Part 3 (1/2)
”Love is an unerring light, And joy its own security”
And that ”other strength,” whichnature of the child in the felt presence of the Inspirer of Duty, will certainly be needed by the kindergartner ill 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 a the Irish nurses those who could teach ether bad ood reat deal of discipline; and I hope the time may come when schools for the education of children's nurses, such as Frbel established in Ha, which still exist, h I think the education of _ to aim at, as it would render nursery maids comparatively unnecessary It is so short a period of achildren, 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 seeate herthe nursery period On the other hand, when the age for the kindergarten co 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 tianized that no ed to leave their children's souls uncared for in order to get the ithal 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 Phenoenerosity (or a desire for union with its kind); a desire or a feeling of finiteness in strange contrast with that instinct to ”have doives vitality to self-assertion We call this primal desire for union his heart, and this primal self-assertion his will The will expresses itself in efforts to change its environ down, tearing up, because it does not yet kno to put in order, or to change things artistically The child acts without external s h 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 reive this ansith 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 wo of surprise I seeiven the reat deal And I now think I was truly philosophical in this, for I affir 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 nobleness of norant 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 uidance to which it will voluntarily and gladly surrender itself A norant force of self-will and wants it to have free course She cannot help desiring to have her child have its oay 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 todifferent from what it was impelled to do at first; in short, she inspires hi, and so educates the blind instinct of self-assertion into a harnity and nobleness instead of crushi+ng its personality We hear of ”breaking the child's will” A child's will should never be broken, but opened up into harh a lower harartner But aabout this result, because she acts froht, while the kindergartner by thought must cultivate in herself the ience as if it were the greatest evil Doubtless it will becoreat 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 conition (unconscious, it may be) of the divine possibilities of the child,--a spark of the divine creativeness! Of the two evils, extreence is not so deadly a ed children return froal of the Gospel storyallowed 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 _canized 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 hi 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 God holds in his gracious hands for the final salvation of every one of his children
Besides, to _choose_ to give up one's oill is the only co the soul to th 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 coh The most perfect, if not the only real, obedience I have ever seen, has been that of strong , tender ly, for it seereatest social disorders that exist in the nations ans in Warsaw”[5] is fore 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 ith to character)always disarmed, and killed by the mother's syth, direct antagonisonism 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 irieve his heart, and disappoint his hope as hu him sad or bitter, but stinified patience The appointed doly radually he is to learn that nature's inexorable laws are the expression of a Supreust, who takes up His hu will; for radually subdues into a stepping-stone, by knowledge, and the use of it The h the first, she is not the only instrumentality by which the Divine Providence works The time co up to other influences; when the child bursts out of the nursery, not only self-asserting and affectionate, but putting forth energies, and seeking satisfaction of sensibilities that cannot be artenthe nursery; and the child begin to take his place in the company of his equals, to learn his place in their companionshi+p, 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 conizance of the uide their self-assertion, 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 tiarten is definitely indicated by two facts Firstly, Divine Providence has so arranged general fa 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 individualitya force of will for so narrow a scope of relation as is afforded by one fale family influence was an evil, it would now be an evil to confine the child entirely to it, narrowing his heart and ht into relation with equals who have other personal characteristics, other relations with nature and the hu child, at this period, to get out of doors to play with other children, is un possession, first of his body, and then of his personal and social consciousness, he has beco 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 hi him to make it into instrureat ideas and a noble will
All governovernment, a free subordination of the individual in order to forher than subjection We subject ents must be subordinated It is still the artner's part is to subordinate, not to check childish, spontaneous talk, though, of course, it ulated so far as not to let the children interrupt each other _iartners begin the session by asking each in turn what is interesting to hienerally receives each one as he or she co kiss, and have so to say, in which she expresses due sympathy, and later recurs to and connects hat 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 e 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 conity 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 ins to transfer the inward outward Love, and other sentiood 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 God before they _exist_ out of God The Italian philosopher Gioberti says that the soul is a _spiritual activity_; that is, it sees God as the first act of its life God 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 fro, the ideals of beauty, and the sense of accountability to God andus pain, as _re is in the comparison of our outwardincreate” (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 sy instinctively _cohts in and loves the birds, beyond all other foroes 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 ins, and (which is the point I want you to observe especially at thisto its understanding spiritual realities And it is the office of education to see that the relations of things,--the laws of order as,--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 God and the sentiments of the heart of ical fory 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 God and, in a certain sense, _God_, while the abstractions of the human mind are the refuse of finite spirit, infinitely superficial, -blocks to the -stones to new outlooks, or rather, inlooks Never should children be talked to in the language of theological science, but wholly in iinative syreat care, and we should be on our guard against rousing the faculty of abstraction which is a sleeping danger in the nature, whose prenorance 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 co which it hadwasus, in order that we lory of God and perfection of ht 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,” ”hty prophet,” ”seer blest,”
”On who all our lives to find,”
and therefore a child can supply a substantialecho of the soul that
”Colory from God,”
whose voice sent it forth, as Gioberti says, ”to suffer and to be for a season on earth”
I hope you followinto the child, which is the thing that ought to be done if one undertakes to teach it That the child really knows God before God is even named to him is not a speculative theory with me but a fact of my experience It is one ofin the lap of a young lady, whose na , 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 ination,--only a Face and head,--close to nant smile, in which the kindness rather predoence; but it looked at , ”Yes, I hly 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 knoho e, notwithstanding she said this Though it was the first tiht, it seemed not new to irl, more than four years old, as I know fro in a certain house, to which ent oninto a roo at an eainst the wall I went up to her and said, ”Mamma, Eliza asked me who made me, and I told her a rievance and outrage