stage as crystals
are in a first stage with reference to the development of
life.… For this reason the boy should at an early period be
taught to see Nature in all her diversity as a unit, as a great
living whole, as a thought of God. The integrity of Nature, as
a continually self-developing whole must be shown him at an
early period.”--_E., p. 198._
Although this particular passage was written in connection with Nature
Study for older boys, yet it is from thoughts such as these that Froebel
seems to have taken an idea that man-in-infancy ought to meet, if it may
be so expressed, matter-in-infancy. Though everything in the surroundings
was to help to bring about self-consciousness, “the air blowing about all
living creatures, as well as the arousing spiritual language of words,”
yet that definite thing-in-itself, which is to help the child to an early
dim consciousness of self is to be “the counterpart of himself,” a simple
undifferentiated whole “susceptible of a progressive development.”
And now we must come to the question of Froebel’s “Symbolism,” a thorny
subject, because one into which the personal equation enters largely.
Some writers, notably Miss Susan Blow, author of “Symbolic Education,”
regard this symbolism as all-important, Froebel’s glory rather than his
weakness. Others consider that it appeals to adults alone and that where
it is supposed to affect children it tends towards artificiality and
sentimentality. In so far as this is true, it must be regarded as a weak
point.
It is, however, not an easy task to settle what ideas are covered by
the term “Froebel’s symbolism.” The dictionary meaning for symbol is
“a visible sign or representation of an idea; anything which suggests
an idea, as by resemblance or convention; an emblem; a representation;
a type; a figure; as the lion is the symbol of courage and the lamb of
meekness or patience.”
It certainly passes my comprehension how anything can symbolize an
idea not yet acquired, however much it may help in calling up ideas
already more or less clearly gained. The crown may symbolize power to
an adult, but not to the child, who when told that Stephen and Matilda
fought for the crown, innocently inquired: “Couldn’t they have had
another one made?” The Union Jack may symbolize British nationality or
British freedom, or even British Jingoism to adults who already possess
these ideas, but not to a little child. On the other hand, any kind of
celebration appeals to children, as to more primitive people, and to
be allowed to march round the playground on Empire Day carrying a flag
arouses a joyous emotion, which will later be interwoven with patriotic
ideas of various kinds. It is decidedly open to question whether as
regards the child Froebel himself intended much more than this, whatever
his followers may have done.
Professor Thorndyke gives us to understand that Froebel says a
child plays with a ball because it symbolizes “infinite development
and absolute limitation.” Now it is true that Froebel wrote in his
“Aphorisms”--quoted in a footnote to Hailmann’s “Education of Man”--“The
spherical is the symbol of diversity in unity and of unity in diversity.…
It is infinite development and absolute limitation.” But the “Aphorisms”
were not written for children, and Hailmann quotes the passage in
speaking of Froebel’s philosophical doctrines as to the ultimate nature
of force and matter!
To Froebel, Spirit is everywhere striving for utterance. The
Universe--the Manifold--is the revelation of one great mind, and
everything in Nature, “though soundless it be to the ear, a message can
give emblematic (sinnbildlich) but clear.” Certainly, he would have the
boy study Nature, “the writing and book of God,” but it is not to the boy
that he says:
“The works speak, by the form the Spirit manifests itself. By
that which has been produced and created, the nature and spirit
of the producer and creator make themselves known. The world
must therefore necessarily manifest the nature of its original
cause--the spirit of its Creator.”
For Froebel as for Goethe, the Time Spirit “weaves for God the garment
we see Him by.” He calls “the temporal an expression of the eternal,
the material a manifestation of the spiritual.” He speaks of “the Power
which reveals itself by uniting all things, in Nature in the Universe
as weight, in human life as Love,” and it pleases him to put into the
hand of the boy--in that picture of a family group by which he typifies
Humanity--a ball hanging by a string, and this he calls an emblem or
symbol (Sinnbild).
There is nothing in all this with which any one need quarrel. Froebel
was assuredly an idealist, but in these days that is no longer a term of
reproach. No one, to whom it does not appeal, need use the suggestion,
but to those of us who believe that right guidance of a child’s delight
in fairy tales is one way of developing his sense of reverence, there is
nothing so very far fetched even in Froebel’s way of trying to bring to
the child’s consciousness, the spirit striving for utterance not only
in every beautiful form, but in everything beautiful as he does in “The
Smell Song.”
Of fairy tales Froebel says:
“The child, like the man, would like to know the meaning of
what happens around him. This is the foundation of the Greek
choruses, especially in tragedies. This, too, is the foundation
of many legends and fairy tales, and it is the result of the
deeply-rooted consciousness of being surrounded by that which
is higher and more conscious than ourselves.”--_P., p. 147._
So, when the child delights in the scent of the flower, Froebel says to
the mother: “Let your child find in all things a mind, a struggle for
being. Colour form and spicy smell all forthtell the One ruling hand
which called all into existence.” But all she is told to pass on to the
child is only the thought that an angel has put the scent there and is
saying: “The little one does not see me, but without me there would be no
fragrance.”
Although in one sense the educator of young children need have no
dealings at all with “symbolism,” yet in another, a walking-stick does,
for the boy who bestrides it, symbolize, a horse, as a piece of wood
may symbolize for his little sister the infant whom she may nurse and
caress, with what Froebel calls “the dim and transferred perception of
inner life.” Here Froebel seems quite right, as when in speaking of a
child’s visit to a toyshop he says, “a true child is content with very
little of the outer, he is satisfied by a doll or cart, a whistle or a
sheep, provided only that in or through it he can find his own world and
represent it in actual deeds.”--_M., p. 199._
It may be said, too, that there is symbolism in children’s drawings, the
animal or object is symbolized by that which to the child is the most
outstanding characteristic. One small boy drew a camel with a rider so
small that some one protested he could not see over the hump, so the
artist promptly drew a second rider in front. Being asked if he could
draw an elephant, he assented cheerfully and added a trunk to his camel.
By the addition of claws the elephant became a cat, but at that point he
paused, remarking, “It’s not very like a cat, it’s more like a bird,” and
a pair of wings completed the transformations. In like manner by help of
a walking stick a child becomes his own father, and a pair of spectacles
transforms him into his grandmother. But in all such cases the child is
dealing with ideas he has already grasped.
To say that circle or ring games help a child to gain an idea of
unity--Ring a Ring of Roses may give the first dim idea of corporate
unity--is a very different thing from saying that a circle is to the
child a symbol of unity. This is the kind of thing, however, that
Froebel is supposed to have said, but after careful investigation one
is surprised to find how little there is, and to what extent Froebel’s
disciples and translators seem to have read in their own interpretations.
For instance, in searching for passages about symbolism, we find in
the English translation of the paper on Movement Plays, a passage
stating that the “Snail Game” forms a frequent conclusion to a “games”
period, because it yields the form of the circle, “which is symbolic of
wholeness.” On comparing this with the original, however, we find that
this phrase is an addition of the translator’s. No doubt she considered
it explanatory, but all that Froebel himself says is that the game
is suitable “because it finally unites all the players in a lively
and completely finished whole.” To practical teachers, who know the
difficulty of getting a number of children to settle down after a game,
this may bear a very different meaning.
It seems to me that Froebel’s translators have been altogether too fond
of the word “symbolic.” The German words usually translated “symbol”
and “symbolic” are “Sinnbild” and “Vorbild,” with their respective
adjectives. After considering innumerable passages in which these words
occur it seems plain that Froebel’s meaning would often have been
better expressed by “typical,” or by “significant,” and sometimes by
“metaphorical.”
For instance, it is quite legitimate to say of such perceptions as
Froebel intended a child to gain from his second “Gift”--resistance,
weight, hardness and softness, noise, etc.--that the ball and cube
give, and are only intended to give, “normal, fundamental and _typical_
perceptions” (nur die normalen, begründenden und vorbildlichen
Anschauungen), and Froebel goes on to say that the same perceptions must
come from many other objects. There is nothing _symbolic_ here, and there
is no reason for using this word.
That in many passages _significant_ would be a much more correct
translation than symbolic is abundantly evident. Froebel was convinced,
and most people will now agree with him, that there is real meaning or
significance in those activities, which are common to children of all
countries, and this meaning he endeavours to discover. Small blame to him
if, though wonderfully correct on the whole, he sometimes hits upon a
wrong meaning, in which case we are apt to fall back upon that convenient
scapegoat, his symbolism.
In one of his letters he thanks his cousin for describing to him how she
had watched a tiny child “who quietly let his eye travel from the ball
hanging at the end of its cord, up to the hand which held it,” and he
adds:
“I am convinced, and I wish that all teachers, and especially
all mothers, shared in the conviction, that the very earliest
phenomena of child-life are _full of symbolic meaning_, that
is to say, they indicate the higher, the intellectual life in
the child and his individual peculiarities at the same time.
Our duty is to search in everything for its ultimate basis,
its point of origin, its well-spring; and to make clear the
connection between the outward manifestation and its inward
cause.”--_L., p. 101._
What Froebel deduced from the incident was that the child looks not only
at the appearance of the swinging ball, but for the cause of the swinging
phenomenon, the supporting, moving hand. So it is plain that for “full
of symbolism” we should here read “full of significance.” Or, again, in
his excellent sketch of early boyhood, with its desire to share the work
of the father, its desire to explore, to collect, to construct, etc.,
Froebel concludes:
“Thus it is certain that very many of the boy’s actions have
an inner, an intellectual importance, that they indicate his
mental tendencies and are therefore _symbolical_.”--_E., p.
118._
Here, again, _significant_ would be a better English translation than
_symbolical_.
Again, in accordance with his belief in instinct, Froebel declares that
it is his “firm conviction that wherever we find anything that gives
children ever freshly a joy belonging to real life there is at the bottom
of it something important for a child’s life.” When he sees that children
often enjoy going to church and joining in the singing at an age when
the words can have no meaning, he says: “All the spontaneous activity of
child-life is _symbolical_ (Sinnbildlich).” But there is not a word of
anything that is ordinarily called “symbolical” in what follows, so far
as the child is concerned. The little one is supposed to have “reached
a new life-stage,” viz. “the dim anticipation that he is not alone in
life, but one amid mankind.” Consequently he is attracted by “assembly
life.” The most ardent believer in symbolism can make little of the very
practical answers the mother is told to give to the child’s questions.
He is to be answered “out of the range of his own experience, feelings
and ideas, his own intellectual development and necessities.” He is to be
told that when he is old enough to go to church, he will not only like to
hear the organ, but will find out “why flowers bloom and birdies sing and
why we still remember Christmas Day.”
There is another child in the Mother Songs, who wants to visit the
moon, and drags his mother towards the ladder that he may climb up.
According to the translator Froebel says he wants to point out “the
higher symbolical meaning.” But what he says is that one remark presses
itself upon him, how “we ought to cultivate intelligently the child’s
observation of and pleasure in the moon, and in the night sky, and not
let this sink into the formlessness and emptiness of mere wonder.” For
example, it is, he says, quite as easy to tell a child that the moon is a
beautiful bright swimming ball, as to say it is a man; or that the stars
are sparkling suns which look small because they are far away, as to call
them “golden pins,” and he adds “Truth never injures, but error always
does.”
There are certainly some instances in which Froebel found for the
tendencies and actions of children, a meaning that does not commend
itself to common sense, but as a rule he only “ventures to suggest”
rather than insists, and his practical application is generally
unobjectionable. We assent willingly, when Froebel tells us that
rhythmic movement, passive as well as active, is the earliest beginning
of all ordered activity. But we smile when, in accounting for the
childish interest in clocks, after allowing for the mystery, he goes on:
“Let me hold the opinion that a deeply slumbering notion of the
importance of time lies at the bottom of the pleasure children
take in playing with a clock.”--_M., p. 139._
As he truly and naïvely remarks, “this opinion of mine hurts, as an
opinion, neither the child nor any one else,” and the application may,
even in this instance, be useful as he says it is, viz. that we should
use this pleasure to instil the beginnings of punctuality or law and
order. As an opinion it is not worthy of Froebel’s insight, and we can
only say that instances of this kind are really negligible, though some
have been unnecessarily emphasized by certain Froebelians to whom they
appeal.
There are, it is true, a few instances which deserve the strictures which
have been heaped up somewhat rashly. It is only put as a question, but
Froebel does say of children’s pleasure in circle games, “May not their
delight spring from the longing and efforts to get an all-round, or
all-sided, grasp of an object?”
As to metaphor, Froebel delights in this; his bent of mind is to take
pleasure in all analogies, and he suggests that the mother should make
more use of the metaphors implied in ordinary language. For example, he
speaks of “the transferred moral meaning of such words and phrases as
‘_straight_ and _straightforward_,’ and of ‘_walking in crooked paths_.’”
In using little finger plays to give a child control over his hands,
the mother is told to think how important for later life is “the right
handling of things, in the actual as well as in the figurative sense.”
The wise mother is represented as cherishing the child’s love of light
and brightness, saying, “Never shrink away from light”; and while she
shows the picture she says, “Here is a boy who has broken the window and
now he must go a long way to fetch the glazier unless he can content
himself with a dark board that will keep out the dear bright light. You
must not heedlessly stop Light’s entering your heart and mind, for if you
do, you will have to buy it back by trouble and loss of time lest heart
and mind become dark. Open your door and little window to the light.”
Thus she makes the child “see inner things through the outer,” and uses
his pleasure in light to make him hate deeds of darkness. But there is no
harm in all this, the words are used as a clergyman uses the half-dozen
words of his text, as a germ of thought which he cultivates, as a
finger-post pointing the way in which our minds may travel. And Froebel,
like the clergyman, sometimes travels far from the branching of the roads.
Froebel’s curious attempts at etymology ought perhaps to be mentioned
as a weak point, though they really do not affect his theories,
psychological or educational, one way or another. The ball, as the
child’s first object through which he gains his first perceptions of
solidity, weight, mass, etc., is described as on that account “an image
of the universe” (der B--all ist der Bild des Alles). The thought is
worth having, the pseudo-etymology does not much matter.
To sum up, then, there is mysticism in Froebel’s writings as addressed
to the adult, and with this no one has any right to quarrel even if it
should not appeal to him or her personally. But an undue preponderance
has been given to this side of Froebel by those to whom it appeals, or
so it seems to me. It does not appeal to me, nor can I perceive that it
affects to any appreciable extent the educational theories based on the
psychological grounds so carefully considered by Froebel. To writers
like Miss Blow, the author of “Symbolic Education,” such a statement
would no doubt seem outrageous. With intellectual people possessed of
Miss Blow’s philosophic insight, children may be safe from artificiality
and sentimentality. But the average teacher is incapable of philosophy,
and when the uncultured mind is supplied with food it cannot digest,
that mind is starved. The teacher who glibly uses phrases which she
does not understand has reached a state of mind immeasurably below
plain ignorance, for it is destructive of honest thought and common
sense.[47] The main business of the Froebelian is to forward the cause
to which Froebel devoted his life “to bring about a more general use of
progressive development in the culture and education of children. We must
throw overboard everything that hampers action and set before ourselves,
as in his day Froebel tells us he attempted to do, the definite task of
“founding anew the practical methods of actual teaching so as to bring
them into satisfactory relation with the needs of our life of to-day.”