Part 1 (1/2)

Education in The Hoarten, and The Primary School

by Elizabeth P Peabody

INTRODUCTION

AMONG those who in the last twenty years have helped to spread a knowledge of the educational principles of Froebel beyond the limits of his native country, Miss Elizabeth Peabody's na to her enthusiastic efforts that the value of the Kindergarten was early recognised in the United States, and that its first Aed to maintain, amid many difficulties, a standard of real efficiency for the teachers of Froebel's syste occupied herself, theoretically and practically, with educational subjects Not satisfied by merely intellectual methods of instruction, and impatient of the superficiality which was too often approved, she reat aim to train character, and, by a simultaneous development of children's mental capacities and of their moral nature, to prepare the that when Miss Peabody, holding such views of education, came in contact with the ideas and the work of Froebel, she at once experienced the delight always attached to the discovery that the proble our own minds have been successfully solved by some one who has started from principles such as ours, and who has cultivated the same ideal She found that Froebel had carried into practice that very kind of training of which she had realized the iht truths which she had already er to inform herself about the new system, Miss Peabody travelled, in 1868, to Europe, on purpose to visit in Gerer living, and by his best pupils On her return to America, she devoted herself for artens and of training institutions, and to enlightening, by her writings and addresses,the value and simplicity of Froebel's ood enerous exertions, in the increasing nuarten in America, in its adoption as a first department of many State priartens founded from North to South, and from New York to San Francisco Advanced now in years, this wared in other lines of philanthropic work, but she retains, and still ress which she has laboured so actively to secure

Ever since Miss Peabody's zeal was kindled for Froebel's ideal as to young children's education, her help and criticisarten students in America, and by all ith serious purpose, have thus worked for the move of the session at Nores, and on other occasions when she saw an opportunity of exercising influence in favour of rational principles of education This book, which appeared only lately at Boston, consists of a few of such lectures It is noith Miss Peabody's consent, published in England, where lad to profit by the author's wise and loving study of little children, and her syht into Froebel'sthe last few years various thoughtful writers on education have drawn attention here to the subject of infant ement, and it is remarkable hoidely the principles of Froebel and Pestalozzi are now recognised and accepted But books are still greatly needed which, especially addressed to those who have charge of children, urge in a convincing manner how essential it is that the first few years should be rightly guided, and indicate certain defined educational aims I think that Miss Peabody's lectures are likely to prove very useful in this direction Though her readers will perhaps contest soical deductions, they cannot fail to be i, by her evidently tender and reverent love of children, and by her excellent suggestions in regard to their harst its other merits, this book tends to correct the still too prevalent notion, that the Kindergarten is a peculiar--an alical--institution, which provides a sure remedy for children's imperfections, apart frolected little ones, the contrast between their treatarten and their ordinary experience, is necessarily striking and decided, because the parents are careless and ignorant But Froebel's view of the Kindergarten was, that it should be a supple to her ive, through the whole day, to her younger children the regular attention which their awakening faculties need It was to be a portion of the ho, not a patch of a new texture He saw that a child requires to have about it, as Miss Peabody says, ”love and thought in practical operation,” and this not now and then, but always And as the e of others, he organised the Kindergarten--a higher nursery, under refined and motherly influences, for those that have passed out of babyhood

There, on the saently tended for two or three hours of the day, and developed in body, mind, and character Froebel's object also was to provide coe and attain soive the opportunity to inexperienced uidance carried out by even young teachers, who had been trained to study children, and had learnt how to occupy them suitably Here we see another link with the home Now Miss Peabody entered so arten out of its supposed exceptional sphere, and to show that the teachers represent te that which the , for the children's good

These Lectures are also useful in presenting a high ideal of Kindergarten teaching Miss Peabody sees that the work of educating requires special qualifications in those who undertake it, and that such as are not fitted for it, had better take up a different career At the sa, as always, character above intellect, she considers that ious and moral nature is well cultivated, and who take pains to develop theirthes are calculated to inspire the teacher with hearty zest for her labour, and yet with an abiding feeling that even years of practice leave her far behind her ever advancing standard Miss Peabody encourages no exaggerated estinises that he gained many truths from fellow-students of children's nature and faculties; but she clais to those ith unselfish aims bestow close attention on a subject of deep human interest To teachers, therefore, as well as to all who love children, she says--and with this quotation I will close my few introductory remarks--”You will not be wise if you do not look out of Froebel's ”

E A MANNING

LECTURE I

THE KINDERGARTNER

WHOEVER proposes to beco to the idea of Frbel, must at once dismiss from her mind the notion that it requires less ability and culture to educate children of three, than those of ten or fifteen years of age It deuide accurately the _for itself, requires a finer ability and a profounder insight than to listen to recitations from books ever so learned and scientific?

To for a knowledge of the laws of thought, will, and feeling, in their interaction upon the threshold of consciousness, which can be acquired only by the study of children themselves in their every act of life--a study to be pursued in the spirit that reveals what Jesus Christ _meant_, when he said: ”He that receiveth a little child in my name, receiveth _me, and Him that sent me_;” ”Woe unto him who offends one of these little ones, for their spirits behold the face of my Father who is in heaven”

Not till children who have been therow up, will there be found any adult persons who can keep kindergartens without devoting themselves to a special study of child-nature in the spirit of devout hunorance and injury inevitable froun our own lives in the confusions of accidental and disorderly i had the clue of reason put into our hands by that human providence of education, which, to be true, must reflect point by point the Divine Providence, that according to the revelations of history is educating the whole race, and whichthe spontaneous play of children fresh from the hands of the Creator

The education of children by a genial training of their spontaneous playful activities to the production of order and beauty within the humble sphere of childish fancy and affection, was a fresh idea with Frbel; but, like every universal idea, it was not absolutely new in the world Plato says, in his great book on _Laws_:--

”Play has the htiest influence on the maintenance and non-maintenance of laws; and if children's plays are conducted according to laws and rules, and they always pursue their a pleasure therein, it need not be feared that when they are grown up they will break lahose objects are ain, in his _Republic_, he says:--

”Froht to be subject to strict laws For if their plays, and those who le with them, are arbitrary and lawless, how can they beco and obedient? On the contrary, when children are early trained to submit to laws in their plays, love for these laws enters into their souls with thethem, and helps their development”

You will observe Plato's association of ulate play Music, with the Greeks, had indeed a broaderthan attaches to the ith us, who confine it to that subtle expression of the sense of law and harmony which is ination through the ear All knowledge and art inspired by the sacred Nine, they na, the har of colors, plastic art, poetry, and science, which is nothing less than thinking according to the rhythhters of Me thethe_music_ or how to live divinely; a process which may commence before children leave the nursery, if their plays are regulated according to artistic principles

It is comanization I think their organization was only exceptional, because it was more carefully treated in infancy than ours is apt to be I do not believe that in Greece, or anywhere in the world, there were ever more beautiful little children than there are in America; and the beauty would not be so transient as it unquestionably is with us, if truly cultivated persons took our children in hand from babyhood for the care of their bodies and norant class of the coeneral run of the servants who have the education of the their earliest infancy Even many parents who take care of their own children do not y, and see in little children which requires special study, except indeed at the very first, when the child is put into the mother's arms more helpless than the lowest form of animal life (for the very insect is endowed by nature, as the child is not, with enough absolute knowledge--we call it instinct--to fulfil its small circle of relations without help of its parents) It seeht, that the child, whose duty and whose destiny it is to have dominion over nature, should be endowed least of all creatures with any absolute knowledge of it But the mystery is solved e consider that the happiness which is distinctively human, is only to be found in the discovery and enjoy relations to our kind, with the fulfil to them It is the absolute helplessness of the hues the maternal instinct to rush to his rescue, lest he should die at once And to continue to study his manifestations of pleasure and discontent with obedient respectfulness, is the perfection of the ot on so far as to know the simplest uses of its own body, and especially after it has learned enough words to express its simplest wants and sensations, even parents seeet on by itself, so that children froe are left to self-education, as it were; this virtual abandon of them--mind and body--on the part of those around thelect; for when are children uide their own thoughts and action? Hoould a garden of flowers fare, to be planted, and then left to groith so little scientific care taken by the gardener, as is bestowed upon children between one and five years old?

Frbel, in the very word kindergarten, proclaiospel for children which holds within it the prodom, in which God's will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven--a consummation which we daily pray for with our lips, but do not do the first thing to bring about, by educating our children in the way of order, which is no less earth's than ”heaven's first law,” and arten uarded coardener treats his plants; that is, in the first place, studied to see what they are, and what conditions they require for the fullest and rowth; in the second place, put into or supplied with these conditions, with as little handling of their individuality as possible, but with an unceasing genial and provident care to rerowth It is because they are living organisms that they are to be _cultivated_--not _drilled_ (which is a process only appropriate to insensate stone)

I think there is perhaps no better way ofis, which makes such an importunate deerrew in the mind of Frbel himself; for thus we shall see that it would be unreasonable to expect that it could be improvised by every teacher; but that here, as elsewhere in huuide his fellows, according to the law enunciated by St John in the 38th verse of the 4th chapter of his Gospel

We have the materials of this history on Frbel's own authority, in an autobiographical letter that he wrote to the Duke of Meiningen, whose interest in him was excited by an incident so characteristic of Frbel, that I will relate it Having heard of a cruel and stupid oppositionofficials of a region where he wasa martyr of hi him the situation of head-tutor to his only son But Frbel astonished hi the duke word that it would be impossible to educate, in a perfect manner, a child so isolated by conventional rank and circumstances that he must inevitably conceive himself to be intrinsically superior to other children The duke was sowith every difficulty, should refuse one of the highest posts in a royal household, with all its emoluments, from a purely conscientious scruple of this kind, that his curiosity was piqued He sent for Frbel, and they had a conversation upon the principles and spirit of a truly human education, by which Frbel convinced him that a noble moral development was indispensable to a truly intellectual one, so that the duke was actually persuaded to send his son as an equal with other boys to a neighboring school One day, so_, on account of a beating he had received froe, asked the name of the offender, and said that he should be immediately expelled fro prince dried his tears, refused to tell the boy's na was all fair!” It is quite consistent with these facts, that the duke should ask Frbel how his idea grew in his mind Frbel's answer is still extant I have not been able to get the original text, but I can give you the substance of it, as it was given to me

Friedrich Frbel was the son of a laborious pastor of seven villages in Thuringia He lost his mother before his remembrance, and fell into the care of hard-worked doht upon his infant life except what came from the love and sympathy of two older brothers, who cherished hie was in the shadow of the church, and into it no ray of sunshi+ne ever came; and the child was kept drearily in the house He tells of seeing work a part of the church that had becoed to i the ti so heavily on his hands, his discovery of the building instinct, so universal in childhood, and which he thought should always have simple materials afforded it hich to express itself At last his fatherchild of her husband, and awakened in hi love, which he reciprocated with all the energies of his long-starved heart But when the merely instinctive woman had a child of her own, a certain jealousy arose in her, and she repulsed poor little Friedrich, and ”no longer”--as he pathetically re expression in Gerh association It is plain that the child was endoith an immense sensibility to, or more than ordinary presentiment of the Divine Order of Nature, and with the extreift As he was so poorly developed physically, he became in his joyless early life perhaps morbidly nervous Disappointed in his timid efforts to please, all the sweet bells of his nature were jangled, and he was miserable--he knew not why He says he always found hi--the too much, or the too little--and was cohty boy But sometimes the pastor took him out of his stepmother's way, to accompany himself in his parochial visits, in which Frbel says he see family quarrels

This s that was rather ludicrously expressed, when he one day asked of his oldest brother, who happened to co-school, why it was that God had not made people all men, or all wo in the world In order to divert him from such premature consideration of social questions, the posed elder brother undertook to teach hi to him the law of contrasts conciliated with each other for the production of harhted hat he was shown; but still his exceptionally enius importunately asked, why may not huoodness?