Education in The Home, The Kindergarten, and The Primary School Part 13

The human being not only craves liberty and love instinctively, but law also; he "feels the weight of chance desires," and "longs for a repose that ever is the same." This is the _rationale_ of Frbel's method in the occupations; he suggests the child's action, sometimes by interrogation merely, instead of directing it peremptorily. He asks the child, when he has done one thing, what is the opposite? which itself suggests the combination of opposites, that immediately produces a symmetrical effect. The child enjoys the symmetry all the more, if he feels as if he personally produced it. This is the secret of his love of repet.i.tion. He wants to see if by the same means he can again produce the same effect. He does the thing again and again, till he feels that he does it all of himself. He does not want you to help him even with your words (and you never should help him _except_ with words). If a child acts from a suggestion, he feels free,--but if he produces the same effect, or a similar effect, without your suggestion, he has a still more self-respecting sense of power; and his will becomes more consciously free the more he chooses to put on the harness of order.

The kindergartner will sometimes have a child put under her care whose will has been exasperated by arbitrary and capricious treatment, or who has been made to act against his inclination till he has reacted, out of pure _contrariness_, as we say. This contrariness proves that he has been outraged; perhaps in some instances the effect has been produced by not feeding his mind with knowledge of law. The very violence of the evil may show that he is an exceptionally fine child, with an enormous sense of power that he does not know what to do with because the proper educational influence has failed him. In other cases obstinacy may be a reaction against the vicious will of another, who, instead of offering him the bread of law, has presented to him the stone of his own stumbling. It is indispensable to give the child law, as well as love; but when you are doubtful whether you can genially suggest the law,--at all events express the love; and never subst.i.tute for the law your own will. The law which produces a good or beautiful effect, is G.o.d's will; your will is not creative of the child's will like G.o.d's; its best effect is to stimulate the antagonism of the child's, when the latter is feeble, which it sometimes is by reason of physical mal-organization, or by having been crushed by overbearing management, or vitiated by selfish caprice.

I may be told that if Frbel's education is wholly of a genial, coaxing character, it fails of being an image of the Divine Providence, which is an alternation of attractions and antagonisms, speaking now in the music of nature, and now in thunders and lightnings, not only cherishing the heart with love, but stimulating the will with law; and be warned not to enervate the character, by producing an aesthetic luxury of sentiment, by which the personal being shall stagnate in the worst kind of selfishness--the pa.s.sive kind. This objection might be pertinent, if the kindergarten were to be protracted beyond the era to which Frbel limits it. Certainly the time comes, when the finite will should be antagonized, if need be, by the law of universal humanity. The purest, most loving, most disinterested will known to human history, recognized that there might be a _wiser_ will, not to be doubted as still more loving; and said, "Not my will, but Thine be done,"--"Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (my free causal power). But let the kindergartner remember she is not infinitely wise and good, and beware of enacting the sovereign judge. There is no doubt that an exclusively cherishing tenderness should be the law of the nursery, with no antagonism whatever, because at that age it is a wise self-a.s.sertion which we wish to develop. We therefore act _for_ the infant, having secured his acting _with_ us by our genial encouragement. But this is no argument for continuing to act for him, when he can act with consciousness of an individual life. We must not prolong babyhood into the kindergarten; or, at least, we must begin to engraft personal consciousness upon it, by _playing_ little antagonisms merely. And so, it is no argument against the play of kindergarten that it does mature men. Let the children play with complete earnestness, but, as Plato says, "according to laws," and they will all the more likely seek laws when they come into wider relations.

The development of the consciousness of man is serial. In the nursery we coax the child to exercise the various muscles by playfully duplicating their action; we make him _make believe_ walk, impressing his senses, as it were, with the whole operation as an object. The child first experiences the pleasure of movement, then desires to move for the sake of renewing this pleasure; then enjoys your helping him to do what he has not yet the bodily strength and skill to accomplish; and finally wills to take up his body and make his first independent step. This is the first crisis in the history of his individuality, and every mother knows it is the cheer of her magnetizing faith that enables him to pa.s.s through it. He then repeats the action intentionally, simply because he can; enjoying the exertion he makes all the more if, by your care, he has not begun to walk too soon and experienced the pain of numerous falls, from want of guardian arms and supporting hands. Such pains disturb and haunt his fancy, and dishearten him. Courage and serene joy give strength and enterprise to activity.

The nursery and kindergarten education are the preliminary processes which foreshadow all the processes of the Divine Providence. Therefore, even in the nursery we _play_ antagonizing processes. We heighten the child's enjoyment by making him conscious of isolation a moment, to restore, as it were, with a shout, the delightful sense of relation; for the baby likes to have a handkerchief thrown over his head unexpectedly, and suddenly withdrawn again and again. So we sometimes pretend to let him fall, and just when he is about to cry with alarm, catch him again and kiss him.

Frbel in his nursery plays has several of this nature; and as children grow older they play antagonisms spontaneously, which are beneficial just so far as they elicit the consciousness of individual power; but are harmful if, proceeding too far, they show its limitations painfully, and make the child feel himself a victim.

In the kindergarten season various sensibilities are manifest that have not shown themselves in the nursery, and which are premonitions of the destined dominion over material nature, which at first so much dominates the child, and would destroy his body if you did not intervene with your loving care. These are to be mothered in the kindergartner's heart till they become conscious desires, informing and directing his will, which is encouraged and strengthened--if it is never superseded by your will--until he shall begin to realize his personal responsibility. Then, as he took his body into his own keeping when he began to run alone, so now he will take his character into his own hands to educate, and he will do it all the more certainly and energetically, if he feels you to be an all-helping, all-cherishing, all-inspiring friend, which you must needs be if you are open to feel and wise to know G.o.d's love to you, in making you His vicegerent to give glimpses, at least, of the immeasurable love of G.o.d, in giving the inexorable laws of nature, for the fulcrum of the power that He pours into His children in the form of will; and which obeys Him just in proportion as it keeps its freedom to alter and alter and alter, till there is no longer any evil to be conscious of, and men shall have got the dominion over nature, which consists in using it for all generous purposes, in a universal mutual understanding with one another. To be in the progressive attainment of this high destiny, is the growing happiness of man; a happiness which must ever have in it that element of _victory_, which distinguishes the eternal life of Christ from the nirwana of Buddha.

MORAL SENTIMENT.

WE have been asked by one of the students of Frbel's art and science, what books we should recommend to help her to a fuller knowledge of the subjects on which we gave a few hints in our first and second paper of _Glimpses_.

In reply, we would first say, that it is a needed preparation for any study of books on intellectual and moral philosophy, to look back on our own moral history and mental experience, and ask ourselves what was the process of our moral growth, and the circ.u.mstances of the formation of our opinions; that is, what action of our relatives, guardians, and companions, had the best--and what the worst--practical effects upon our characters; what aided and what hindered us? Every fault in our characters has its history, having generally originated in the action of others upon us; sometimes their intentional action, which may have been merely mistaken, or may have been wilfully selfish and malignant; and sometimes an influence unconsciously exerted. On the other hand, much of our life that has blest ourselves and others, can be referred to spontaneous manifestations of others, having no special reference to ourselves; generous sentiments uttered in felicitous words, generous acts recorded in history, or done in the privacy of domestic life; great truths bodied forth in imaginative poetry, over which our young hearts mused till the fire burned.

This empirical knowledge of the great nature which we share, is a living nucleus that will give vital meaning to any true words with which scientific treatises on the mind are written; and a power to judge whether the writer is talking about facts of life, or mere abstractions, out of which have died all spiritual substance, leaving only "a heap of empty boxes." In no department of study are we more liable to take words for things than in this. Abstraction is the source of all the false philosophy and theology which has distracted the world. Generalizations are of no aid--but a delusion and a snare--unless the mental and moral phenomena, from which they are derived, have been the writer's experiences, personal or sympathetic. Such experiences are as substantial as material things, to say the least; and even they do not do justice to the whole truth, which is--if we may so express it--the vital experience of G.o.d. Hence is the Living Word to which human abstractions can never do justice; being, indeed, but the refuse of thought, "a weight to be laid aside" and forgotten, like a work done, as we stretch forward to the prize of truth, which is our "high calling."

In Book II. chapter vii. of Campbell's _Philosophy of Rhetoric_, there is a section headed, "Why is it that nonsense so often escapes being detected, both by the writer and reader?" It explains with great perspicuity the uses and abuses of our faculty of abstraction, which is not a spiritual, but merely an intellectual faculty. I would commend this essay (and indeed, for several reasons, the whole book) to a student of intellectual philosophy. A great deal may be learned upon this subject, also, from an Essay on Language, printed a second time with some other papers, by Phillips & Sampson, Boston, in 1857, and probably still to be found in old bookstores, if it be not reprinted by its author, R. L. Hazard.

On the subject of my second paper of _Glimpses_ the same author has written two books, one published by D. Appleton, in New York, in 1864, _The Freedom of the Mind in Willing; or, Every Being that wills, a Creative First Cause_; and in 1869, Lee & Shepard, Boston, published, as supplement, _Two Letters on Causation and Freedom in Willing, addressed to John Stuart Mill, with an Appendix on the Existence of Matter, and our Notions of Infinite s.p.a.ce_.[13]

INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM TO WILL.

IF the spontaneous will of man, and its heart with its latent love, hope, and sense of beauty and justice, are without date,

"An eye among the blind, That deaf and silent reads the eternal deep, Haunted forever by the eternal mind,"

yet there is no doubt that the human understanding, as well as the body, begins in time, and gradually identifies the individual for communication with other individuals of its kind. The beginning of the human understanding is in the impressions of an environing universe, against which the sensibility reacts, and by this activity develops the organs of sense, which are the connection of those two great contrasts, the soul and the outward universe. For perceptions of sense are the instrumentality by which the will vivifies the heart, so disposing the particulars of the surrounding universe as to give the definite form of _thoughts_ to consciousness. The human being has no absolute knowledge like the lower animals, who are pa.s.sive instrumentality of G.o.d to certain finite ends below the plane of spirituality. Created for the infinite ends of intelligence, and free communion with one another and G.o.d, men need to become conscious of the whole process of their own being, and do so by a gradual conversation with G.o.d, who is forever saying, by the universe, which is his speech, I AM. And here education begins its offices, by helping man to reply THOU ART, which he does by his legitimate art. But no one man can utter the _thou art_ of humanity adequately. It takes all humanity forever and ever to do so; and it does not do so but just so far as the men who compose it are in mutual understanding and communion with each other. Therefore each child must be taken by the hand by those already conscious, and led to realize his own consciousness by learning that of his fellows.

In the action and reaction of the individual with his special environment, he comes to distinguish himself from that which gives him pleasure and pain, and he will be attracted to the former, and repelled from the latter; and thus come to discriminate outward things from each other. The observation and discrimination of the particulars of nature is _thinking_. Sensuous impressions are the raw material of thoughts, but discrimination and cla.s.sification of things according to their similarities, is the _operation_ of thought.

Education has an office in both the acc.u.mulation of sensuous impressions and the operation of thinking. The mother and nurse of each child must so order the objects about him, that his organs shall be properly impressed, and not overtaxed, because only so can they grow to be a good instrumentality for receiving even more delicate impressions. A tender sympathy for the unconscious little one, who is gradually coming to identify himself, and love,--such as only a mother can have in the greatest perfection,--are the special qualifications of the educator at this stage. Such a knowledge of nature's laws and order, as may enable the educator to lead the child's activity according to law and order, can alone help the child to reproduce, on his finite plane, an image of G.o.d's creative action. The educator who should succeed the nurse is the kindergartner, who, without lacking the sympathetic affection of the nurse, must add a knowledge of nature both material and spiritual, so that she may bring these opposites into their right connection with each other.

She will therefore lead the child to _produce_ something that shall serve as a ground for the operation of thinking. Instead of letting the blind will spend its energy in wild and aimless motion, she will present a desirable aim to attain, which will produce an effect that shall satisfy the heart, and produce an object that shall engage the attention, and stimulate to a reproduction of it, until it is thoroughly known, not only in its natural properties, but in the law of its being, which was the child's own method of producing the thing.

The genesis of the understanding, then, is, first, sensuous impression, which, reproducing itself intentionally, becomes, secondly, perception; and, thirdly, an adapting of means to ends, and thereby rising into judgment and knowledge. To get understanding precedes getting knowledge, which is the special work of the understanding when it is developed.

There is another faculty of the individual, besides understanding, and which is to be discriminated from it--fancy. Vivid and clear sensuous impressions are the foundation of fancy, as well as of understanding.

But the will, acting among these impressions in a wild and sovereign way, is fancy; while the will arranging impressions according to the order of nature, is understanding. Frbel has provided for the development of the understanding the occupations, as he calls the regular _production_ of forms, transient and permanent. Nothing can be produced which satisfies the aesthetic sense, except by following the laws of creation. To a.n.a.lyze these productions will give experimental understanding of those laws. In superintending the occupations, the kindergartner must, therefore, see that the child does things in the right order, and gives an account of what he does in the right words; for words, the first works of human art, have a great deal to do with the development of the understanding, lifting man into a sphere above that of the mere animal. After a thing is made, or an effect produced and named, it must be made a subject for a.n.a.lysis; and it can easily be made so, because children's attention is easily conciliated to what they themselves have done or produced. Putting their own action into a thing, makes it interesting to them; and they can make an exhaustive a.n.a.lysis of it, because, in addition to its appearances, they know the law of its being, which was their own method, and the cause of its being, which was their own _motive_. From a.n.a.lyzing their own works, children can, in due time, be led to a.n.a.lyze works of nature. And here the kindergartner has great room for the exercise of judgment, in the selection of suitable objects.

Frbel advised that objects for lessons should be taken from the vegetable creation; and that children should be interested in planting seeds and watching growth, becoming acquainted with its general conditions, observing which are within the scope of their own powers to provide, and which are beyond human power; thus leading the understanding through nature, outward and inward, to G.o.d.

If we see that the work done is artistic, and that the objects of nature a.n.a.lyzed are beautiful, this culture of the understanding may refine and elevate the taste, and beautify the fancy.

For the fancy is to be carefully cherished by the kindergartner. It is not amenable to direct influence perhaps, but not beyond an indirect influence. The soundness of the understanding is conducive to a beautiful play of fancy, which is a peculiarly human faculty; for we have not a particle of evidence that any animal below man has this kind of thinking, which delights in transcending the facts of nature in its creations, and sometimes sets the laws of nature at defiance. But we must defer to another paper the many things we have to say in regard to the imagination and its culture.

CONSCIENCE.

WE have given a few hints by way of answering the questions on psychology, which must come up, to be considered by a kindergartner who is intent on understanding the "harp of a thousand strings," from which it is her duty to bring out the music.

We have found that the human being comes into the world with an aesthetic nature, which is to be vivified by the presentation of the beauties of nature and art, in such a way as to insure reaction of the will in creations of fancy; for only so can sensibility to beauty be prevented from degenerating into sensuality. If the fancy remains wholly subjective, it loses its childish health and leads astray. It should have objective embodiment in song, dance, and artistic manipulation of some sort. Now, artistic manipulation of any kind necessitates the examination of natural elements and the discovery of the laws of production, which are, of course, identical with the organic laws of nature that bear witness to an intelligent Creator.

To excite the human understanding to appreciate names, and cla.s.sify things for _use_ and giving pleasure, it is necessary to present things to children gradually, first singly, and then in simple rhythmical combinations, so that they may have time to find themselves personally, and not be overwhelmed with a mult.i.tude of impressions. A real lover of children will quickly find out that they like to take time "playing with things," as they call it; and that there is a special pleasure in discovering differences in things; that a new distinct perception of any relation of things delights the child, as the discovery of a principle delights the adult mind. The fanciful plays of the kindergarten, whether sedentary or moving, cultivate the imagination, the understanding, and the physical powers in harmony, and more than this, they cultivate the heart and conscience, because the moving plays have for their indispensable condition numbers of their equals, and everything they make is intended for others. The presentation of persons, as having the same needs and desires of enjoyment as themselves, proves sufficient to call into consciousness the heart and conscience, just as immediately and inevitably as the presentation of nature and art calls into activity the understanding and imagination.

Because nature and human kind are so _vast_ that, as a whole they daunt the young mind, even to the point of checking its growth, it is necessary that some one, who has had time to a.n.a.lyze it in some degree, should call attention to points; and it is the consummate art of education to know what points to touch, so that the mind shall make out the octave; for, unless it does so, it will not act to purpose. As exercise of the limbs is necessary to physical development, and the act of perceiving, understanding, and fancying, with actual manipulation of nature, is necessary to intellectual development; so is kindness and justice acted out, to the development of the social and moral nature or conscience.

But there is something else in man than relations to external nature and fellow-man. This self-determining being, who moves, perceives, understands, fancies, loves, and feels moral responsibility to the race in which he finds himself a living member, is only consciously happy when he is magnanimous, which he can only be, if he feels himself a free power in the bosom of infinite love; in short, a son of the Father of all men! "We are the offspring of G.o.d" is the inspiration alike of heathen poet and Christian apostle.

As the psychological condition of the human love which is man's social happiness, is that sense of individual want and imperfection which stimulates the will to seek the mother and brother; so the psychological condition of the piety which makes man's beat.i.tude, is the sense of social imperfection, in respect both to moral purity and happiness, stimulating the will to seek a Father of all spirits. The more we love, the more we feel the need of G.o.d. But is G.o.d nothing but "an infinite sigh at the bottom of the heart," as Feuerbach, the holiest of infidels, sadly says? or, as in thinking, we discover the ent.i.ty we name I; so in loving, do we not discover G.o.d, or rather does not G.o.d reveal Himself to us, as Essential Substance? Wordsworth declares that

"Serene will be our days and bright, And happy will our nature be, When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security; 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, as he had already sung in that same great song, in Duty--"daughter of the voice of G.o.d,"

"Victory and Law When empty terrors overawe; From vain temptations doth set free, And calms the weary strife of frail humanity!"

Conscience, then, is the soul's witness, first of the relation of the individual to the human race; and ultimately, of the relation of the human race to G.o.d; and it must be inspired with knowledge of the sonship of the human race to the Universal Father, or human life is bottomless despair. But with that knowledge which G.o.d must give (since man cannot reach it with his own understanding) he shall be able, even on the cross, to love the most ignorant brother infinitely; and infinitely to trust that the Father of all will justify his spirit in acting accordingly.

FOOTNOTE:

[13] In the first of these last two books, Mr. Hazard has made an examination of Edwards on the Will, and the only satisfactory reply to his argument for Necessity ever made. Very early in life, the task of answering Edwards was given him, by the late William E. Channing, D.D., who read his first edition of _Language_, and was so much struck with the metaphysical genius displayed in it, that he sought out the anonymous author on purpose to make this suggestion. He found him a clerk in his father's great manufactory, to whose business he afterwards succeeded, and he was engaged in it until he was an old man. All his books are a proof that _business_ may be as good a disciplinarian of the higher intellect as scholastic education, to say the least.

APPENDIX.

NOTE A, TO LECTURE I.

IN 1872 the first training school for kindergartners was founded in England by the Manchester Kindergarten a.s.soc.

To the prospectus is subjoined the following statement:--

The aim of the kindergarten system of training, intended for young children up to the age of seven, when school-teaching _proper_ should begin, is to prepare for all subsequent education. A short examination of the system will show that it is in idea far superior to any other method of early training, while experience proves that its pupils acquit themselves well even under plans most dissimilar. The theory of the kindergarten is that every exertion of the faculties, whether of body or mind, will be healthful and pleasurable, so long as such exertion takes place without compulsion, without appeal to selfish motives, with no more than necessary restraint. The experience of parents and teachers may be appealed to as proving that children enjoy their employments most, and learn best, when a.s.sociated in numbers.

The kindergarten, therefore, gathers children together in numbers, which vary with cla.s.s and other circ.u.mstances, and proceeds to exercise, on a plan most carefully reasoned out, all limbs and muscles of the body by marching, gymnastics, and regulated games; to practise all the senses, and tastes that depend directly upon the senses, by drawing, singing, modelling in clay, and many most beautiful "occupations," which in addition arouse invention--one of the highest human faculties. The intellectual powers, being in a rudimentary condition, are less directly called into action; but the faculties of number and form, along with skill of hand, are so developed that the learning of "the three R's"

becomes incredibly easy. Above all, good feeling is exercised and evil feeling checked, by happy social life, in which the tender plants of the kindergarten see that each one's happiness depends upon all, and that of all on each.

Sedulous attention is paid to the effect of each employment upon children of different temperaments. Sanitary conditions are most carefully observed, and unflagging interest is secured by frequent changes of occupation.