CHARACTER BUILDING
[Sidenote: Froebel's Philosophy]
Although we have taken up the question of punishment and the manner
of dealing with various childish iniquities before the question of
character-building, it has only been done in order to clear the mind
of some current misconceptions. In the statements of Froebel's simple
and positive philosophy of child culture, misconception on the part of
the reader must be guarded against, and these misconceptions generally
arise from a feeling that, beautiful as his optimistic philosophy may
be, there are some children too bad to profit by it--or at least that
there are occasions when it will not work out in practice. In the
preceding section we have endeavored to show in detail how this method
applies to a representative list of faults and shortcomings, and
having thus, we hope, proved that the method is applicable to a wide
range of cases--indeed to all possible cases--we will proceed to
recount the fundamental principles which Froebel, and before him
Pestalozzi,[A] enunciated; which times who adhere to the new education
are to-day working out into the detail of school-room practice.
[Sidenote: Object of Moral Training.]
As previously stated, the object of the moral training of the child is
the inculcation of the love of righteousness. Froebel is not concerned
with laying down a mass of observances which the child must follow,
and which the parents must insist upon. He thinks rather that the
child's nature once turned into the right direction and surrounded
by right influences will grow straight without constant yankings
and twistings. The child who loves to do right is safe. He may make
mistakes as to what the right is, but he will learn by these mistakes,
and will never go far astray.
[Sidenote: The Reason Why]
However, it is well to save him as far as possible from the pain
of these mistakes. We need to preserve in him what has already been
implanted there; the love of understanding the reasons for conduct.
When the child asks "Why?" therefore, he should seldom be told
"Because mother says so." This is to deny a rightful activity of
his young mind; to give him a monotonous and insufficient reason,
temporary in its nature, instead of a lasting reason which will remain
with him through life. Dante says all those who have lost what he
calls "the good of the intellect" are in the Inferno. And when you
refuse to give your child satisfactory reasons for the conduct you
require of him, you refuse to cultivate in him that very good of the
intellect which is necessary for his salvation.
[Sidenote: Advantage of Positive Commands]
As soon, however, as your commands become positive instead of
negative, the difficulty of meeting the situation begins to disappear.
It is usually much easier to tell the child why he should do a thing
than why he should not do its opposite. For example, it is much easier
to make him see that he ought to be a helpful member of the family
than to make him understand why he should stop making a loud noise, or
refrain from waking up the baby. There is something in the child which
in calm moments recognizes that love demands some sacrifice. To this
something you must appeal and these calm moments, for the most part,
you must choose for making the appeal. The effort is to prevent the
appearance of evil by the active presence of good. The child who is
busy trying to be good has little time to be naughty.
[Sidenote: Original Goodness]
Froebel's most characteristic utterance is perhaps this: "A
suppressed or perverted good quality--a good tendency, only repressed,
misunderstood, or misguided--lies originally at the bottom of
every shortcoming in man. Hence the only and infallible remedy for
counteracting any shortcoming and even wickedness is to find the
originally good source, the originally good side of the human being
that has been repressed, disturbed, or misled into the shortcoming,
and then to foster, build up, and properly guide this good side. Thus
the shortcoming will at last disappear, although it may involve a hard
struggle against habit, but not against original depravity in man, and
this is accomplished so much the more rapidly and surely because man
himself tends to abandon his shortcomings, for man prefers right to
wrong." The natural deduction from this is that we should say "do"
rather than "don't"; open up the natural way for rightful activity
instead of uttering loud warning cries at the entrance to every wrong
path.
[Sidenote: Kindergarten Methods]
It is for this reason that the kindergarten tries by every means to
make right doing delightful. This is one of the reasons for its songs,
dances, plays, its bright colors, birds, and flowers. And in this
respect it may well be imitated in every home. No one loves that which
is disagreeable, ugly, and forbidding; yet many little children are
expected to love right doing which is seldom attractively presented to
them.
The results of such treatment are apparent in the grown people of
to-day. Most persons have an underlying conviction that sinners, or
at any rate unconscientious persons, have a much easier and pleasanter
time of it than those who try to do right. To the imagination of the
majority of adults sin is dressed in glittering colors and virtue in
gray, somber garments. There are few who do not take credit for right
doing as if they had chosen a hard and disagreeable part instead
of the more alluring ways of wrong. This is because they have been
mis-taught in childhood and have come to think of wrongdoing as
pleasant and virtue as hard, whereas the real truth is exactly the
opposite. It is wrongdoing that brings unpleasant consequences and
virtue that brings happiness.
[Sidenote: Right Doing Made Easy]
There are those who object that by the kindergarten method right doing
is made too easy. The children do not have to put forth enough effort,
they say; they are not called upon to endure sufficient pain; they do
not have the discipline which causes them to choose right no matter
how painful right may be for the moment. Whether this dictum is ever
true or not, it certainly is not true in early childhood. The love of
righteousness needs to be firmly rooted in the character before it is
strained and pulled upon. We do not start seedlings in the rocky soil
or plant out saplings in time of frost. If tests and trials of virtue
must come, let them come in later life when the love of virtue is so
firmly established that it may be trusted to find a way to its own
satisfaction through whatever difficulties may oppose.
[Sidenote: Neighbors' Opinions]
In the very beginning of any effort to live up to Froebel's
requirements it is evident that children must not be measured by the
way they appear to the neighbors. This is to reaffirm the power of
that rigid tradition which has warped so many young lives. She who
is trying to fix her child's heart upon true and holy things may well
disregard her neighbor's comments on the child's manners or clothes
or even upon momentary ebullitions of temper. She is working below the
surface of things, is setting eternal forces to work, and she cannot
afford to interrupt this work for the sake of shining the child up
with any premature outside polish. If she is to have any peace of mind
or to allow any to the child, if she is to live in any way a simple
and serene life, she must establish a few fundamental principles by
which she judges her child's conduct and regulates her own, and stand
by these principles through thick and thin.
[Sidenote: The Family Republic]
Perhaps the most fundamental principle is that enunciated by Fichte.
"Each man," he says, "is a free being in a world of other free
beings." Therefore his freedom is limited only by the freedom of the
other free beings. That is, they must "divide the world amongst them."
Stated in the form of a command he says again, "Restrict your freedom
through the freedom of all other persons with whom you come in
contact." This is a rule that even a three-year-old child can be made
to understand, and it is astonishing with what readiness he will admit
its justice. He call do anything he wants to, you explain to him,
except bother other people. And, of course, the corollary follows that
every one else can do whatever he pleases except to bother the child.
[Sidenote: Rights of Others]
This clear and simple doctrine can be driven home with amazing force,
if you strictly respect the child's right as you require him to
respect yours. You should neither allow any encroachments upon your
own proper privileges, except so far as you explain that this is only
a loving permission on your part, and not to be assumed as a precedent
or to be demanded as a right; nor should you yourself encroach upon
his privileges.
If you do not expect him to interrupt you, you must not interrupt him.
If you expect him to let you alone when you are busy, you must let
hint alone when he is busy, that is, when he is hard at work playing.
If you must call him away from his playing, give him warning, so that
he may have time to put his small affairs in order before obeying your
command. The more carefully you do this the more willing will be his
response on the infrequent occasions when you must demand immediate
attention. In some such fashion you teach the child to respect the
rights of others by scrupulously respecting those rights to which he
is most alive, namely, his own. The next step is to require him with
you to think out the rights of others, and both of you together should
shape your conduct so as to leave these rights unfringed.
[Sidenote: The Child's Share in Ruling]
As soon as the young child's will has fully taken possession of his
own organism he will inevitably try to rule yours. The establishment
of the law of which I have just spoken will go far toward regulating
this new-born desire. But still he must be allowed in some degree to
rule others, because power to rule others is likely to be at some time
during his life of great importance to him. To thwart him absolutely
in this respect, never yielding yourself to his imperious demands,
is alike impossible and undesirable. His will must not be shut up
to himself and to the things that he can make himself do. In various
ways, with due consideration for other people's feelings, with
courtesy, with modesty, he may well be encouraged to do his share of
ruling. And while, of course, he will not begin his ruling in such
restrained and thoughtful fashion as is implied by these limitations,
yet he must be suffered to begin; and the rule for the respect of
the rights of others should be suffered gradually to work out these
modifications.
A safe distinction may be made as follows: Permit him, since he is
so helpless, to rule and persuade others to satisfy his legitimate
desires, such as the desire for food, sleep, affection, and knowledge;
but when be demands indulgencies, reserve your own liberty of choice,
so as to clearly demonstrate to him that you are exercising choice,
and in doing so, are well within your own rights.
[Sidenote: Low Voice Commands]
There is one simple outward observation which greatly assists us the
inculcation of these fundamental truths--that is the habit of using
a low voice in speaking, especially when issuing a command or
administering a rebuke. A loud, insistent voice practically insures
rebellion. This is because the low voice means that you have command
of yourself, the loud voice that you have lost it. The child submits
to a controlled will, but not to one as uncontrolled as his own. In
both cases he follows your example. If you are self-controlled, he
tends to become so; if you are excited and angry, he also becomes so,
or if he is already so, his excitement and anger increases.
While most mothers rely altogether too much upon speech as a means of
explaining life to the child, yet it must be admitted that speech has
a great function to perform in this regard. Nevertheless it is well to
bear in mind that it is not true that a child will always do what
you tell him to do, no matter how plain you may tell him, nor how
perfectly you may explain your reasons.
[Sidenote: Limitations of Words]
In the first place, speech means less to children than to grown
persons. Each word has a smaller content of experience. They cannot
get the full force of the most clear and eloquent statement. Therefore
all speech must be reinforced by example, and by as many forms of
concrete illustrations as can be commanded. Each necessary truth
should enter the child's mind by several channels; hearing, eye-sight,
motor activity should all be called upon. Many truths may be
dramatized. This, where the mother is clever enough to employ it, is
the surest method of appeal. But in any case, speech alone must not
be relied upon, nor the child considered a hopeless case who does not
respond to it.
Denunciatory speech especially needs wise regulation. As Richter says,
"What is to be followed as a rule of prudence, yea, of justice, toward
grown-up people, should be much more observed toward children, namely,
that one should never judgingly declare, for instance, 'You are a
liar,' or even, 'You are a bad boy,' instead of saying, 'You have told
an untruth,' or 'You have done wrong.' For since the power to command
yourself implies at the same time the power of obeying, man feels a
minute after his fault as free as Socrates, and the branding mark
of his _nature_, not his _deed_, must seem to him blameworthy of
punishment.
"To this must be added that every individual's wrong actions, owing to
his inalienable sense of a moral aim and hope, seem to him only short,
usurped interregnums of the devil, or comets in the uniform solar
system. The child, consequently, under such a moral annihilation,
feels the wrong-doing of others more than his own; and this all the
more because, in him, want of reflection and the general warmth of his
feelings, represent the injustice of others in a more ugly light than
his own."
[Sidenote: Example versus Precept]
If any one desires to prove the superior force of example over
precept, let him try teaching a baby to say "Thank you" or "Please,"
merely by being scrupulously careful to say these things to the baby
on all fit occasions. No one has taken the statistics of the number
of times every small child is exhorted to perfect himself in this
particular observance; but it is safe to say that in the United States
alone these injunctions are spoken something like a million times
a day and all quite unnecessarily. The child will say "Please"
and "Thank you" without being told to do so, if he merely has his
attention called to the fact that the people around him all use these
phrases.
[Sidenote: Politeness to Children]
The truth is, too many parents forget to speak these agreeable words
whenever they ask favors of their own children; so the force of their
example is marred. What you do to the child himself, remember, always
outweighs anything you do to others before him. This is the reason why
it is necessary that you should acknowledge your own shortcomings to
the child, if you expect him to acknowledge his to you. It is also
necessary sometimes to point out clearly the kind and considerate
things that you are in the habit of doing to others, lest the
untrained mind of the young child may fail to see and so miss the
force of your example.
But in thus revealing your own good deeds to the child, remember
the motive, and reveal them only (a) when he cannot perceive them
of himself, (b) when he needs to perceive them in order that his own
conduct may be influenced by them, and (c) at the time when he is most
likely to appreciate them. This latter requirement precludes you from
announcing your own righteousness when he is naughty, and compels you,
of course, to go directly against your native impulse, which is to
mention your deeds of sacrifice and kindness only when you are angry
and mean to reproach him with them. When you tell him how devoted you
have been at some moment when you are both thoroughly angry, he is in
danger of either denying or hating your devotion; but when you refer
to it tenderly, and, as your heart will then prompt you, modestly, at
some loving moment, he will give it recognition, and be moved to love
goodness more devotedly because you embody it.
[Sidenote: Law-Making Habit]
Another important rule is this: Do not make too many rules. Some women
are like legislatures in perpetual session. The child who is confused
and tantalized by the constant succession of new laws learns presently
to disregard them, and to regulate his life according to certain
deductions of his own--sometimes surprisingly wise and politic
deductions. The way to re yourself of this law-making habit is to stop
thinking of every little misdeed as the beginning of a great wrong. It
is very likely an accident and a combination of circumstances such as
may not happen again. To treat misdemeanors which are not habitual nor
characteristic as evanescent is the best way to make them evanescent.
They should not be allowed to enter too deeply into your consciousness
or into that of your child.
[Sidenote: Live with Your Children]
In order to be able to discriminate between accidental wrong-doing,
and that which is the first symptom of wrong-thinking, you must be
in close touch with your children. This brings us to Froebel's great
motto, "Come, let us live with our children!" This means that you are
not merely to talk with your child, to hear from his lips what he is
doing, but to live so closely with him, that in most cases you know
what he is doing without any need of his telling you. When, however,
he does tell you something which happened in the school play-ground
or otherwise out of the range of your knowledge, be careful not to
moralize over it. Make yourself as agreeable a secret-keeper as his
best friend of his own age; let your moralizing be so rare that it is
effective for that very reason. If the occasion needs moral reflection
at all--and that seldom happens--the wise way is to lead the child to
do his own reflecting; to arrive at his own conclusions, and if you
must lead him, by all means do so as invisibly as possible. For the
most part it is safe to take the confessions lightly, and well to keep
your own mind young by looking at things from the boy's point of view.
[Sidenote: The Subject of Sex]
If, however, there is to be perfect confidence between you, the
one subject which is usually kept out of speech between mothers and
children must be no forbidden subject between them; you must not
refuse to answer questions about the mystery of sex. If you are not
the fit person to teach your child these important facts, who is?
Certainly not the school-mates and servants from whom he is likely
to learn them if you refuse to furnish the information. Usually it is
sufficient simply to answer the child's honest questions honestly; but
any mother who finds herself unable to cope with this simple matter
in this simple spirit, will find help in Margaret Morley's "Song
of Life," in the Wood-Allen Publications, and the books of the Rev.
Sylvanus Stall.[B]
In respect to these matters more than in respect to others, but also
in respect to all matters, children often do not know that they are
doing wrong, even when it it very difficult for parents to believe
that they do not intend wrong-doing. As we have seen from our analysis
of truthfulness, the child may very often lie without a qualm of
conscience, and he may still more readily break the unwritten rules
of courtesy, asking abrupt and even cruel questions of strangers, and
haul the family skeleton out of its closet at critical moments. Such
things cannot be wholly guarded against, even by the exercise of the
utmost wisdom, but the habit of reasoning things out for himself is
the greatest help a child can have.
[Sidenote: Righteousness]
The formation of the bent of the child's nature as a whole is a matter
of unconscious education, but as he grows in the power to reason,
conscious education must direct his mental activity. It is not enough
for him, as it is not enough for any grown person, to do the best
that he knows; he must learn to know the best. The word righteousness
itself means right-wiseness, i.e., right knowingness.
To quote Froebel again, "In order, therefore, to impart true, genuine
firmness to the natural will-activity of the boy, all the activities
of the boy, his entire will should proceed from and have reference
to the development, cultivation, and representation of the internal.
Instruction in example and in words, which later on become precept
and example, furnishes the means for this. Neither example alone, nor
words will do; not example alone, for it is particular and special,
and the word is needed to give the particular individual example
universal applicability; not words alone, for example is needed to
interpret and explain the word, which is general, spiritual, and of
many meanings.
"But instruction and example alone and in themselves are not
sufficient; they must meet a good pure heart and this is the outcome
of proper educational influences in childhood."
[Sidenote: Moral Precocity]
Lest these directions should seem to demand an almost superhuman
degree of control and wisdom on the part of the mother, remember that
moral precocity is as much to be guarded against a mental precocity.
Remember that you are neither required to be a perfect mother nor
to rear a perfect child. As Spencer remarks, a perfect child in this
imperfect world would be sadly out of joint with the times, would
indeed be a martyr. If your basic principles are right and if your
child has before him the daily and hourly spectacle of a mother who is
trying to conform herself to high standards, he will grow as fast as
it is safe for him to grow. Spencer says: "Our higher moral faculties
like our higher intellectual ones, are comparatively complex. As a
consequence they are both comparatively late in their evolution, and
with the one as with the other, a very early activity produced by
stimulation will be at the expense of the future character. Hence the
not uncommon fact that those who during childhood were instanced as
models of juvenile goodness, by and by undergo some disastrous and
seemingly inexplicable change, and end by being not above but below
par; while relatively exemplary men are often the issue of a childhood
not so promising.
"Be content, therefore, with moderate measures and moderate results,
constantly bearing in mind the fact that the higher morality, like the
higher intelligence, must be reached by a slow growth; and you will
then have more patience with those imperfections of nature which your
child hourly displays. You will be less prone to constant scolding,
and threatening, and forbidding, by which many parents induce a
chronic irritation, in a foolish hope that they will thus make their
children what they should be."
[Sidenote: Rules in Character Building]
In conclusion, the rules that may be safely followed in
character-building may be summed up thus:
(1) Recognize that the object of your training is to help the child to
love righteousness. Command little and then use positive commands
rather than prohibitions. Use "do" rather than "don't."
(2) Make right-doing delightful.
(3) Establish Fichte's doctrine of right, see page 64.
(4) Teach by example rather than precept. Therefore respect the
child's rights as you wish him to respect yours.
(5) Use a low voice, especially in commanding or rebuking.
(6) In chiding, remember Richter's rule and rebuke the sin and not the
sinner.
(7) Confess your own misdeeds, by this means and others securing the
confidence of your children.
Finally, remember that this is an imperfect world, you are an
imperfect mother, and the best results you can hope for are likely
to be imperfect. But the results may be so founded upon eternal
principles as to tend continually to give place to better and better
results.
[Footnote A: Pestalozzi, Educator, Philosopher, and Reformer. Author
of "How Gertrude Teaches Her Children."]
[Footnote B: "What a Young Girl Ought to Know" and "What a Young Woman
Ought to Know" by Dr. Mary Wood Allen. "What a Young Boy Ought to
Know," "What a Young Man Ought to Know," by Rev. Sylvanus Stall.]
PLAY
Although Froebel is best known as the educator who first took
advantage of play as a means of education, he was not, in reality, the
first to recognize the high value of this spontaneous activity. He was
indeed the first to put this recognition into practice and to use the
force generated during play to help the child to a higher state of
knowledge.
But before him Plato said that the plays of children have the
mightiest influence on the maintenance or the non-maintenance of laws;
that during the first three years the child should be made "cheerful"
and "kind" by having sorrow and fear and pain kept away from him and
by soothing him with music and rhythmic movements.
[Sidenote: Aristotle]
Aristotle held that children until they were five years old "should be
taught nothing, not even necessary labor, lest it hinder growth, but
should be accustomed to use much motion as to avoid a indolent habit
of body, and this," he added, "can he acquired by various means, among
others by play, which ought to be neither illiberal, nor laborious, or
lazy."
[Sidenote: Luther]
Luther rebukes those who despise the plays of children and says
that Solomon did not prohibit scholars from play at the proper time.
Fenelon, Locke, Schiller, and Richter all admit the deep significance
of this universal instinct of youth.
Preyer, speaking not as a philosopher or educator, but as a scientist,
mentions "the new kinds of pleasurable sensations with some admixture
of intellectual elements," which are gained when the child
gradually begins to play. Much that is called play he considers true
experimenting, especially when the child is seen to be studying the
changes produced by his own activity, as when he tears paper into
small bits, shakes a bunch of keys, opens and shuts a box, plays with
sand, and empties bottles, and throws stones into the water. "The
zeal with which these seemingly aimless movements are executed is
remarkable. The sense of gratification must be very great, and is
principally due to the feeling of his own power, and of being the
cause of the various changes."
[Sidenote: Educational Value of Play]
All these authorities are quoted here in order to show that the
practical recognition of play which obtains among the advanced
educators to-day is not a piece of sentimentalism, as stern critics
sometimes declare, but the united opinion of some of the wisest minds
of this and former ages. As Froebel says, "Play and speech constitute
the element in which the child lives. At this stage (the first three
years of childhood) he imparts to everything the virtues of sight,
feeling, and speech. He feels the unity between himself and the whole
external world." And Froebel conceives it to be of the profoundest
importance that this sense of unity should not be disturbed. He finds
that play is the most spiritual activity of man at this age, "and at
the same time typical of human life as a whole--of the inner, hidden,
natural life of man and all things; it gives, therefore, joy, freedom,
contentment, inner and outer rest, peace with the world: it holds the
sources of all that is good. The child that plays thoroughly until
physical fatigue forbids will surely be a thorough, determined man,
capable of self-sacrifice for the promotion and welfare of himself and
others."
But all play does not deserve this high praise. It fits only the play
under right conditions. Fortunately these are such that every mother
can command them. There are three essentials: (1) Freedom, (2)
Sympathy, (3) Right materials.
[Sidenote: Freedom]
(1) Freedom is the first essential, and here the child of poverty
often has the advantage of the child of wealth. There are few things
in the poverty-stricken home too good for him to play with; in
its narrow quarters, he becomes, perforce, a part of all domestic
activity. He learns the uses of household utensils, and his play
merges by imperceptible degrees into true, healthful work.
In the home of wealth, however, there is no such freedom, no such
richness of opportunity. The child of wealth has plenty of toys, but
few real things to play with. He is shut out of the common activity of
the family, and shut in to the imitation activity of his nursery. He
never gets his small hands on realities, but in his elegant clothes is
confined to the narrow conventional round that is falsely supposed to
be good for him.
Froebel insists upon the importance of the child's dress being
loose, serviceable, and inconspicuous, so that he may play as much
as possible without consciousness of the restrictions of dress.
The playing child should also have, as we have noticed in the first
section, the freedom of the outside world. This does not mean merely
that he should go out in his baby-buggy, or take a ride in the park,
but that he should be able to play out-of-doors, to creep on the
ground, to be a little open-air savage, and play with nature as he
finds it.
[Sidenote: Sympathy]
(2) Sympathy is much more likely to rise spontaneously in the mother's
breast for the child's troubles than for the child's joys. She will
stop to take him up and pet him when he is hurt, no matter how busy
she is, but she too often considers it waste of time to enter into his
plays with him; yet he needs sympathy in joy as much as in sorrow. Her
presence, her interest in what he is doing, doubles his delight in it
and doubles its value to him. Moreover, it offers her opportunity for
that touch and direction now and then, which may transform a rambling
play, without much sequence or meaning, into a consciously useful
performance, a dramatization, perhaps, of some of the child's
observations, or an investigation into the nature of things.
(3) Right Material. Even given freedom and sympathy, the child needs
something more in order to play well: he needs the right materials.
The best materials are those that are common to him and to the rest of
the world, far better than expensive toys that mark him apart from
the world of less fortunate children. Such toys are not in any way
desirable, and they may even be harmful. What he needs are various
simple arrangements of the four elements--earth, air, fire and water.
[Sidenote: Mud-pies]
(1) _Earth_. The child has a noted affinity for it, and he is
specially happy when he has plenty of it on hands, face, and clothes.
The love of mud-pies is universal; children of all nationalities and
of all degrees of civilization delight in it. No activity could be
more wholesome.
[Sidenote: Sand]
Next to mud comes sand. It is cleaner in appearance and can be brought
into the house. A tray of moistened sand, set upon a low table, should
be in every nursery, and the sand pile in every yard.
[Sidenote: Clay]
Clay is more difficult to manage indoors, because it gets dry and
sifts all about the house, but if a corner of the cellar, where there
is a good light, can be given up for a strong table and a jar of clay
mixed with some water, it will be found a great resource for rainy
days. If modeling aprons of strong material, buttoned with one button
at the neck, be hung near the jar of clay, the children may work in
this material without spoiling their clothes. Clay-modeling is an
excellent form of manual training, developing without forcing
the delicate muscles of the fingers and wrists, and giving wide
opportunity for the exercise of the imagination.
[Sidenote: Digging]
Earth may be played with in still another way. Children should dig in
it; for all pass through the digging stage and this should be given
free swing. It develops their muscles and keeps them busy at helpful
and constructive work. They may dig a well, make a cave, or a pond, or
burrow underground and make tunnels like a mole. Give them spades
and a piece of ground they can do with as they like, dress them in
overalls, and it will be long before you are asked to think of another
amusement for them.
[Illustration: Pattern of a modelling apron]
[Sidenote: Gardens]
In still another way the earth may be utilized, for children may
make gardens of it. Indeed, there are those who say that no child's
education is complete until he has had a garden of his own and grown
in it all sorts of seeds from pansies to potatoes. But a garden is
too much for a young child to care for all alone. He needs the help,
advice, and companionship of some older person. You must be careful,
however, to give help only when it is really desired; and careful also
not to let him feel that the garden is a task to which he is driven
daily, but a joy that draws him.
[Sidenote: Kites Windmills Soap-bubbles]
(2) _The Air_. The next important plaything is the air. The kite and
the balloon are only two instruments to help the child play with it.
Little windmills made of colored paper and stuck by means of a pin
at the end of a whittled stick, make satisfactory toys. One of their
great advantages is that even a very young child can make them for
himself. Blowing soap-bubbles is another means of playing with air.
By giving the children woolen mittens the bubbles may be caught and
tossed about as well as blown.
(3) _Water_. Perhaps the very first thing he learns to play with is
water. Almost before he knows the use of his hands and legs he plays
with water in his bath, and sucks his sponge with joy, thus feeling
the water with his chief organs of touch, his mouth and tongue. A few
months later he will be glad to pour water out of a tin cup. Even
when he is two or three years old, be may be amused by the hour,
by dressing him in a woolen gown, with his sleeves rolled high, and
setting him down before a big bowl or his own bath-tub half full of
warm water. To this may be added a sponge, a tin cup, a few bits of
wood, and some paper. They should not be given all at once, but one at
a time, the child allowed to exhaust the possibilities of each before
another is added. Still later he may be given the bits of soap left
after a cake of soap is used up. Give him also a few empty bottles or
bowls and let him put them away with a solid mass of soap-suds in them
and see what will happen. When he is older--past the period of putting
everything in his mouth--he may be given a few bits of bright ribbons,
petals of artificial flowers, or any bright colored bits of cloth
which can color the water.
Children love to sprinkle the grass with the hose or to water the
flowers with the sprinkling can. They enjoy also the metal fishes,
ducks, and boats which may be drawn about in the water by means of a
magnet. Presently they reach the stage when they must have toy-boats,
and next they long to go into real boats and go rowing and sailing.
They want to fish, wade, swim, and skate.
[Sidenote: Dangerous Pastimes]
Some of those pastimes are dangerous, but they are sure to be indulged
in at some time or other, with or without permission. There never grew
a child to sturdy manhood who was successfully kept away from water.
The wise mother, then, will not forbid this play, but will do her
best to regulate it, to make it safe. She will think out plans for
permitting children to go swimming in a safe place with some older
person. She will let them go wading, and at holiday time will take
them boat-riding. If she permits as much activity in these respects
as possible, her refusal when it does come will be respected; and
the child will not, unless perhaps in the first bitterness of
disappointment, think her unfriendly and fussy. Above all, he is not
likely to try to deceive her, to run off and take a swim on the sly,
and thus fall into true danger.
[Sidenote: Precaution with Fire]
(4) _Fire_ is another inevitable plaything. Miss Shinn reports that
the first act of her little niece that showed the dawn of voluntary
control of the muscles was the clinging of her eyes to the flame of
a candle, at the end of the second week. The sense of light and
the pleasure derived from it is of the chief incentives to a baby's
intellectual development. But since fire is dangerous the child must
be taught this fact as quickly and painlessly as possible. He will
probably have to be burned once before he really understands it,
but by watching you can make this pain very small and slight,
barely sufficient to give the child a wholesome fear of playing with
unguarded fire. For instance, show that the lamp globe is hot. It is
not hot enough to injure him, but quite hot enough to be unpleasant to
his sensitive nerves. Put your own hand on the lamp and draw it away
with a sharp cry, saying warningly, "Hot, hot!" Do not put his hand
on the lamp, but let him put it there himself and then be very
sympathetic over the result. Usually one such lesson is sufficient.
Only do not permit yourself to call everything hot which you do not
want him to touch. He will soon discover that you are untruthful and
will never again trust you so fully.
[Sidenote: Bonfires]
Under _proper regulations_, however, fire may be played with safely.
Bonfires with some older person in attendance are safe enough and
prevent unlawful bonfires in dangerous places. The rule should be that
none of the children may play with fire except with permission; and
then that permission should be granted as often as possible that the
children may be encouraged to ask for it. A stick smouldering at one
end and waved about in circles and ellipses is not dangerous when
elders are by, but it is dangerous if played with on the sly. Playing
with fire on the sly is the most dangerous thing a child can do, and
the only way to prevent it is to permit him to play with fire in
the open. A beautiful game can be made from number of Christmas tree
candles of various colors and a bowl of water. The candles are lighted
and the wax dropped into the water, making little colored circles
which float about. These can be linked together such a fashion as to
form patterns which may be lifted out on sheets of paper.
[Sidenote: Magic Lantern]
The magic lantern is an innocent and comparatively cheap means of
playing with light. If it is well taken care of and fresh slides
added from time to time it can be made a source of pleasure for years.
Jack-o'-lanterns are great fun, and when pumpkins are not available,
oranges may be used instead.
[Sidenote: Rhythmic Movements]
Besides these elemental playthings the child gets much valuable
pleasure out of the rhythmic use of his own muscles. All such plays
Plato thought should be regulated by music, and with this Froebel
agreed, but in the Household this is often impossible. The children
must indulge in many movements when there is no one about who
has leisure to make music for them. Still, when they come to the
quarrelsome age, a few minutes' rhythmic play to the sound of music
will be found to harmonize the whole group wonderfully. For this
purpose the ordinary hippity-hop, fast or slow according to the music,
is sufficient. It is as if the regulation of the body to the laws
of harmony reacted upon minds and nerves. Such an exercise is
particularly valuable just before bed-time. The children go to sleep
then with their minds under the influence of harmony and wake in the
morning inclined to be peaceful and happy.
[Sidenote: Songs]
A book of Kindergarten songs, such as Mrs. Gaynor's "Songs of the
Child World" and Eleanor Smith's "Songs for the Children," ought to be
in every household, and the mother ought to familiarize herself with a
dozen or so of these perfectly simple melodies. Of course the children
must learn them with her. When once this has been done she has a
valuable means of amusing them and bringing them within her control at
any time. She may hum one of the songs or play it. The children must
guess what it is and then act out their guess in pantomime, so that
she can see what they mean. Perhaps it is a windmill song; their
arms fly around and around in time to the music, now fast, now slow.
Perhaps it is a Spring song; the children are birds building their
nests. Other songs turn them into shoemakers, galloping horses, or
soldiers.
[Sidenote: Dramatic Plays]
Dramatic plays, whether simple, like this, or elaborate, are,
as Goethe shows in _Wilhelm Meister_, of the greatest possible
educational advantage. In them the child expresses his ideas of the
world about him and becomes master of his own ideas. He acts out
whatever he has heard or seen. He acts out also whatever he is
puzzling about, and by making the terms of his problem clear to his
consciousness usually solves it.
[Sidenote: Dancing]
As for dancing, Richter exclaims: "I know not whether I should most
deprecate children's balls or most praise children's dances. For the
harmony connected with it (dancing) imparts to the affections and the
mind that material order which reveals the highest, and regulates the
beat of the pulse, the step, and even the thought. Music is the meter
of this poetic movement, and is an invisible dance, as dancing is a
silent music. Finally, this also ranks among the advantages of his
eye and heel pleasure; that children with children, by no harder canon
than the musical, light as sound, may be joined in a rosebud feast
without thorns or strife." The dances may be of the simplest kind,
such as "Ring Around a Rosy," "Here We Go, To and Fro," "Old Dan
Tucker" and the "Virginia Reel." The old-fashioned singing plays, such
as "London Bridge," "Where Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow," and
"Pop Goes the Weasel" have their place and value. Several collections
of them have been made and published, but usually quite enough
material may be found for these plays in the memories of the people of
any neighborhood.
[Sidenote: Toys]
All these plays, it will be noticed, call for very simple and
inexpensive apparatus, in most cases for no apparatus at all.
Nevertheless there is a place for toys. All children ought to have
a few, both because of the innocent pleasure they afford and because
they need to have certain possessions which are inalienably their own.
A simple and inexpensive list of suitable toys adapted to various ages
is given at the end of this section. Most of them are exactly the toys
that parents usually buy. But it will be noticed that none of them are
very elaborate or expensive, and that the patrol wagon is not among
them. This is because the patrol wagon directly leads to plays that
are not only uneducational but positively harmful in their tendencies.
The children of a whole neighborhood were once led into the habit of
committing various imitation crimes for the sake of being arrested
and carried off in miniature patrol wagon. It any such expensive and
elaborate toys are bought, it may well be the plain express wagon or
the hook and ladder and fire engine. The first of these leads to plays
of industry, the second to those of heroism.
LIST OF TOYS SUITABLE FOR VARIOUS AGES.
Ball, rubber ring, soft animals and rag dolls ......... Before 1 year
Blocks and Bells ............................................. 1 year
Small chair and table ....................................1 1/2 years
Noah's Ark .................................................. 2 years
Picture books ............................................... 2 years
Materials and instruments .............................. 2 to 3 years
Carts, stick-horses, and reins ..................... 2 1/2 to 3 years
Boats, ships, engines, tin or wooden animals, dolls,
dishes, broom, spade, sand-pile, bucket, etc ................ 3 years
Hoop, games and story books ................................. 5 years
OCCUPATIONS
[Sidenote: Home Kindergarten]
There are a number of books designed to teach mothers how to carry the
Kindergarten occupations over into the home; but while such books may
be helpful in a few cases, in most cases better occupations present
themselves in the course of the day's work. The Kindergarten
occupations themselves follow increasingly the order of domestic
routine. For example, many children in the Kindergarten make mittens
out of eiderdown flannel in the Fall, when their own mothers are
knitting their mittens, and make little hoods either for themselves
or for their dolls. At other periods they put up little glasses of
preserves or jelly, and study the industry of the bees and the way
they put up their tiny jars of jelly. Their attention is called also
to the preparations that the squirrels and other animals make for
winter, and to that of the trees and flowers. In other words, the
occupations in the Kindergarten are designed to bring the children
into conscious sympathy with the life of nature and of the home.
[Sidenote: Kindergarten Methods]
That mother who keeps this purpose in mind and applies it to the
occupations that come up naturally in the course of a day's work,
will thereby bring the Kindergarten spirit into her own home much more
truly than if she invests in a number of perforated sewing cards and
colored strips of paper for weaving. Not that there is any harm in
these bits of apparatus, provided that the sewing cards are large and
so perforated as not to task the eyes and young fingers of the sewer.
But unless for some special purpose, such as the making of a Christmas
or birthday gift, these devices are unnecessary and better left to the
school, which has less richness of material at hand than has the home.
[Sidenote: Helping Mother]
In allowing the children to enter a workers into the full life of the
home several good things are accomplished. (1) The eager interest of
the developing mind is utilized to brighten those duties which are
likely to remain permanent duties. Not does this observation apply
only to girls. Domestic obligations are supposed to rest chiefly upon
them, but the truth is that boys need to feel these obligations as
keenly as the girls, if they are to grow into considerate and helpful
husbands and fathers. The usual division of labor into forms falsely
called masculine and feminine is, therefore, much to be deplored.
Moreover, at an early age children are seldom sex-conscious, and any
precocity in this direction is especially evil in its results; yet
many mothers from the beginning make such a division between what
they require of their boys and of their girls as to force this
consciousness upon them. All kinds of work, then, should be allowed in
the beginning, however it may differentiate later on, and little
boys as well as little girls should be taught to take an interest in
sewing, dish-washing, sweeping, dusting, and cooking--in all the forms
of domestic activity.
This is so far recognized among educators that the most progressive
primary schools now teach cooking to mixed classes of boys and
girls, and also sewing. These activities are recognized as highly
educational, being, as they are, interwoven with the history of the
race and with its daily needs. When they are studied in their full sum
of relationship, they increase the child's knowledge of both the past
and the living world.
[Sidenote: Teaching Mother]
(2) Besides the deepening of the child's interest in that work which
in some form or other he will have with him always, is the quickening
of the mother's own interest in what may have come to seem to her
mere daily drudgery. Any woman who undertakes to perform so simple
an operation as dish-washing with the help of a bright happy child,
asking sixteen questions to the minute, will find that common-place
operation full of possibilities; and if she will answer all the
questions she will probably find her knowledge strained to the
breaking point, and will discover there is more to be known about
dish-washing than she ever dreamed of before; while in cooking, if
she will make an effort to look up the science, history, and ethics
involved in the cooking and serving of a very simple meal, she will
not be likely to regard the task as one beneath her, but rather as
one beyond her. No one can so lead her away from false conventions and
narrow prejudices as a little child whom she permits to help her and
teach her.
[Sidenote: The Love of Work]
(3) The child's spontaneous joy in being active and in doing any
service is being utilized, as it should be, in the performance of his
daily duties. We have already referred to the fact that all children
in the beginning love to work, and that there must be something the
matter with our education since this love is so early lost and so
seldom reacquired. If when young children wish to help mother they
are almost invariably permitted to do so, and their efforts greeted
lovingly, this delight in helpfulness will remain a blessing to them
throughout life.
[Sidenote: To Make "Helping" of Benefit]
But in order to get these benefits from the domestic activities two or
three simple rules must be observed. (1) Do not go silently about your
work, expecting your child to be interested and to understand without
being talked to. Play with him while you work with him, and see the
realization of youthfulness that comes to yourself while you do it.
Many tasks fit for childish hands are in their nature too monotonous
for childish minds. Here your imagination must come into play to rouse
and excite his activity. For instance, you are both shelling peas.
When he begins to be tired you suggest to him, "Here is a cage full of
birds, let us open the door for them;" or you may tell a story while
you work, but it should be a story about that very activity, or the
child will form the habit of dreaming and dawdling over his work. Such
stories may be perfectly simple and even rather pointless and yet
do good work; the whole object is to keep the child's fly-away
imagination turned upon the work at hand, thus lending wings to his
thought, and lightness to his fingers. Moreover, the mother who talks
with her child while working is training in him the habit of
bright unconscious conversation, thus giving him a most useful
accomplishment. Making a game or a play out of the work is, of course,
conducive to the same good results. When the story or the talk drags,
the game with its greater dramatic power may be substituted.
[Sidenote: Fatigue]
(2) Children should neither be allowed to work to the point of fatigue
nor to stop when they please. Fatigue, as our latest investigators in
physiological psychology have conclusively proved, is productive of an
actual poison in the blood and as such is peculiarly harmful to young
children. But while work--or for that matter play either--must never
be pushed past the point of healthful fatigue, it may well be pushed
past the point of spontaneous interest and desire: the child may be
happily persuaded by various hidden means to do a little more than he
is quite ready to do. By this device, which is one of the recognized
devices of the Kindergarten, mothers increase by imperceptible degrees
that power of attention which makes will power.
[Sidenote: Willing Industry]
(3) Set the example of willing industry. Neither let the child
conceive of you as an impersonal necessary part of the household
machinery, nor as an unwilling martyr to household necessities. Most
mothers err in one or the other of these two directions, and many of
them err in both: they either, (a) perform the innumerable services of
the household so quietly and steadily that the child does not perceive
the effort that the performance costs and, therefore, as far as his
consciousness is concerned, is deprived of the force of his mother's
example, or (b) they groan aloud over their burdens and make their
daily martyrdom vocal. Either way is wrong, for it is a mistake not to
let a child see that your steady performance of tasks, which cannot be
always delightful, is a result of self-discipline; and it is equally a
mistake to let him think that this discipline is one against which
you rebel. For in reality you are so far from being unwilling to bind
yourself in his service that if he needed it you would promptly double
and quadruple your exertions. It is exactly what you do when he is
sick or in danger; and if he dies the sorest ache of your heart is the
ache of the love that can no longer be of service to the beloved.
[Sidenote: Monotony]
(4) Remember that monotony is the curse of labor for both child and
adult, but that _monotony cannot exist where new intellectual insights
are constantly being given_. Therefore, while the daily round of
labor, shaped by the daily recurring demands for food, warmth,
cleanliness, and sleep, goes on without much change, seize every
opportunity to deepen the child's perception of the relation of this
routine to the order of the larger world. For instance, if a new house
is being built near by, visit it with the children, comparing it with
your own house, figure out whether it is going to be easier to keep
clean and to warm than your house is and why. If you need to call in
the carpenter, the plumber, the paper-hanger, or the stoveman, try
to have him come when the children are at home, and let them satisfy
their intense curiosity as to his work. This knowledge will sooner or
later be of practical value, and it is immediately of spiritual value.
[Sidenote: Beautiful Work]
(5) Beautify the work as much as possible by letting the artistic
sense have full play. This rule is so important that the attempt to
establish it in the larger world outside of the home has given rise to
the movement known as the arts and crafts movement, which has its rise
in the perception that no great art can come into existence among us
until the common things of daily living--the furniture, the books, the
carpets, the chinaware--are made to express that creative joy in the
maker which distinguishes an artistic product from an inartistic one.
This creative joy, in howsoever small degree, may be present in most
of the things that the child does. If he sets the table, he may set it
beautifully, taking real pleasure in the coloring of the china and the
shine of the silver and glass. He ought not to be permitted to set it
untidily upon a soiled tablecloth.
[Sidenote: The Right Spirit]
(6) This is a negative rule, but perhaps the most important of all: DO
NOT NAG. The child who is driven to his work and kept at it by means
of a constant pressure of a stronger will upon his own, is deriving
little, if any, benefit from it; and as you are not teaching him to
work for the sake of his present usefulness, which is small at
the best, but for the sake of his future development, you are more
desirous that he should perform a single task in a day in the right
spirit, than that he should run a dozen errands in the wrong spirit.
(7) Besides a regular time each day for the performance of his set
share in the household work, give him warning before the arrival of
that hour. Children have very incomplete notions of time; they become
much absorbed in their own play; and therefore no child under nine
or ten years of age should be expected to do a given thing at a given
time without warning that the time is at hand.
[Sidenote: "Busy Work"]
Besides these occupations which are truly part of the business of life
come any number of other occupations--a sort of a cross between real
play and steady work, what teachers call "busy work"--and here the
suggestions of the Kindergarten may be of practical value to the
mother. For instance, weaving, already referred to, may keep an active
child interested and quiet for considerable periods of time. Besides
the regular weaving mats of paper, to be had from any Kindergarten
supply store, wide grasses and rushes may be braided into mats, raffia
and rattan may be woven into baskets, and strips of cloth woven into
iron-holders. A visit to any neighboring Kindergarten will acquaint
the mother with a number of useful, simple objects that can be woven
by a child. Whatever he weaves or whatever he makes should be applied
to some useful purpose, not merely thrown away; and while it is true
that a conscientious desire to live up to this rule often results in
a considerable clutter of flimsy and rather undesirable objects about
the house, still, ways may be devised for slowly retiring the oldest
of them from view, and disposing of others among patient relatives.
[Sidenote: Sewing]
Sewing is another occupation ranch used in the Kindergarten as well as
in the home. Beginning with the simple stringing of large wooden beads
upon shoe-strings, it passes on to sewing on buttons, and sewing doll
clothes to the making of real clothing. This last in its simplest form
can be begun sooner than most parents suppose, especially if the child
is taught the use of the sewing machine. There is really no reason why
a child, say six years old, should not learn to sew upon the machine.
His interest in machinery is keen at this period, and two or three
lessons are usually sufficient to teach him enough about the mechanism
to keep him from injuring it. Once he has learned to sew upon the
machine, he may be given sheets and towels to hem, and even sew up
the seams of larger and more complex articles. He will soon be able
to make aprons for himself and his sisters and mother. Toy sewing
machines are now sold which are really useful playthings, and on which
the child can manufacture a number of small articles. Those run by
a treadle are preferable to those run by a hand crank, because they
leave the child's hands free to guide the work.
[Sidenote: Drawing Cutting Pasting]
Drawing, painting, cutting and pasting are excellent occupations for
children. A large black-board is a useful addition to the nursery
furnishings, but the children should be required to wash it off with a
damp cloth, instead of using the eraser furnished for the purpose,
as the chalk dust gets into the room and fills the children's lungs.
Plenty of soft pencils and crayons, also large sheets of inexpensive
drawing paper, should be at hand upon a low table so that they can
draw the large free outlines which best develop their skill, whenever
the impulse moves them. If they have also blunt scissors for cutting
all sorts of colored papers and a bottle of innocuous library paste,
they will be able to amuse themselves at almost any time.
[Sidenote: Painting]
Some water colors are now made which are harmless for children so
young that they are likely to put the paints in their mouths. Paints
are on the whole less objectionable than colored chalks, because
the crayons drop upon the floor and get trodden into the carpet. If
children are properly clothed as they should be in simple washable
garments, there is practically no difficulty connected with the free
use of paints, and their educational value is, of course, very high.
TEST QUESTIONS
The following questions constitute the "written recitation" which the
regular members of the A.S.H.E. answer in writing and send in for
the correction and comment of the instructor. They are intended to
emphasize and fix in the memory the most important points in the
lesson.
STUDY OF CHILD LIFE PART II
Read Carefully. In answering these questions you are earnestly
requested _not_ to answer according to the text-book where opinions
are asked for, but to answer according to conviction. In all cases
credit will be given for thought and original observation. Place your
name and full address at the head of the paper; use your own words so
that your instructor may be sure that you understand the subject.
1. State Fichte's doctrine of rights and show how it applies to child
training. If possible, give an example from your own experience.
2. What is the aim of moral training?
3. What two sayings of Froebel most characteristically sum up his
philosophy?
4. What is the value of play in education?
5. What are the natural playthings? Tell what, in your childhood, you
got out of these things, or if you were kept away from them, what the
prohibition meant to you.
6. What do you think about children's dancing? And acting?
7. Do you agree with those who think that the Kindergarten makes right
doing too easy? State the reasons for your opinion.
8. What can you say of commands, reproofs, and rules?
9. Should you let the children help you about the house, even when
they are so little as to be troublesome? Why? If they are unwilling to
help, how do you induce them to help?
10. What would you suggest as regular duties for children of 4 to 5
years? Of 7 to 8 years?
11. Which do you consider the more important, the housework or the
child?
12. Wherein may the mother learn from the child?
13. What is the difference between amusing children and playing with
them? What is the proper method?
14. Mention some good rules in character building.
15. From your own experience as a child what can you say of teaching
the mysteries of sex?
16. Are there any questions you would like to ask, or subjects which
you wish to discuss in connection with this lesson?
Note.--After completing the test sign your full name.
[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD
By Murillo, Spanish painter of the seventeenth century]
STUDY OF CHILD LIFE