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GUIDE TO THE KINDERGARTEN AND INTERMEDIATE CLASS,
BY
ELIZABETH P. PEABODY;
AND
MORAL CULTURE OF INFANCY,
BY
MARY MANN.
REVISED EDITION.
NEW YORK:
E. STEIGER.
1877.
The present volume is a revised edition of the book which under the
title
Moral Culture of Infancy
and
Kindergarten Guide
has been in the market since 1860, latterly published by MESSRS. J. W.
SCHERMERHORN & CO. of New York.
Cambridge, Elizabeth P. Peabody.
October 1st, 1877. Mary Mann.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
J. W. SCHERMERHORN & CO.,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the
Southern District of New York.
COPYRIGHT, 1877, BY E. STEIGER.
PREFACE.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 1, 1869.
SINCE publishing the first edition of what I meant to be a Guide to
those who undertake to give Kindergarten culture, I have been in Europe,
and made a special study of the Kindergartens established in Hamburgh,
Berlin, and Dresden, by Froebel himself, and his most distinguished
scholars.
This study has more and more confirmed the conviction I derived from
reading Froebel's "Essay on the Education of the Human Race;" viz., that
no greater benefit could be conferred on our country, than the far and
wide spread of Kindergartens, _as an underpinning_, so to say, of our
noble public-school system, giving adequate moral foundation,
thoroughness, and practicality to the national education.
But I also learned that no book could be written that would make an
expert Kindergartner. It was the careful observations and earnest
experiments of half a century, that gave to Froebel himself that
profound knowledge of childhood which enabled him to formulate the
principles, deduce the rules, and call forth the spirit of a genuine art
of education. But though no genius and industry less than his own could
have originated this art, any soundly cultured, intelligent,
genial-tempered young woman, who loves children, can appreciate and
practise it, if--and only if--she is trained by a living teacher engaged
in the work at the moment.
This, I myself have proved experimentally also; for _my_ knowledge was
first obtained only from books. I had the best manuals and guides, but
did not know that they were intended merely for the convenience of
already trained teachers; and that they necessarily omitted the
characteristic peculiarity of the method, because _written words_
cannot do justice to the fine steps by which the child is led to
gradually carry its total spontaneity forwards, on every plane of its
little life,--artistic, moral, and intellectual.
For there is nothing merely mechanical and imitative in true
Kindergarten culture: the child acts "from within outwards" in every
thing it does, however seemingly trifling; and, if we use the word
_artist_ in its most general sense, becomes an artist from the
beginning. Thus is prevented that too common divorce between the powers
of thinking and acting, whose harmony ensures ability in a strict
proportion to intellectual capacity. Consciousness of aim, and enjoyment
of success, at every step develop new ideas and power, and fulfil that
law of nature by which thought tends to rush into act instantly, as in
childish play. Nothing is more melancholy in experience than to see
people _drifting_ instead of _living_; but this general failure of human
life is owing to the fact, that the unassisted child is baffled in its
will and balked of its desires, by a want of that steadiness of aim,
perseverance, and knowledge of how to adapt means to ends, which adult
sympathy and wisdom should supply; and from want of which it loses the
original harmony of its being in the process of its growth. Kindergarten
culture is the adult mind entering into the child's world, and
appreciating nature's intention as displayed in every impulse of
spontaneous life; and so directing it that the joy of success may be
ensured at every step, and artistic things be actually produced, which
gives the self-reliance and conscious intelligence that ought to
discriminate human power from blind force.
The only mistake in idea which I see that I made in my "Guide," was
making it the object of the teacher to cultivate the _individualities_
of each pupil especially. This is not even desirable, and would require
the intuitive genius of Froebel in every single teacher. In a true art
of education, individualities will be tenderly respected; but it is not
what is individual, but what is common to all (or that universal of
human nature which rises into the divine creative), which is to be
cultivated especially. Every process of Froebel's Kindergarten is good
for all children, and, interfering with nothing original, leaves their
individualities free to express themselves _sufficiently_. For
individual varieties are irrefragable, and give piquancy and beauty to
human life, except they are pampered,--when they become deformities. To
follow universal laws in their orderly development, ensures a necessary
harmony with others, while a margin is always to be left for
_invention_, which is what gives conscious freedom, and makes obedience
no longer blind and passive, but intelligent and active; every healthy
instinct and affection becoming at last spiritual law.
Nevertheless, I gladly meet the demand of the public for a second
edition of the "Guide," because its defect is not in its spirit and
general idea, seeing that it has awakened an interest in Kindergartens
all over the United States, as numerous letters from all parts have
proved to me; but in my having somewhat confused what belongs to the
second and third stages of primary education, with a preliminary
process, which it is necessary not only to begin with, but to keep
distinct for a considerable time, until the habit of mind is formed of
asking clearly what is going to be done before attempting to do it. What
I missed cannot be supplied by any book; for this preliminary process
can only be learned from the living teaching of the Normal class. I make
some revisory notes, also change some thirty pages, and gladly embrace
the opportunity, which the popularity of my "Guide" gives me, to make
known, as far as it goes abroad, that, when I came home from Europe, I
found what I had seen to be the indispensable condition of an effective
introduction of Froebel's art into either the private or public
education of America; viz., a training-school for Kindergartners,
actually established by Madame Kriege in Boston (127 Charles Street), in
connection with a Kindergarten to be taught by her daughter, fresh from
the school of Berlin, founded by the Baroness Marienholtz, a noble lady
who has devoted her pen, her fortune, the prestige of her rank, and even
her personal services, to the diffusion of Kindergarten culture on the
continent of Europe.
The so-called Kindergarten which I had established, was gladly given up
to make room for this genuine one; and I have the highest expectations
from the Normal training. Already several teachers, who had made
experiments of their own, which had taught them the need of this special
instruction, have engaged themselves as Madame Kriege's pupils; and the
spread of the demand for Kindergartners will, I think, keep her Normal
class always full. I cannot but hope that the time may come when the
Normal schools of all our States may be endowed with a professorship of
Kindergarten culture adequately filled.
Omitting my own preface to my first edition, I retain as explanation of
the origin of the letters on moral culture, which make the last part of
the "Guide," and give it its greatest value to mothers, Mrs. Mann's
POSTSCRIPT.
"I have been urged to publish these letters, written twenty years ago,
as an appendix to a Kindergarten Guide, because the school herein
described was a groping attempt at something of the same kind, and had
left very pleasant memories in the hearts of the children referred
to--now no longer children, but some of them men and women nobly and
beautifully acting their parts on earth as parents; and others,--having
died martyrs' deaths for human freedom in the desolating war that now
ravages our beloved country,--angels in heaven.
"If an inborn love of children and of school-keeping are qualifications
for judging of the best means of educating them, I may claim to have
known something of the theory and practice best adapted to that end. My
object was to put them in possession of all their faculties. Many
improvements in methods, and many facilities in means, have been added
to the resources of teachers since these letters were written. Physical
training is felt to be of the greatest importance, in preference to the
ancient mode of shutting children up many hours in close rooms, and
repressing all natural and joyous life. The principle is discovered of
educating by _directing the activities_. Hence the Kindergarten.
"M. M.
"CONCORD, MASS., 1863."
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. KINDERGARTEN--WHAT IS IT? 9
II. ROOMS, ETC. 19
III. MUSIC 22
IV. PLAYS, GYMNASTICS, AND DANCING 28
V. THE KINDERGARTNER 35
VI. KINDERGARTEN OCCUPATIONS 43
VII. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EXERCISES 54
VIII. OBJECT LESSONS 58
IX. GEOMETRY 65
X. READING 71
XI. GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGES 98
XII. GEOGRAPHY 103
XIII. THE SECRET OF POWER 104
MORAL CULTURE OF INFANCY 105
SONGS.
AMERICAN KINDERGARTEN.
CHAPTER I.
KINDERGARTEN--WHAT IS IT?
WHAT is a Kindergarten? I will reply by negatives. It is not the
old-fashioned infant-school. That was a narrow institution,
comparatively; the object being (I do not speak of Pestalozzi's own, but
that which we have had in this country and in England) to take the
children of poor laborers, and keep them out of the fire and the
streets, while their mothers went to their necessary labor. Very good
things, indeed, in their way. Their principle of discipline was to
circumvent the wills of children, in every way that would enable their
teachers to keep them within bounds, and quiet. It was certainly better
that they should learn to sing _by rote_ the Creed and the "definitions"
of scientific terms, and such like, than to learn the profanity and
obscenity of the streets, which was the alternative. But no mother who
wished for anything which might be called the _development_ of her child
would think of putting it into an infant-school, especially if she lived
in the country, amid
"the mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,"
where any "old grey stone" would altogether surpass, as a stand-point,
the bench of the highest class of an infant-school. In short, they did
not state the problem of infant culture with any breadth, and
accomplished nothing of general interest on the subject.
Neither is the primary public school a Kindergarten, though it is but
justice to the capabilities of that praiseworthy institution, so
important in default of a better, to say that in one of them, at the
North End of Boston, an enterprising and genial teacher has introduced
one feature of Froebel's plan. She has actually given to each of her
little children a box of playthings, wherewith to amuse itself according
to its own sweet will, at all times when not under direct
instruction,--necessarily, in her case, on condition of its being
perfectly quiet; and this one thing makes this primary school the best
one in Boston, both as respects the attainments of the scholars and
their good behavior.
_Kindergarten_ means a garden of children, and Froebel, the inventor of
it, or rather, as he would prefer to express it, _the discoverer of the
method of Nature_, meant to symbolize by the name the spirit and plan of
treatment. How does the gardener treat his plants? He studies their
individual natures, and puts them into such circumstances of soil and
atmosphere as enable them to grow, flower, and bring forth fruit,--also
to renew their manifestation year after year. He does not expect to
succeed unless he learns all their wants, and the circumstances in which
these wants will be supplied, and all their possibilities of beauty and
use, and the means of giving them opportunity to be perfected. On the
other hand, while he knows that they must not be forced against their
individual natures, he does not leave them to grow wild, but prunes
redundancies, removes destructive worms and bugs from their leaves and
stems, and weeds from their vicinity,--carefully watching to learn what
peculiar insects affect what particular plants, and how the former can
be destroyed without injuring the vitality of the latter. After all the
most careful gardener can do, he knows that the form of the plant is
predetermined in the germ or seed, and that the inward tendency must
concur with a multitude of influences, the most powerful and subtile of
which is removed in place ninety-five millions of miles away.
In the Kindergarten, _children_ are treated on an analogous plan. It
presupposes gardeners of the mind, who are quite aware that they have as
little power to override the characteristic individuality of a child, or
to predetermine this characteristic, as the gardener of plants to say
that a lily shall be a rose. But notwithstanding this limitation on one
side, and the necessity for a concurrence of the Spirit on the
other,--which is more independent of our modification than the remote
sun,--yet they must feel responsible, after all, for the perfection of
the development, in so far as removing every impediment, preserving
every condition, and pruning every redundance.
This analogy of education to the gardener's art is so striking, both as
regards what we can and what we cannot do, that Froebel has put every
educator into a most suggestive Normal School, by the very word which he
has given to his seminary,--Kindergarten.
If every school-teacher in the land had a garden of flowers and fruits
to cultivate, it could hardly fail that he would learn to be wise in his
vocation. For suitable preparation, the first, second, and third thing
is, to
"Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher."
The "new education," as the French call it, begins with children in the
mother's arms. Froebel had the nurses bring to his establishment, in
Hamburg, children who could not talk, who were not more than three
months old, and trained the nurses to work on his principles and by his
methods. This will hardly be done in this country, at least at present;
but to supply the place of such a class, a lady of Boston has prepared
and published, under copyright, Froebel's First Gift, consisting of six
soft balls of the three primary and the three secondary colors, which
are sold in a box, with a little manual for mothers, in which the true
principle and plan of tending babies, so as not to rasp their nerves,
but to amuse without wearying them, is very happily suggested. There is
no mother or nurse who would not be assisted by this little manual
essentially. As it says in the beginning,--"Tending babies is an art,
and every art is founded on a science of observations; for love is not
wisdom, but love must act _according to wisdom_ in order to succeed.
Mothers and nurses, however tender and kind-hearted, may, and oftenest
do, weary and vex the nerves of children, in well-meant efforts to amuse
them, and weary themselves the while. Froebel's exercises, founded on
the observations of an intelligent sensibility, are intended to amuse
without wearying, to educate without vexing."
Froebel's Second Gift for children, adapted to the age from one to two
or three years, with another little book of directions, has also been
published by the same lady, and is perhaps a still greater boon to every
nursery; for this is the age when many a child's temper is ruined, and
the inclination of the twig wrongly bent, through sheer _want of
resource and idea_, on the part of nurses and mothers.
But it is to the next age--from three years old and upwards--that the
Kindergarten becomes the desideratum, if not a necessity. The isolated
home, made into a flower-vase by the application of the principles set
forth in the Gifts above mentioned, may do for babies. But every mother
and nurse knows how hard it is to meet the demands of a child too young
to be taught to read, but whose opening intelligence and irrepressible
bodily activity are so hard to be met by an adult, however genial and
active. Children generally take the temper of their whole lives from
this period of their existence. Then "the twig is bent," either towards
that habit of self-defence which is an ever-renewing cause of
selfishness, or to the sun of love-in-exercise, which is the exhaustless
source of goodness and beauty.[A]
The indispensable thing now is a sufficient society of children. It is
only in the society of equals that the social instinct can be gratified,
and come into equilibrium with the instinct of self-preservation.
Self-love, and love of others, are equally natural; and before reason is
developed, and the proper spiritual life begins, sweet and beautiful
childhood may bloom out and imparadise our mortal life. Let us only give
the social instinct of children its fair chance. For this purpose, a few
will not do. The children of one family are not enough, and do not come
along fast enough. A large company should be gathered out of many
families. It will be found that the little things are at once taken out
of themselves, and become interested in each other. In the variety,
affinities develop themselves very prettily, and the rough points of
rampant individualities wear off. We have seen a highly-gifted child,
who, at home, was--to use a vulgar, but expressive word--pesky and
odious, with the exacting demands of a powerful, but untrained mind and
heart, become "sweet as roses" spontaneously, amidst the rebound of a
large, well-ordered, and carefully watched child-society. Anxious
mothers have brought us children, with a thousand deprecations and
explanations of their characters, as if they thought we were going to
find them little monsters, which their motherly hearts were persuaded
they were not, though they behaved like little sanchos at home,--and,
behold, they were as harmonious, from the very beginning, as if they had
undergone the subduing influence of a lifetime. We are quite sure that
children begin with loving others quite as intensely as they love
themselves,--forgetting themselves in their love of others,--if they
only have as fair a chance of being benevolent and self-sacrificing as
of being selfish. Sympathy is as much a natural instinct as self-love,
and no more or less innocent, in a moral point of view. Either principle
alone makes an ugly and depraved form of natural character. Balanced,
they give the element of happiness, and the conditions of spiritual
goodness and truth,--making children fit temples for the Holy Ghost to
dwell in.
A Kindergarten, then, is children in society,--a commonwealth or
republic of children,--whose laws are all part and parcel of the Higher
Law alone. It may be contrasted, in every particular, with the
old-fashioned school, which is an absolute monarchy, where the children
are subjected to a lower expediency, having for its prime end quietness,
or such order as has "reigned in Warsaw" since 1831.
But let us not be misunderstood. We are not of those who think that
children, in any condition whatever, will inevitably develop into beauty
and goodness. Human nature tends to revolve in a vicious circle, around
the idiosyncrasy; and children must have over them, in the person of a
wise and careful teacher, a power which shall deal with them as God
deals with the mature, presenting the claims of sympathy and truth
whenever they presumptuously or unconsciously fall into selfishness. We
have the best conditions of moral culture in a company large enough for
the exacting disposition of the solitary child to be balanced by the
claims made by others on the common stock of enjoyment,--there being a
reasonable oversight of older persons, wide-awake to anticipate,
prevent, and adjust the rival pretensions which must always arise where
there are finite beings with infinite desires, while Reason, whose
proper object is God, is yet undeveloped.
Let the teacher always take for granted that the law of love is quick
within, whatever are appearances, and the better self will generally
respond. In proportion as the child is young and unsophisticated, will
be the certainty of the response to a teacher of simple faith:
"There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them,--who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth.
"And blest are they who in the main
This faith even now do entertain,
Live in the spirit of this creed,
Yet find another strength, according to their need."
That "other strength" is to be found in recognition of the Eternal laws
of order, and reverent application of them to human action. But children
must receive this from the Kindergartner, who shall give them such help
in embodying their ever-springing fancies as shall prevent "the weight
of chance desires," and issue in a tangible success, by entering into
and carrying forward their total, spontaneous activity, without
destroying its childishness.
One of the most important exercises for children in the Kindergarten is
block building. A box of eight little cubes is so managed that it will
unfold in the child's mind the law of symmetry, by means of series of
forms which the children are led to make in a way rather difficult to
describe here. So quick are the fancies of children, that the blocks
will serve also as symbols of every thing in Nature and imagination. We
have seen an ingenious teacher assemble a class of children around her
large table, to each of whom she had given the blocks. The first thing
was to count them, a great process of arithmetic to most of them. Then
she made something and explained it. It was perhaps a light-house,--and
some blocks would represent rocks near it to be avoided, and ships
sailing in the ocean; or perhaps it was a hen-coop, with chickens
inside, and a fox prowling about outside, and a boy who was going to
catch the fox and save the fowls. Then she told each child to make
something, and when it was done hold up a hand. The first one she asked
to explain, and then went round the class. If one began to speak before
another had ended, she would hold up her finger and say,--"It is not
your turn." In the course of the winter, she taught, over these blocks,
a great deal about the habits of animals. She studied natural history in
order to be perfectly accurate in her symbolic representation of the
habitation of each animal, and their enemies were also represented by
blocks. The children imitated these; and when they drew upon their
imaginations for facts, and made fantastic creations, she would
say,--"Those, I think, were fairy hens" (or whatever); for it was her
principle to accept everything, and thus tempt out their invention. The
great value of this exercise is to get them into the habit of
representing something they have thought by an outward symbol. The
explanations they are always eager to give, teach them to express
themselves in words. Full scope is given to invention, whether in the
direction of possibilities or of the impossibilities in which children's
imaginations revel,--in either case the child being trained to the habit
of embodiment of its thought.
Froebel thought it very desirable to have a garden where the children
could cultivate flowers. He had one which he divided into lots for the
several children, reserving a portion for his own share in which they
could assist him. He thought it the happiest mode of calling their
attention to the invisible God, whose power must be waited upon, after
the conditions for growth are carefully arranged according to _laws_
which they must observe. Where a garden is impossible, a flower-pot with
a plant in it, for each child to take care of, would do very well.
But the best way to cultivate a sense of the presence of God is to draw
the attention to the conscience, which is very active in children, and
which seems to them (as we all can testify from our own remembrance)
another than themselves, and yet themselves. We have heard a person say,
that in her childhood she was puzzled to know which was herself, the
voice of her inclination or of her conscience, for they were palpably
two; and what a joyous thing it was when she was first convinced that
one was the Spirit of God, whom unlucky teaching had previously embodied
in a form of terror on a distant judgment-seat. Children are consecrated
as soon as they get the spiritual idea, and it may be so presented that
it shall make them happy as well as true. But the adult who enters into
such conversation with a child must be careful not to shock and profane,
instead of nurturing the soul. It is possible to avoid both discouraging
and flattering views, and to give the most tender and elevating
associations.
But children require not only an alternation of physical and mental
amusements, but some instruction to be passively received. They delight
in stories, and a wise teacher can make this subservient to the highest
uses by reading beautiful creations of the imagination. Not only such
household-stories as "Sanford and Merton," Mrs. Farrar's "Robinson
Crusoe," and Salzmann's "Elements of Morality," but symbolization like
the heroes of Asgard, the legends of the Middle Ages, classic and
chivalric tales, the legend of Saint George, and "Pilgrim's Progress,"
can in the mouth of a skilful reader be made subservient to moral
culture. The reading sessions should not exceed ten or fifteen minutes.
Anything of the nature of scientific teaching should be done by
presenting _objects_ for examination and investigation.[B] Flowers and
insects, shells, etc., are easily handled. The observations should be
drawn out of the children, not made to them, except as corrections of
their mistakes. Experiments with the prism, and in crystallization and
transformation, are useful and desirable to awaken taste for the
sciences of Nature. In short, the Kindergarten should give the
beginnings of everything. "What is well begun is half done."
We must say a word about the locality and circumstances of a
Kindergarten. There is published in Lausanne, France, a newspaper
devoted to the interests of this mode of education, in whose early
numbers is described a Kindergarten which seems to be of the nature of a
boarding-school; at least, the children are there all day. Each child
has a garden, and there is one besides where they work in common. There
are accommodations for keeping animals, and miniature tools to do
mechanical labor of various kinds. In short, it is a child's world. But
in this country, especially in New England, parents would not consent to
be so much separated from their children, and a few hours of
Kindergarten in the early part of the day will serve an excellent
purpose,--using up the effervescent activity of children, who may
healthily be left to themselves the rest of the time, to play or rest,
comparatively unwatched.
Two rooms are indispensable, if there is any variety of age. It is
desirable that one should be sequestrated to the quiet employments. A
pianoforte is desirable, to lead the singing, and accompany the plays,
gymnastics, frequent marchings, and dancing, when that is taught,--which
it should be. But a hand-organ which plays fourteen tunes will help to
supply the want of a piano, and a guitar in the hands of a ready teacher
will do better than nothing.
Sometimes a genial mother and daughters might have a Kindergarten, and
devote themselves and the house to it, especially if they live in one of
our beautiful country-towns or cities. The habit, in the city of New
York, of sending children to school in an omnibus, hired to go round the
city and pick them up, suggests the possibility of a Kindergarten in one
of those beautiful residences up in town, where there is a garden before
or behind the house. It is impossible to keep Kindergarten _by the way_.
It must be the main business of those who undertake it; for it is
necessary that every individual child should be borne, as it were, on
the heart of the _gardeners_, in order that it be _inspired_ with order,
truth, and goodness. To develop a child from within outwards, we must
plunge ourselves into its peculiarity of imagination and feeling. No one
person could possibly endure such absorption of life in labor
unrelieved, and consequently two or three should unite in the
undertaking in order to be able to relieve each other from the enormous
strain on life. The compensations are, however, great. The charm of the
various individuality, and of the refreshing presence of conscience yet
unprofaned, is greater than can be found elsewhere in this work-day
world. Those were not idle words which came from the lips of Wisdom
Incarnate:--"Their angels do always behold the face of my Father:" "Of
such is the kingdom of heaven."
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Froebel's Building Blocks are in a Series of six, each one to be
introduced after the previous one has been in a measure exhausted. But
there is a specific way in which they are to be used, and exact
directions for this are to be found in Mrs. KRAUS-BOELTE'S _Kindergarden
Guide_.
[B] Calkin's _Object Lessons_ will give hints.