Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class and Moral Culture of Infancy Part 3

The object-lessons involved in the plays are those which especially belong to the Kindergarten, because their aim is not so much to open the intellect to science, as to give moral training. The latter is ever to be kept in advance of the former; for it is the _tree of life_, whose fruits--if they are first eaten--will render harmless and salutary those of the tree of knowledge.

I was not unaware of this when I began my own Kindergarten; and the very first thing I did, was to give an object lesson, which was, as I afterwards found, exactly in the spirit of Froebel. When the children were a.s.sembled the first day, in my very pleasant room, looking full of expectation, I went forward with a beautiful rose-tree in a little flower-pot, and said, "Come, and I will show you what is beautiful. It is a rose fully blown. Now say the words--all of you--after me; and I said again, 'It is a rose fully blown.'" They all repeated these words with glad voices, and then each following sentence of that beautiful prose hymn of Mrs. Barbauld. I especially noted the smiling eyes and lips, as they repeated,--

"He who made the rose is more beautiful than the rose.

"It is beautiful, but He is beauty."

Another day a basket of roses was handed round to the children; and, when each had one in hand, this recitation was renewed.

After it was over, I said, "What did G.o.d make the rose for?" They all smiled, as if conscious of knowing; and one, more courageous than the rest, said, "To give us pleasure;" followed by a dear little utilitarian, who said, "To make rose-water." I added, "Yes; and the rose-water gives us pleasure, too, because it has a sweet smell, and a sweet taste, besides. Is not G.o.d very good to give us roses to look at and smell; and to make into rose-water, after they are all faded and fallen to pieces? What is the reason that G.o.d makes things to give us pleasure? Could we not have lived very comfortably without flowers?"

They answered spontaneously, "Because G.o.d loves us." "What else does the dear G.o.d give us to make us happy?" Different children answered, and spoke of different flowers, and of other things which gave them pleasure, and thus they were put into a grateful mood, without a word said about the _duty_ of grat.i.tude to G.o.d; for love of G.o.d comes spontaneously, when he is conceived aright, and forecloses the thought of duty. But duty to our fellow-creatures should always be suggested when the heart is overflowing with grat.i.tude to the common Father. I went on asking such questions as "Do _you_ love anybody? what do you do to make people happy that you love? what would you like to do with your rose? Do sick people like to have flowers? do you know any sick person?

do you like to do the same kind of things G.o.d does? do you think G.o.d wants you to make your friends happy? and all happy whom he loves?" The roses were then gathered into a shallow basin of water, to be preserved till school should be over, and they could go and bestow them as they had severally suggested; for it is important to make children _do_ whatever of kindness they think of, not idly sentimentalize.

Other lessons, on the material origin of the rose, the planting, the process of growth, and even the making of rose-water, opened up; and Mrs. Barbauld's prose hymns afforded other subjects for similar lessons, as well as whatever other hymns they learned to recite or sing; and I took great care that no hymns should be sung that did not admit of being made intelligible to their hearts and imaginations.

Moral training is effected by taking care in the plays to keep the children in the mood of mutual accommodation, by showing them how this is necessary for the beauty of the play. There is also a great opportunity in the playing, to check all selfish movements, by appeals to sympathy and conscience, which is the presentiment of reason, and forefeeling of moral order, for whose culture material order is indispensable; and order must be kept by the child intentionally, that it may cultivate the intellectual principle of which it is the manifestation. Some plan of play prevents the little creatures from hurting each other, and fancy naturally furnishes the plan,--the mind unfolding itself in fancies, which are easily quickened and led in harmless directions by an adult of any resource. Children delight to personate animals; and a fine genius could not better employ itself than in inventing a great many more plays, setting them to rhythmical words, describing what is to be done. Kindergarten plays are easy intellectual exercises; for to do anything whatever with a thought beforehand, develops the heart or quickens the intelligence; and thought of this kind does not tax intellect, or check physical development, which last must never be sacrificed in the process of education.

There are enough instances of marvellous acquisition in infancy, to show that imbibing with the mind is as natural as with the body, if suitable beverage is put to the lips; but in most cases the mind's power is balanced by instincts of body, which should have priority, if they cannot certainly be in full harmony. The mind can better afford to wait for the maturing of the body, for it survives the body, than the body can afford to wait for the mind; for it is irretrievably stunted, if the nervous energy is not free to stimulate its special organs, at least equally with those of the mind.

There is not, however, any need to sacrifice the culture of either mind or body, but to harmonize them. They can and ought to grow together.

They mutually help each other.

CHAPTER V.

THE KINDERGARTNER.

THE first requisite to a Kindergarten is, of course, the Kindergartner, fully intelligent of childhood, and thoroughly trained herself in everything that the child is to do.

The first Kindergartner was Froebel himself; who, in the course of a long life, studied into the science of childhood, and worked out a series of artistical exercises, which aim to educate--that is, _draw_ forth---the powers of children from a more profound depth than ordinary education respects. But instead of beginning with putting checks upon childish play, he took the hint of his method from this spontaneous activity; and began with genially directing it to a more certainly beautiful effect than it can attain when left to itself. A large part of the art of primary school-teaching hitherto, has consisted in keeping children still, and preventing them from playing.

It was Froebel's wisdom to accept the natural activity of childhood as a hint of the Divine Providence, and to utilize its spontaneous play for education. And it is this which takes away from his system that element of baneful antagonism which school discipline is so apt to excite, and which it is such a misfortune should ever be excited between the young and old. Nothing is worse for the soul, at any period of life, than to be put upon self-defence; for humility is the condition of the growth of mind as well as morals, and ensures that natural self-respect shall not degenerate into a petty wilfulness and self-a.s.sertion. The divine impulse of activity in children should not be directly opposed, but accepted and guided into beautiful production, according to the laws of creative order, which the adult has studied out in nature, and genially presents in _playing_ with the child.

But such playing is a great art, and founded on the deepest science of nature, within and without; and therefore Froebel never established a Kindergarten without previously preparing Kindergartners by a normal training, which his faithful disciples have scrupulously kept up. And if only genius and love like his own could in one lifetime have discovered the science and worked out the processes of this culture, yet hundreds of pupils of these normal cla.s.ses have proved, that any fairly gifted, well-educated, genial-tempered young woman, who will devote a reasonable time to training for it, can become a competent Kindergartner.

Nothing short of this will do; for none of the manuals which have been written to guide already trained experts, can supply the place of the living teacher. Written words will not describe the fine gradations of the work, or give an idea of the conversation which is to be constantly had with the children. It would be less absurd to suppose that a person could learn to make watches by reading a description of the manufacture in an encyclopaedia, than to suppose a person could learn to educate children by mere formulas.

Indeed, it is _infinitely_ less absurd. For a child is not finite ma.s.s to be moulded, or a blank paper to be written upon, at another's will.

It is a living subject, whose own cooperation--or at least willingness--is to be conciliated and made instrumental to the end in view. Would a Cremona violin be put into the hands of a person ignorant of music, to be tuned and made to discourse divine harmonies? How is it, then, that the "harp of a thousand strings"--which G.o.d puts into the hands of every mother, in perfect tune--is so recklessly committed, first to ignorant girl-nurses, and then to the least educated teachers?

Looking at children's first schools, it would seem that anybody is thought skilful enough to begin a child's education! It takes a long apprenticeship to learn to play on the instrument with seven strings, in order to bring out music. But it is stupidly thought that anybody can play on the greater instrument, whose strings thrill with pleasure or pain, and discourse good or evil, as they are touched wisely or unwisely!

Froebel struck the key-note of the music of the spheres, which human life is destined to become, when he announced, as a first principle, that the well-thought-out wisdom of the ideal mother's love is the science of education; and that this science of sciences is founded on self-knowledge; by which he did not mean (any more than did Socrates, or that older sage who engraved "know thyself" upon the temple of Delphi) individual idiosyncrasy, but the very self which Jesus Christ said all men must _become_, when he set a little child in the midst, and declared that no one could enter his kingdom, that did not _become_ as _one_; and when, another time, he called and blessed little children, because, as he said, of such was the kingdom of heaven; and again, more significantly still, when he warned from "_offending_ (it might be better rendered _perverting_) these little ones; _because_," as he added, "_their spirits do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven_." To know the soul before it has been warped by individual caprice and circ.u.mstance, is the science of sciences, on which is to be founded the art of arts; viz., that of educating the child so that its individuality may develop, not destroy, its sense of universal relations. And here I must pause to say, that it is simply astonishing that when most of us believe, as our religion, that Jesus Christ embodied in himself the wisdom, as well as love, and even power of G.o.d,--"without measure,"--his words about children are pa.s.sed over with so little inquiry into the depths of their _meaning_. What can it mean--that their spirits always behold the face of the Father--short of the very philosophy of Gioberti,--that the newly-created soul commences its consciousness in the eternal world, with a reciprocal vision of G.o.d _remembered in the heart_ through life, and const.i.tuting the divine term of conscience, which is the CONSTANT, while the human term is of only fitful growth. As Wordsworth says,--

"Our Life's Star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar!

Not in entire forgetfulness And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From G.o.d who is our home.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light and whence it flows; He sees it _in his joy_: The youth, who daily from the East Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended."

But Froebel does not, like Wordsworth, make it strictly inevitable, however it may have hitherto been common, that

"The man perceives it die away And fade into the light of common day;"

for he teaches that the parental sympathy and instruction of those adults who have attained

"The faith that looks through death In years that bring the philosophic mind"

should intervene; which is just Kindergarten culture; preserving the heart's vision of the truths that

"We are toiling all our lives to find"

unshadowed; while the organs of the human mind gradually bring to bear G.o.d's manifestation in nature, which, point by point, forms the human understanding, by making an intellectual consciousness of what the heart knows.

Because the science of education is the a.n.a.lysis and gauging of love by intellect, Froebel sought the true form of the art of education in the method of the mother's love, which he studied out with a philosophic earnestness. Not that any mother could _tell_ him the secret. It cannot be put into formulas, nor does it come by intuition into the scientific form in which a Kindergartner needs to have it. Froebel, in watching the mother, saw that she was "led in a way she knew not." But he divined the meaning of that way, and its issues, and gives it to the Kindergartner.

The beginning of a child's life is its learning the fact and uses of its body. Here, as everywhere, human action blindly gropes for knowledge.

The child cannot even find the breast to suck, but sucks what is nearest, compelling the mother to give it the breast by automatic motions which she understands; or by cries which awaken her heart.

Gradually these reciprocal instincts open upon the child the first thing it knows; namely, that it is dependent for the means of life. For a child knows, in its heart, for a long time before it reflects and gets the thought, that not in itself, but outside of itself, is the source of its life. Of course, it is bodily life merely that it seeks at first, trying to incorporate the without with the within by eating every thing; the organs for this action on the outward world being first developed.

But if it is regularly fed and kept comfortable, the eye will be satisfied with seeing, the ear with hearing, the hand with handling.

Now it is no less the instinct of the mother to make the baby's body the first plaything, than to feel its own body is the first pleasure of the child. To use its organs in play is the first action in which the voluntary combines with the instinctive animal impulse.

The first distinctive human intelligence a child _expresses_, is the recognition of its mother's smile. Its higher life begins in the reciprocation of that smile. _No mere animal smiles!_ The mother's heart also goes to meet the child's faith with vocal expressions of tender joy; the heart of the child is awakened by tones which emparadise it, and it answers by like tones. There is nothing among the lower animals like this conversation of mother and child, by looks and tones, emparadising both. By and by, it notices light and colors, and begins to play with its hands and feet.

Hence the most characteristic work of Froebel is "The Mother's Cosseting Songs." In this imperfect world, mothers are not always true to ideal motherhood; but ignorance, and often indolence, and other forms of self-indulgence, superinducing stupidity,--even a tyrannous sense of property in the child, and sometimes mere timidity, interferes. And, in general, Froebel saw how little most mothers reflect on the great work they are doing when they play with their children. He wished them to study into the laws they are obeying, in order to discover their scope and meaning, that they may be able to supplement with thought the short-comings of their too often spoilt instincts. Mothers taught him more than they knew themselves; and he repaid the debt by telling them what they taught him in these "Cosseting Songs," which he gathered from many lips and brought together for the enriching of all.

First may be seen in the pictured ill.u.s.trations which accompany the songs, that the plays are merely the sympathetic furtherance of the child's own motions. The mother enjoys the sight of her baby kicking up its little legs, fumbling its little hands, and enjoying its bodily existence generally; and she sympathizingly intervenes, and draws the child to forget itself in its heart-sense of her sympathetic presence.

She feeds the instinctive putting forth of its own joy, the first form of its faith, with the expression of her joy; and thus the heart grows with the body, and the mind opens to expect boundless love, which it reciprocates without reserve. A healthy child

"Loves whate'er it looks upon."

If it is not happy and loving, it is the condemnation of its environment. Some one in relation with it, perhaps more than one, has failed to show the necessary love; and "better were it for such," as Jesus Christ has said "that a millstone were hung about their necks, and they were cast into the uttermost depths of the sea." If these words mean any thing,--and who will dare say they are mere rhetoric?--then let us take care that we do not rush into the work of education, without being sure that we shall not do so immense a mischief; and let mothers see to it, that they do not put their children into the care of persons who do not combine love and knowledge of childhood in measures not to be expected of the common run of children's nurses and primary teachers.

Not only because every mother is not an ideal mother, but because sometimes children are consigned, by inevitable circ.u.mstance, to other nursing than a wise mother's, such a manual as the "Cosseting Songs" is indispensable _to instruct nurses_.

And nurses ought always to be instructed. When Froebel was in Hamburg, he received nurses into normal training. Both mothers and nurses brought their infants of six months old to his house, and he taught them how to play with--without fatiguing--them, by carefully respecting those indications of pleasure and pain which are the child's only means of communication.

And as lectures on _child-nature_ are a part of the Kindergarten training, those preparing to be children's nurses, even to this day, are admitted to the Hamburg training-school, which was not relinquished when Froebel died, but is now instructed by the best teachers of the Volks-Kindergartens, who go into it by turns. It has its sessions in the evenings; and the normal pupils pay for their instruction, at least in part, by a.s.sisting in the morning in the Volks-Kindergarten, which forms also an important part of their training.

But at all events, there can be no adequate Kindergarten culture anywhere, unless a specific normal training is constantly kept up to supply the ever-increasing demand which tends to outgo the supply, especially when nurses are admitted, as at Hamburg.

Having thus indicated the source whence must be drawn the Kindergarten culture, it is not our purpose to attempt the impossible, by stating it abstractly; for a series of abstractions is more apt to conceal than to reveal a living science. No book can train a Kindergartner, but only at best serve as a convenient reminder to educated experts, and instruct parents that there is one necessary condition of their children's receiving the benefit of Kindergarten culture; viz., a thoroughly educated Kindergartner.

And this may be obtained even in America, from a lady of _the apostolic succession_; a pupil of the training-school of the Baroness Marienholtz, of Berlin, who has devoted her talents, her fortune, the prestige of her rank, and her personal services, to spread the art of her revered master on the continent of Europe. Miss Kriege not only has studied a year in this training-school, but all the while frequented the Kindergarten of Madame Vogler, as observer and a.s.sistant; and,--together with her mother, a lady who is the equal of the Baroness Marienholtz in every thing but the fortune which enables the latter to teach without price,--combines every qualification, with enthusiasm, for the spread of a method of education that unquestionably has a great future in this country, inasmuch as it makes a true base to the grand harmonies of our national const.i.tution.

As one feature of the normal cla.s.s is a series of lectures on _the being of the child_, which are given on one day of the week, it would be desirable that Madame Kriege should admit mothers and sisters who have no intention of making teaching their vocation, but who may thus understand and be able to co-operate in spirit with the Kindergartner, in the education of the children; for it is a great hindrance to the Kindergarten when it is not understood at home. All the educators of the child should understand each other, and co-operate, if the highest results are to be attained.