Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class and Moral Culture of Infancy Part 1

Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Cla.s.s and Moral Culture of Infancy.

by Elizabeth P. Peabody and Mary Mann.

PREFACE.

CAMBRIDGE, Ma.s.s., March 1, 1869.

SINCE publishing the first edition of what I meant to be a Guide to those who undertake to give Kindergarten culture, I have been in Europe, and made a special study of the Kindergartens established in Hamburgh, Berlin, and Dresden, by Froebel himself, and his most distinguished scholars.

This study has more and more confirmed the conviction I derived from reading Froebel's "Essay on the Education of the Human Race;" viz., that no greater benefit could be conferred on our country, than the far and wide spread of Kindergartens, _as an underpinning_, so to say, of our n.o.ble public-school system, giving adequate moral foundation, thoroughness, and practicality to the national education.

But I also learned that no book could be written that would make an expert Kindergartner. It was the careful observations and earnest experiments of half a century, that gave to Froebel himself that profound knowledge of childhood which enabled him to formulate the principles, deduce the rules, and call forth the spirit of a genuine art of education. But though no genius and industry less than his own could have originated this art, any soundly cultured, intelligent, genial-tempered young woman, who loves children, can appreciate and practise it, if--and only if--she is trained by a living teacher engaged in the work at the moment.

This, I myself have proved experimentally also; for _my_ knowledge was first obtained only from books. I had the best manuals and guides, but did not know that they were intended merely for the convenience of already trained teachers; and that they necessarily omitted the characteristic peculiarity of the method, because _written words_ cannot do justice to the fine steps by which the child is led to gradually carry its total spontaneity forwards, on every plane of its little life,--artistic, moral, and intellectual.

For there is nothing merely mechanical and imitative in true Kindergarten culture: the child acts "from within outwards" in every thing it does, however seemingly trifling; and, if we use the word _artist_ in its most general sense, becomes an artist from the beginning. Thus is prevented that too common divorce between the powers of thinking and acting, whose harmony ensures ability in a strict proportion to intellectual capacity. Consciousness of aim, and enjoyment of success, at every step develop new ideas and power, and fulfil that law of nature by which thought tends to rush into act instantly, as in childish play. Nothing is more melancholy in experience than to see people _drifting_ instead of _living_; but this general failure of human life is owing to the fact, that the una.s.sisted child is baffled in its will and balked of its desires, by a want of that steadiness of aim, perseverance, and knowledge of how to adapt means to ends, which adult sympathy and wisdom should supply; and from want of which it loses the original harmony of its being in the process of its growth. Kindergarten culture is the adult mind entering into the child's world, and appreciating nature's intention as displayed in every impulse of spontaneous life; and so directing it that the joy of success may be ensured at every step, and artistic things be actually produced, which gives the self-reliance and conscious intelligence that ought to discriminate human power from blind force.

The only mistake in idea which I see that I made in my "Guide," was making it the object of the teacher to cultivate the _individualities_ of each pupil especially. This is not even desirable, and would require the intuitive genius of Froebel in every single teacher. In a true art of education, individualities will be tenderly respected; but it is not what is individual, but what is common to all (or that universal of human nature which rises into the divine creative), which is to be cultivated especially. Every process of Froebel's Kindergarten is good for all children, and, interfering with nothing original, leaves their individualities free to express themselves _sufficiently_. For individual varieties are irrefragable, and give piquancy and beauty to human life, except they are pampered,--when they become deformities. To follow universal laws in their orderly development, ensures a necessary harmony with others, while a margin is always to be left for _invention_, which is what gives conscious freedom, and makes obedience no longer blind and pa.s.sive, but intelligent and active; every healthy instinct and affection becoming at last spiritual law.

Nevertheless, I gladly meet the demand of the public for a second edition of the "Guide," because its defect is not in its spirit and general idea, seeing that it has awakened an interest in Kindergartens all over the United States, as numerous letters from all parts have proved to me; but in my having somewhat confused what belongs to the second and third stages of primary education, with a preliminary process, which it is necessary not only to begin with, but to keep distinct for a considerable time, until the habit of mind is formed of asking clearly what is going to be done before attempting to do it. What I missed cannot be supplied by any book; for this preliminary process can only be learned from the living teaching of the Normal cla.s.s. I make some revisory notes, also change some thirty pages, and gladly embrace the opportunity, which the popularity of my "Guide" gives me, to make known, as far as it goes abroad, that, when I came home from Europe, I found what I had seen to be the indispensable condition of an effective introduction of Froebel's art into either the private or public education of America; viz., a training-school for Kindergartners, actually established by Madame Kriege in Boston (127 Charles Street), in connection with a Kindergarten to be taught by her daughter, fresh from the school of Berlin, founded by the Baroness Marienholtz, a n.o.ble lady who has devoted her pen, her fortune, the prestige of her rank, and even her personal services, to the diffusion of Kindergarten culture on the continent of Europe.

The so-called Kindergarten which I had established, was gladly given up to make room for this genuine one; and I have the highest expectations from the Normal training. Already several teachers, who had made experiments of their own, which had taught them the need of this special instruction, have engaged themselves as Madame Kriege's pupils; and the spread of the demand for Kindergartners will, I think, keep her Normal cla.s.s always full. I cannot but hope that the time may come when the Normal schools of all our States may be endowed with a professorship of Kindergarten culture adequately filled.

Omitting my own preface to my first edition, I retain as explanation of the origin of the letters on moral culture, which make the last part of the "Guide," and give it its greatest value to mothers, Mrs. Mann's

POSTSCRIPT.

"I have been urged to publish these letters, written twenty years ago, as an appendix to a Kindergarten Guide, because the school herein described was a groping attempt at something of the same kind, and had left very pleasant memories in the hearts of the children referred to--now no longer children, but some of them men and women n.o.bly and beautifully acting their parts on earth as parents; and others,--having died martyrs' deaths for human freedom in the desolating war that now ravages our beloved country,--angels in heaven.

"If an inborn love of children and of school-keeping are qualifications for judging of the best means of educating them, I may claim to have known something of the theory and practice best adapted to that end. My object was to put them in possession of all their faculties. Many improvements in methods, and many facilities in means, have been added to the resources of teachers since these letters were written. Physical training is felt to be of the greatest importance, in preference to the ancient mode of shutting children up many hours in close rooms, and repressing all natural and joyous life. The principle is discovered of educating by _directing the activities_. Hence the Kindergarten.

"M. M.

"CONCORD, Ma.s.s., 1863."

AMERICAN KINDERGARTEN.

CHAPTER I.

KINDERGARTEN--WHAT IS IT?

WHAT is a Kindergarten? I will reply by negatives. It is not the old-fashioned infant-school. That was a narrow inst.i.tution, comparatively; the object being (I do not speak of Pestalozzi's own, but that which we have had in this country and in England) to take the children of poor laborers, and keep them out of the fire and the streets, while their mothers went to their necessary labor. Very good things, indeed, in their way. Their principle of discipline was to circ.u.mvent the wills of children, in every way that would enable their teachers to keep them within bounds, and quiet. It was certainly better that they should learn to sing _by rote_ the Creed and the "definitions"

of scientific terms, and such like, than to learn the profanity and obscenity of the streets, which was the alternative. But no mother who wished for anything which might be called the _development_ of her child would think of putting it into an infant-school, especially if she lived in the country, amid

"the mighty sum Of things forever speaking,"

where any "old grey stone" would altogether surpa.s.s, as a stand-point, the bench of the highest cla.s.s of an infant-school. In short, they did not state the problem of infant culture with any breadth, and accomplished nothing of general interest on the subject.

Neither is the primary public school a Kindergarten, though it is but justice to the capabilities of that praiseworthy inst.i.tution, so important in default of a better, to say that in one of them, at the North End of Boston, an enterprising and genial teacher has introduced one feature of Froebel's plan. She has actually given to each of her little children a box of playthings, wherewith to amuse itself according to its own sweet will, at all times when not under direct instruction,--necessarily, in her case, on condition of its being perfectly quiet; and this one thing makes this primary school the best one in Boston, both as respects the attainments of the scholars and their good behavior.

_Kindergarten_ means a garden of children, and Froebel, the inventor of it, or rather, as he would prefer to express it, _the discoverer of the method of Nature_, meant to symbolize by the name the spirit and plan of treatment. How does the gardener treat his plants? He studies their individual natures, and puts them into such circ.u.mstances of soil and atmosphere as enable them to grow, flower, and bring forth fruit,--also to renew their manifestation year after year. He does not expect to succeed unless he learns all their wants, and the circ.u.mstances in which these wants will be supplied, and all their possibilities of beauty and use, and the means of giving them opportunity to be perfected. On the other hand, while he knows that they must not be forced against their individual natures, he does not leave them to grow wild, but prunes redundancies, removes destructive worms and bugs from their leaves and stems, and weeds from their vicinity,--carefully watching to learn what peculiar insects affect what particular plants, and how the former can be destroyed without injuring the vitality of the latter. After all the most careful gardener can do, he knows that the form of the plant is predetermined in the germ or seed, and that the inward tendency must concur with a mult.i.tude of influences, the most powerful and subtile of which is removed in place ninety-five millions of miles away.

In the Kindergarten, _children_ are treated on an a.n.a.logous plan. It presupposes gardeners of the mind, who are quite aware that they have as little power to override the characteristic individuality of a child, or to predetermine this characteristic, as the gardener of plants to say that a lily shall be a rose. But notwithstanding this limitation on one side, and the necessity for a concurrence of the Spirit on the other,--which is more independent of our modification than the remote sun,--yet they must feel responsible, after all, for the perfection of the development, in so far as removing every impediment, preserving every condition, and pruning every redundance.

This a.n.a.logy of education to the gardener's art is so striking, both as regards what we can and what we cannot do, that Froebel has put every educator into a most suggestive Normal School, by the very word which he has given to his seminary,--Kindergarten.

If every school-teacher in the land had a garden of flowers and fruits to cultivate, it could hardly fail that he would learn to be wise in his vocation. For suitable preparation, the first, second, and third thing is, to

"Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher."

The "new education," as the French call it, begins with children in the mother's arms. Froebel had the nurses bring to his establishment, in Hamburg, children who could not talk, who were not more than three months old, and trained the nurses to work on his principles and by his methods. This will hardly be done in this country, at least at present; but to supply the place of such a cla.s.s, a lady of Boston has prepared and published, under copyright, Froebel's First Gift, consisting of six soft b.a.l.l.s of the three primary and the three secondary colors, which are sold in a box, with a little manual for mothers, in which the true principle and plan of tending babies, so as not to rasp their nerves, but to amuse without wearying them, is very happily suggested. There is no mother or nurse who would not be a.s.sisted by this little manual essentially. As it says in the beginning,--"Tending babies is an art, and every art is founded on a science of observations; for love is not wisdom, but love must act _according to wisdom_ in order to succeed.

Mothers and nurses, however tender and kind-hearted, may, and oftenest do, weary and vex the nerves of children, in well-meant efforts to amuse them, and weary themselves the while. Froebel's exercises, founded on the observations of an intelligent sensibility, are intended to amuse without wearying, to educate without vexing."

Froebel's Second Gift for children, adapted to the age from one to two or three years, with another little book of directions, has also been published by the same lady, and is perhaps a still greater boon to every nursery; for this is the age when many a child's temper is ruined, and the inclination of the twig wrongly bent, through sheer _want of resource and idea_, on the part of nurses and mothers.

But it is to the next age--from three years old and upwards--that the Kindergarten becomes the desideratum, if not a necessity. The isolated home, made into a flower-vase by the application of the principles set forth in the Gifts above mentioned, may do for babies. But every mother and nurse knows how hard it is to meet the demands of a child too young to be taught to read, but whose opening intelligence and irrepressible bodily activity are so hard to be met by an adult, however genial and active. Children generally take the temper of their whole lives from this period of their existence. Then "the twig is bent," either towards that habit of self-defence which is an ever-renewing cause of selfishness, or to the sun of love-in-exercise, which is the exhaustless source of goodness and beauty.[A]

The indispensable thing now is a sufficient society of children. It is only in the society of equals that the social instinct can be gratified, and come into equilibrium with the instinct of self-preservation.

Self-love, and love of others, are equally natural; and before reason is developed, and the proper spiritual life begins, sweet and beautiful childhood may bloom out and imparadise our mortal life. Let us only give the social instinct of children its fair chance. For this purpose, a few will not do. The children of one family are not enough, and do not come along fast enough. A large company should be gathered out of many families. It will be found that the little things are at once taken out of themselves, and become interested in each other. In the variety, affinities develop themselves very prettily, and the rough points of rampant individualities wear off. We have seen a highly-gifted child, who, at home, was--to use a vulgar, but expressive word--pesky and odious, with the exacting demands of a powerful, but untrained mind and heart, become "sweet as roses" spontaneously, amidst the rebound of a large, well-ordered, and carefully watched child-society. Anxious mothers have brought us children, with a thousand deprecations and explanations of their characters, as if they thought we were going to find them little monsters, which their motherly hearts were persuaded they were not, though they behaved like little sanchos at home,--and, behold, they were as harmonious, from the very beginning, as if they had undergone the subduing influence of a lifetime. We are quite sure that children begin with loving others quite as intensely as they love themselves,--forgetting themselves in their love of others,--if they only have as fair a chance of being benevolent and self-sacrificing as of being selfish. Sympathy is as much a natural instinct as self-love, and no more or less innocent, in a moral point of view. Either principle alone makes an ugly and depraved form of natural character. Balanced, they give the element of happiness, and the conditions of spiritual goodness and truth,--making children fit temples for the Holy Ghost to dwell in.

A Kindergarten, then, is children in society,--a commonwealth or republic of children,--whose laws are all part and parcel of the Higher Law alone. It may be contrasted, in every particular, with the old-fashioned school, which is an absolute monarchy, where the children are subjected to a lower expediency, having for its prime end quietness, or such order as has "reigned in Warsaw" since 1831.

But let us not be misunderstood. We are not of those who think that children, in any condition whatever, will inevitably develop into beauty and goodness. Human nature tends to revolve in a vicious circle, around the idiosyncrasy; and children must have over them, in the person of a wise and careful teacher, a power which shall deal with them as G.o.d deals with the mature, presenting the claims of sympathy and truth whenever they presumptuously or unconsciously fall into selfishness. We have the best conditions of moral culture in a company large enough for the exacting disposition of the solitary child to be balanced by the claims made by others on the common stock of enjoyment,--there being a reasonable oversight of older persons, wide-awake to antic.i.p.ate, prevent, and adjust the rival pretensions which must always arise where there are finite beings with infinite desires, while Reason, whose proper object is G.o.d, is yet undeveloped.

Let the teacher always take for granted that the law of love is quick within, whatever are appearances, and the better self will generally respond. In proportion as the child is young and unsophisticated, will be the certainty of the response to a teacher of simple faith:

"There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them,--who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth.

"And blest are they who in the main This faith even now do entertain, Live in the spirit of this creed, Yet find another strength, according to their need."

That "other strength" is to be found in recognition of the Eternal laws of order, and reverent application of them to human action. But children must receive this from the Kindergartner, who shall give them such help in embodying their ever-springing fancies as shall prevent "the weight of chance desires," and issue in a tangible success, by entering into and carrying forward their total, spontaneous activity, without destroying its childishness.

One of the most important exercises for children in the Kindergarten is block building. A box of eight little cubes is so managed that it will unfold in the child's mind the law of symmetry, by means of series of forms which the children are led to make in a way rather difficult to describe here. So quick are the fancies of children, that the blocks will serve also as symbols of every thing in Nature and imagination. We have seen an ingenious teacher a.s.semble a cla.s.s of children around her large table, to each of whom she had given the blocks. The first thing was to count them, a great process of arithmetic to most of them. Then she made something and explained it. It was perhaps a light-house,--and some blocks would represent rocks near it to be avoided, and ships sailing in the ocean; or perhaps it was a hen-coop, with chickens inside, and a fox prowling about outside, and a boy who was going to catch the fox and save the fowls. Then she told each child to make something, and when it was done hold up a hand. The first one she asked to explain, and then went round the cla.s.s. If one began to speak before another had ended, she would hold up her finger and say,--"It is not your turn." In the course of the winter, she taught, over these blocks, a great deal about the habits of animals. She studied natural history in order to be perfectly accurate in her symbolic representation of the habitation of each animal, and their enemies were also represented by blocks. The children imitated these; and when they drew upon their imaginations for facts, and made fantastic creations, she would say,--"Those, I think, were fairy hens" (or whatever); for it was her principle to accept everything, and thus tempt out their invention. The great value of this exercise is to get them into the habit of representing something they have thought by an outward symbol. The explanations they are always eager to give, teach them to express themselves in words. Full scope is given to invention, whether in the direction of possibilities or of the impossibilities in which children's imaginations revel,--in either case the child being trained to the habit of embodiment of its thought.

Froebel thought it very desirable to have a garden where the children could cultivate flowers. He had one which he divided into lots for the several children, reserving a portion for his own share in which they could a.s.sist him. He thought it the happiest mode of calling their attention to the invisible G.o.d, whose power must be waited upon, after the conditions for growth are carefully arranged according to _laws_ which they must observe. Where a garden is impossible, a flower-pot with a plant in it, for each child to take care of, would do very well.

But the best way to cultivate a sense of the presence of G.o.d is to draw the attention to the conscience, which is very active in children, and which seems to them (as we all can testify from our own remembrance) another than themselves, and yet themselves. We have heard a person say, that in her childhood she was puzzled to know which was herself, the voice of her inclination or of her conscience, for they were palpably two; and what a joyous thing it was when she was first convinced that one was the Spirit of G.o.d, whom unlucky teaching had previously embodied in a form of terror on a distant judgment-seat. Children are consecrated as soon as they get the spiritual idea, and it may be so presented that it shall make them happy as well as true. But the adult who enters into such conversation with a child must be careful not to shock and profane, instead of nurturing the soul. It is possible to avoid both discouraging and flattering views, and to give the most tender and elevating a.s.sociations.