Education in The Home, The Kindergarten, and The Primary School Part 3

"Love is an unerring light, And joy its own security."

And that "other strength," which must come by reflection on and study of the unfolding nature of the child in the felt presence of the Inspirer of Duty, will certainly be needed by the kindergartner who will receive children not always from the hands of natural and faithful mothers, but of uncultured servant-maids. (It is but justice to the latter to say that there are occasionally found among the Irish nurses those who could teach many mothers. The Irish nature is not altogether bad material for the production of good motherly nurses; but it must not be left _wild_; it needs a great deal of discipline; and I hope the time may come when schools for the education of children's nurses, such as Frbel established in Hamburg, which still exist, may be founded in all our cities.) Though I think the education of _mothers_ is still more important and the first thing to aim at, as it would render nursery maids comparatively unnecessary. It is so short a period of a mother's life when she _has_ young children, and the book of nature which these few years open to her _is so rich_, that, for her own being's sake as well as for the children's, it seems to me a terrible loss for her to delegate her maternal cares to others during the nursery period. On the other hand, when the age for the kindergarten comes, the mother needs to be relieved of the increasing care; and children, in their turn, need other influences than can be had in a family, especially in families where parents have work to do outside of their homes. It is, indeed, "a consummation devoutly to be wished," that the time may come when labor may be so organized that no mothers may be obliged to leave their children's souls uncared for in order to get the wherewithal to sustain their bodies.

The deepest reason why a child should be taken care of in its earliest infancy _by its mother_ rather than by a person comparatively uninterested in its personality, is this, that _only_ a mother can respect a child's personality sufficiently. All others regard the child for its manifested qualities; but with the mother, it is the child itself that she loves, quite irrespective of any qualities that he manifests. Phenomenally, a little child is a complex of self-a.s.sertion and generosity (or a desire for union with its kind); a desire or a feeling of finiteness in strange contrast with that instinct to "have dominion" which gives vitality to self-a.s.sertion. We call this primal desire for union his heart, and this primal self-a.s.sertion his will. The will expresses itself in efforts to change its environments, putting what is at rest in motion, knocking down, tearing up, because it does not yet know how to put in order, or to change things artistically. The child acts without external motive,--doing things merely because it _can_. Even after a child is old enough to think and talk, and has done some act for which you see no reason or motive, when you ask him why he did it, he not unfrequently will say, "_because_." I remember when I was a child of six or seven, that I would give this answer with a perfect sense of satisfaction that it was _an answer_; and when it would sometimes be said, "_because_ is no reason," or "_because_ is an old woman's reason," I recollect my feeling of surprise. I seemed to myself to have given the most substantial reason. The word meant to me a great deal. And I now think I was truly philosophical in this, for I affirmed the primal truth, that a self-determining person in spontaneous action, if only of some instinct, is a first _cause_[4]--an _absolute cause_--to the extent of consciousness. It was an intuition.

Now to retain the sense of this causal personality is at the root of all stability of character, all n.o.bleness of manifestation. But self-a.s.sertion in an ignorant child is more apt than otherwise to be disorderly, discordant, and perhaps destructive; it therefore provokes resistance in the unthinking, but challenges the thoughtful to give guidance. It is of life-and-death importance to the child whether this force shall meet mere hard resistance, which shall utterly crush it or increase it by reaction, or whether it shall meet with a genial sympathetic guidance to which it will voluntarily and gladly surrender itself. A mother _loves_ this little ignorant force of self-will and wants it to have free course. She cannot help desiring to have her child have its own way. She does not want it to be opposed by others. She will, as far as possible, further or humor it, as we say. And when she finds it necessary to control it, she will try to do it by awakening the child's affectionateness, and so captivating its fancy as to make it feel it is doing as it likes, though it be something different from what it was impelled to do at first; in short, she inspires him to will the better thing, and so educates the blind instinct of self-a.s.sertion into a harmonizing and beneficent power, and preserves the child's dignity and n.o.bleness instead of crushing its personality. We hear of "breaking the child's will." A child's will should never be broken, but opened up into harmony with G.o.d's will through a lower harmony with the will of its loving and loved mother or kindergartner. But a mother will be more sure than any one else to bring about this result, because she acts from an impulse of the heart deeper than all thought, while the kindergartner by thought must cultivate in herself the impulse.

There are those who deprecate motherly indulgence as if it were the greatest evil. Doubtless it will become a great evil if it be not properly subordinated to the wisdom which appreciates the divinity of order, or if it is alternated with capricious severities; in short, if the indulgence proceeds from indolence or self-love instead of love of the child. The indulgence that really comes from the last is a recognition (unconscious, it may be) of the divine possibilities of the child,--a spark of the divine creativeness! Of the two evils, extreme indulgence is not so deadly a mistake as extreme severity. Indulged children return from afar. The prodigal of the Gospel story may have been over-indulged, perhaps, in being allowed to take his portion of goods, and go off by himself, out of the reach of his father's counsel and authority, and left to his own uneducated self-will. But the sinner, when he _came to himself_ (observe that expression), recognized the self-forgetting, fatherly love in that very indulgence; and it was the immeasurableness of that love that revived his self-respect and hope, and saved him; for the hope was not disappointed. Love giveth, "upbraiding not."

The one fatal thing is to wound the child's heart. It is better to give up the point of controlling its will to righteousness for the moment, than to do that; and a parent is the least likely of all persons to wound his child's heart.

When nothing can be done without wounding, the parent who trusts his own heart will leave the rebel to the consequences which G.o.d holds in his gracious hands for the final salvation of every one of his children.

Besides, to _choose_ to give up one's own will is the only complete and salutary giving up, enabling the soul to mount up spiritually like the eagle and renew its strength. There are families in which the act of disobedience is absolutely unknown, in earlier or in later life; where there is no necessity for uttered commands, because expressed wishes are enough. The most perfect, if not the only real, obedience I have ever seen, has been that of strong men to an unexacting, tender mother.

This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, for it seems to me that the greatest social disorders that exist in the nations among which the "order that reigns in Warsaw"[5] is foremost, is the consequence of _unreasoning obedience_ to wills _not_ infinitely wise and good. The worth and duty of obedience is precisely in ratio with the validity of the command; and a command is valid only so far as it is inspired by a disinterested and proper respect for the being who is commanded.

Children should only obey their parents, _in the Lord_; and parents should never "provoke their children to wrath."

I may be told that the important element of self-a.s.sertion (which gives strength to character) may be weakened by being always disarmed, and killed by the mother's sympathy; and that to provoke it into conscious strength, direct antagonism is necessary. But the best antagonism is that quiet, inevitable one, that comes from the inexorableness of material nature which the child must needs feel, the more disorderly he is, but which he sees is insensate and impersonal; whose antagonism, therefore, does not grieve his heart, and disappoint his hope as human oppression does, making him sad or bitter, but stimulates his mind to conquer and subdue it, or develops a dignified patience. The appointed domain for kingly man is not the brotherhood, but material nature; and gradually he is to learn that nature's inexorable laws are the expression of a Supreme Personality as benignant as it is august, who takes up His human child into Himself, not without his concurring will; for mankind mounts on the nature which he gradually subdues into a stepping-stone, by knowledge, and the use of it. The mother must remember that though the first, she is not the only instrumentality by which the Divine Providence works. The time comes when she is compelled to deliver her cherished darling up to other influences; when the child bursts out of the nursery, not only self-a.s.serting and affectionate, but putting forth energies, and seeking satisfaction of sensibilities that cannot be met within that narrow precinct.

The kindergarten must, then, succeed by complementing the nursery; and the child begin to take his place in the company of his equals, to learn his place in their companionship, and still later to learn wider social relations and their involved duties. No nursery, therefore, not even a perfect one, can supersede the necessity of a kindergarten, where children shall come into cognizance of the moral laws which are to restrain and guide their self-a.s.sertion, and quicken and enlarge their social affections, leading them to self-denials for the sake of opportunities for themselves of useful and creative art, beneficence, and heroism.

The time for transition from the nursery to the kindergarten is definitely indicated by two facts. Firstly, Divine Providence has so arranged general family events that every mother must give up having the child live, as it were, entirely within _her_ life, because she has other children to nurse, or other social duties to do. And, secondly, every child's growth in bodily strength and conscious individuality makes him too strong a force of will for so narrow a scope of relation as is afforded by one family. While hitherto, to be outside of the single family influence was an evil, it would now be an evil to confine the child entirely to it, narrowing his heart and mind, and deforming his character. He needs to be brought into relation with equals who have other personal characteristics, other relations with nature and the human race than his own family. The instinct of the growing child, at this period, to get out of doors to play with other children, is unmistakable. To check it vexes or depresses him. In getting possession, first of his body, and then of his personal and social consciousness, he has become an object to himself, and feels himself a power among other powers affecting each other. But he is still more or less consciously a prisoner (if not a slave) of nature, by reason of his ignorance of the laws of the universe,--_that body_ outside of his own body,--which he is destined, in alliance with others, to take possession of, by action _upon_ and _within_ it, giving him knowledge of it, and enabling him to make it into instrumentality for the expression and embodiment of great ideas and a n.o.ble will.

All government worthy of the name begins in self-government, a free subordination of the individual in order to form the social whole.

Subordination is something higher than subjection. We subject mere animals; intelligent moral agents must be subordinated. It is still the mother's part rather to inspire; the kindergartner's part is to subordinate, not to check childish, spontaneous talk, though, of course, it must be regulated so far as not to let the children interrupt each other _impolitely_, and to keep it to some main subject. Some kindergartners begin the session by asking each in turn what is interesting to him. Mrs. Kraus-Boelte generally receives each one as he or she comes in. They go to her for the morning kiss, and have something to say, in which she expresses due sympathy, and later recurs to and connects with what others say, and thus produces general conversation.

Mrs. Van Kirk is very happy in her introductory conversations.

In playing with the gifts, the teacher dictates certain movements and arrangements, for the purpose of the children's getting into the habit of listening and quickly catching the directions given; and the children should be encouraged to follow _her words_ in what they do, rather than to imitate each other. In their spontaneous work they often make a new symmetrical form, which is really beautiful; and then it is well to call on the child to direct his companions how to make it; for children delight in the dignity of _directing_, and learn to be very precise in the use of all the words expressing relation of all kinds,--prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs,--_precisely_ as well as nouns and verbs.

Language does not merely transfer the outward inward, but soon begins to transfer the inward outward. Love, and other sentiments of the soul, good and bad, are named, as well as sensible objects. Even the instinctive search after proximate causes leads children to infer the substantiality of _wind_ and the other invisible forms of matter; and the spiritual senses inherent in the "Me," which is the most essential of all substances, verifies the ideal world to children, as truly as the bodily senses verify the material world, and even _more so_; for children live in G.o.d before they _exist_ out of G.o.d. The Italian philosopher Gioberti says that the soul is a _spiritual activity_; that is, it sees G.o.d as the first act of its life. G.o.d says, "_Be thou_" and the soul--before it is put into the sleep of nature (the deep sleep that came upon Adam)--looks back and says, "_Thou art_." We have the memory of this primeval vision, and act in our sense of holiness (wholeness?), right, justice, pure love from the uncalculating delight of loving, the ideals of beauty, and the sense of accountability to G.o.d and man, which forever haunt us, sometimes giving us pain, as _remorse_, whose sting is in the comparison of our outward manifested self with our inward sense of "being increate" (as Milton expresses it). It is this supernatural pre-intellectual _soul_ which distinguishes man from the animal creation, and is symbolized by his form, which looks upward to the symbol of infinity made by the sky, with which the human being instinctively _communes_, and towards which the child wants to fly,--and delights in and loves the birds, beyond all other forms of animal life, because they _can_ fly. Gioberti goes on, in his psychology, to say that when the soul, which has recognized its Divine Source as the first act of its life, is put to sleep in nature, it is gradually waked up by the individual forms of nature, which are so many syllables of the Divine Word that are echoed in human words, which describe matter and its evolutions; then the understanding begins, and (which is the point I want you to observe especially at this moment) the words of even a very young child soon bring to its understanding spiritual realities. And it is the office of education to see that the relations of things,--the laws of order among things,--the adjustment of external cause and effect, be _accurately worded_; and especially that the _spiritual_ consciousness gets a happy symbolization; that is, that the best words are used to _do justice_ to the Ideas of G.o.d and the sentiments of the heart of man.

A materialistic educator (or no less a mere dogmatist in religion, who does not see that the logical formulas and abstract terms of scientific theology cannot possibly _wake up_ the primeval vision) may do an all but infinite mischief to the character and heart, by the words he uses in talking to children; and the theologian a greater mischief than the materialist, because the forms and evolutions of matter are, as I have said, _syllables of the Word_ that was in the beginning with G.o.d and, in a certain sense, _G.o.d_, while the abstractions of the human mind are the refuse of finite spirit, infinitely superficial, mere limitations of thought which become stumbling-blocks to the mind when not used as stepping-stones to new outlooks, or rather, inlooks. Never should children be talked to in the language of theological science, but wholly in imaginative symbolization, and the symbols should be chosen with great care, and we should be on our guard against rousing the faculty of abstraction which is a sleeping danger in the nature, whose premature development is injurious in strict proportion to ignorance and sensitiveness. The symbols of the spiritual should be human because human consciousness involves substance outside the physical, and, therefore, did the Word which had not been comprehended in its creation of "everything which it had made," though "without it nothing was made,"

take flesh and dwell among us, in order that we might apprehend the glory of G.o.d and perfection of man with our whole nature. That it would do so, was the insight of the Hebrew genius, whenever by worthy soul-action the law-giver, king, and whoever entered into "the liberty of prophesying" was raised to the height of his nature. Now a child is "on its being's height," "mighty prophet," "seer blest,"

"On whom those truths do rest That we are toiling all our lives to find,"

and therefore a child can supply a substantial meaning to any name for G.o.d adequate to awaken the living echo of the soul that

"Cometh from afar Trailing clouds of glory from G.o.d,"

whose voice sent it forth, as Gioberti says, "to suffer and to be for a season on earth."

I hope you follow me in my thought, for I think I am looking into the child, which is the thing that ought to be done if one undertakes to teach it. That the child really knows G.o.d before G.o.d is even named to him is not a speculative theory with me but a fact of my experience. It is one of my earliest remembrances, that I was sitting in the lap of a young lady, whose name and countenance I have forgotten, who was caressing me, and calling me sweet, beautiful, darling, etc., when all at once she seized me into a closer embrace and exclaimed, rather than asked, Who made you?

I remember my pleased surprise at the question, that I feel very sure had never been addressed to my consciousness before. At once a Face arose to my imagination,--only a Face and head,--close to me, and looking upon me with the most benignant smile, in which the kindness rather predominated over the intelligence; but it looked at me as if meaning, "Yes, I made you, as you know very well." I was so thoroughly satisfied, that I replied to the question decisively, "A man."

The lady said to another who sat near us, "Only think! this great girl does not know who made her!"

I remember I was no less sure of my knowledge, notwithstanding she said this. Though it was the first time I had thought G.o.d and given the name "man" to the thought, it seemed not new to me. I had felt G.o.d before.

I _was_ a rather large girl, more than four years old, as I know from the fact that we were living in a certain house, to which we went on my fourth birthday. My next recollection is of going into a room of this house, where my mother was sitting, working at an embroidery frame that hung against the wall. I went up to her and said, "Mamma, Eliza asked me who made me, and I told her a man, and she said he didn't!" I stated this reply as a grievance and outrage.

Since I came to the age of reflection, I have always regretted the conversation that followed. It was not judicious, and seems to me a little out of character for my mother, who was of strong religious sentiment and quick imagination, and all other conversation on religious subjects that I remember of hers was very good. She was rather thrown off her guard by my unexpected theology and lost her presence of mind. I was her oldest child, and she had waited to see some enquiry raised before speaking on the subject. I had seemed more stupid than I was, for I belong by nature rather to the reflective than perceptive cla.s.s, and so had very little language. At this distance of time I cannot, of course, remember the details of the conversation, but I came out of it with another image of G.o.d in my mind, conveying not half so much of the truth as did that kind Face, close up to mine, and seeming to be so wholly occupied with His creature. The new image was of an old man, sitting away up on the clouds, dressed in a black silk gown and c.o.c.ked hat, the costume of our old Puritan minister. He was looking down upon the earth, and spying round among the children to see who was doing wrong, in order to punish offenders by touching them with a long rod he held in his hand, thus exposing them to everybody's censure. Of course my mother said no such thing to me, but what she did say, by subtle a.s.sociations with the words she used, gave me this image, which I need not say rather checked than promoted my spiritual advancement.

This experience has been of value to me as a teacher since, for it has effectually saved me from being didactic and dogmatic in my religious teaching of children. The Socratic method is the true way of bringing into the definite conscious thought G.o.d's revelation of Himself to the soul. That image of authority and power to punish did not, I think, help, but rather puzzled my moral sense of which I was already conscious. For I remember that I used to muse very much in my childhood upon the mental phenomenon of feeling myself to be two persons. I was clearly conscious of an inward conversation on all occasions of a question of right and wrong, when a higher and lower law distinctly uttered themselves. The lower self often prevailed by the argument that the thing to be done was _transient_, I would do it only this _once_, and never again; and often I thus sinned against the very present G.o.d, which I think I might not have done so presumptuously, had I a.s.sociated the thought of this strange other me with that kind face of Love Divine.

When later in life I did learn that the remonstrating voice was unquestionably G.o.d, because He is the Love that I saw in my childish vision, the war between self-love and conscience ceased. But this was not till a great body of death had been acc.u.mulated, which I have never shuffled off except in moments of hope.

But to take up the thread of my discourse again. I would very earnestly say that the Socratic or conversational method is the only way of bringing into a child's definite consciousness G.o.d's revelation of Himself to souls. But this requires a mutual understanding of words, and if we are careful, we may produce this in the kindergarten.

Frbel intimates that a general impression of there being an invisible Friend and Protector may be given by the baby's seeing the mother in the att.i.tude of devotion, and he would have recognition of G.o.d called forth by her naming the unseen Father at moments when the child's heart is overflowing with joy and love, or seeking to know where some beautiful thing comes from. The child feels already at such times the presence of the Infinite Cause, the Infinite Source of joy and goodness, and the name of Heavenly Father given to this presence will not be an empty vocable. Using with the name of Father the word "our," with which the Lord's Prayer begins, suggests that He is the Father of all alike, and all human beings will thus be united together with Him in the child's imagination.[6]

This idea of one personal but comprehensive Being, the centre of the social organization, is a quickening of the immortal personality, which has a date in time no less certainly than the quickening of the body, and is our sense of ident.i.ty.[7]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] See Hazard's _Man a Creative First Cause_. A book published since this lecture was first given.

[5] "Order reigns in Warsaw" was the form of words in which the subjugation of the Poles to Russians in 1849 was announced in France.

[6] See Frederic Denison Maurice's book on the Lord's Prayer, published by Hurd & Houghton.

[7] See Appendix, note A.

LECTURE IV.

THE KINDERGARTEN.

IN my last lecture I spoke of the ideal nursery; for only there, hitherto, has the divine method of education ever been completely carried out, the unquestionable teacher there being _the child_, "trailing clouds of glory from G.o.d who is our home"; its sweet content and inspiring smile indicating when its nurse is treating it aright; while all that is wrong, whether proceeding from mere ignorance or selfish wilfulness on the part of the adult, is indicated by its cries of fright and anger, which it behooves her to heed.

How is it that, with the spectacle forever before our eyes of the mother and infant, mutually emparadised in child's play (that mutually educating communion of trust and love, by which the child is put into gradual possession of his body, and joyous consciousness of his individuality),--how is it, I say, that we find education has lost its _ideal_, and as soon as the child leaves the nursery for the schoolroom, an antagonism has begun, "with its blessedness at strife," and which leaves us all such scarred and bewildered creatures as we find ourselves to be, as soon as we come to reflect?

But I must remember that what we have to speak of especially is the kindergarten, which follows hard upon the nursery.

When the child's growing activities begin to require a larger social sphere than the nursery,--_i.e._, at about three years old,--it was Frbel's plan to gather the children of several families into what he called a "Child Garden," and to extend the nursery law of _cherishing_ (which is the dealing with living organisms that children are), by exercising them for several hours of every day in rehearsing in plays, in the first place, all the sweet charities of life. This employs their physical forces, and makes them experimentally know that human happiness and goodness are social and generous.

For the so-called "movement plays" are social exercises, gently calling out moral sentiments, as well as intellectual powers. They can only be beautiful and enjoyable when they give mutual pleasure; and this involves that mutual reference and kind consideration of each other which leave no room for selfish feeling or action. Moral education is the alpha and omega of a kindergarten, but it cannot be given by precept. To _do_ the will of G.o.d,--_i.e._, to obey the moral law,--"doing to others as we would have others do to us," _even in play_, is the only way for children to know vitally the doctrine of moral life.

Frbel has suggested a variety of these movement plays, all of them conceived with the greatest care as to their intellectual as well as moral effect. They always have a fanciful aim, within the scope of the child's knowledge and affection, and to play them begins to develop the understanding also.

A gentle intellectual exercise, involved in learning by rote, reciting, and singing the songs that direct the plays, takes the rudeness out and puts intelligence into that exhilaration of the animal spirits which healthy children crave, and prevents it from exhausting the body or disordering the mind; the joyous a.s.sociation of the children with each other aiding this effect. In the sedentary plays, which are called "occupations," and in which the child is genially drawn into producing symmetrical effects to the eye, by making things (albeit only little toys) which begin their artistic life, Frbel has had equal regard to the moral as to the intellectual influences. When the child has gone beyond the age in which he is satisfied with making transient forms and gathering the materials back into boxes, and desires to make something that will last, a legitimate sense of property arises. He feels that what he has made is _his own_, for the thought and work which he knows that he has put into it are his own. Frbel, therefore, would have him, before he begins to _make_ anything, pause and appropriate it intentionally to some object of his love, reverence, or pity. This will check the otherwise rampant propensity to h.o.a.rd, and prevent the pa.s.sions of avarice, vanity, and jealousy from making their appearance.

In our common school life, the pride of _showing off_ their powers, and excelling others, is regularly cultivated in children by compet.i.tion, as a stimulus to industry. But this is as unnecessary as it is deleterious.

For disinterested desire to confer pleasure, and express grat.i.tude and love of others, is found by experience to be a surer stimulus to industry than the baser pa.s.sions, and has the additional value of cultivating positive sweetness and active benevolence. It is desirable, and really produces the greatest practical humility, for children to regard themselves as embryo powers of beneficence, learning to do the Heavenly Father's business from the beginning, like the child Jesus.

Then may they grow "in favor with G.o.d and men," as they grow "in stature," and all their knowledge will prove a divine wisdom unto the salvation of others and themselves. To go into a truly ordered and well governed child-garden, and see all the little children busy making things for the Christmas tree, or for birthday and new year's gifts, for all the friends they know or fancy, we shall see sufficient proofs that love is the truest quickener of industry, and love-inspired industry the true sweetener of the disposition and temper.