Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class and Moral Culture of Infancy Part 5

To make forms from the hint of an engraving, is a little above imitation; and it is to be remembered that we do not wish the children to stop with imitations. Let them go on and invent forms, beautiful vases, pitchers, &c. When they begin to make heads and human figures, a teacher, who understands the principles of drawing, can bring to their notice the proportions of the human figure and face found in nature, which make ideal beauty. Many a heaven-destined sculptor will find himself out, in the Kindergarten.

In Germany, at the quadrennial meetings of the Froebel Union, it is the custom to carry specimens of the children's work in all these kinds. A series of each kind is made up by taking the best work of all the children. The six meetings which have already taken place, have all been signalized by impressing upon the commissioners of education of some State, the value of Froebel's culture to the interests of art,--fine and mechanical,--followed by its adoption. And yet its value to art is of secondary importance to its influence on character, which must needs be lifelong,--leading away from temptation, and delivering from evil, the activity secured to the production of use and beauty.

In America, where the excitements of opportunity are literally infinite, the importance of training the speculative mind and immense energy of the people to law, order, beauty, and love (which are all one in the last a.n.a.lysis), is incalculable; and that it can be done most easily and certainly by beginning with the child's mind while he is still "beholding the face of the Father in heaven" with his heart, no one who has ever faithfully tried Kindergarten culture will doubt.

CHAPTER VII.

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EXERCISES.

HARMONIOUS development is Froebel's idea. Hence, although the physical should never be sacrificed, and comes first into view, in the scheme of Kindergarten culture, it is not to be exclusive. Children grow in stature and physical force, all the better for having their hearts and minds opened in the beginning. It is desirable to have a child become conscious of right and wrong, in reference to eating and drinking, quite early; though temptation to excess should be removed, as a general thing, by giving them simple wholesome food. In any case where children may not go home at noon, and there is a luncheon, some simple fruit, like apples or grapes, together with milk biscuits, or plain bread and b.u.t.ter, make the best repast, satisfying hunger, and not stimulating the palate unduly. I am sometimes shocked at the kind of luncheon children bring to the Kindergarten, it shows such lamentable ignorance of physiological laws. The practical value of the beautiful symbol of the origin of evil, which stands as the first word of the sacred volume, is enhanced, by its having the form in which temptation first a.s.sails the child. No deeper interpretation of it is foreclosed by our presenting it at first, to children, just as it stands. The forbidden fruit is that which will hurt the child; _i. e._, give it the disease which by and by may make death a merciful release from pains intolerable to bear.

Serpents have no higher function than eating; but human beings live to know and love and do good, and so ought not to eat everything that is pleasant to the eyes,--but to stop, as Eve did not, and inquire whether it is G.o.d or the mere animal which is man's proper adviser. Our appet.i.te is the serpent, our thought is from G.o.d. A child understands all this very early, if it is thus simply presented; and it suggests the beginning of his moral life. The lesson can soon be generalized.

Whatever wrong things he is tempted to do, whatever his conscience tells him not to do, is "forbidden fruit;" his desire to do it is the serpent, and if he falls, it is the old folly of Eve, who preferred the advice of the lower being to the command of G.o.d, always given in the Conscience.

I have known a child, to whom this story was early read and interpreted, to whom it seemed to become a "guard angelic" over her life. The moral nature responded to it at once, and a suggestion that a desire was perhaps the voice of the serpent, was always quite enough to arouse the guardian angel--Conscience--to a watch and ward of the severest character. It precluded the necessity of present punishment and the fear of future retribution, (with which a child should never be terrified.)

There is such a thing as making children, I will not say too conscientious, but too conscious; and this is often done by well-meaning parents and teachers, who make them look upon themselves personally as objects of G.o.d's pleasure or displeasure. This will be avoided by using a symbol, like the story of Adam and Eve, which touches the imagination, and saves them from the reactions of personal pique. A judicious teacher, who knows how to paraphrase as she reads, and to skip what is mere prosaic statement, (and no one who cannot do this, is fit to read to children,) can make use of many other pa.s.sages of the Old and New Testament, and of "Pilgrim's Progress," to give to children the whole doctrine of religious self-control, and inspire them to the highest moral issues.

_Spiritual_ life, strictly speaking, can only be _prepared for_ by the _best_ education. Its characteristic and essence consists in that action of the heart and reason which does not come from human prompting. But it _can_ be prepared for, by awakening in the child such an aspiration and felt necessity for virtue, as well as general idea of G.o.d, as makes prayer to the Father of Spirits spontaneous and inevitable. I am in the habit of speaking of G.o.d to children as the Giver of love and goodness, and of the power of thought and action, rather than as the Creator of the outward world, and have found that the tyrannizing unity of the soul's instinct did the rest.

In what is called religious education, teachers often do great harm, with the best intentions, to finely strung moral organizations.

Encouragement to good should altogether predominate over warning and fault-finding. It is often better, instead of blaming a child for short-coming, or even wrong-doing, to pity and sympathize, and, in a hopeful voice, speak of it as something which the child did not mean to do, or at least was sorry for as soon as done; suggesting at the same time, perhaps, how it can be avoided another time. Above all things, an invariable rule in moral education is not to throw a child upon self-defence. The movement towards defending one's self and making excuses, is worse than almost any act of overt wrong. Let the teacher always appear as the friend who is saving or helping the child out of evil, rather than as the accuser, judge, or executioner. Another principle should be, not to confound or put upon the same level the trespa.s.ses against the by-laws of the Kindergarten, made for the teacher's convenience, and those against the moral laws of the universe.

The desirableness of the by-laws that we make for our convenience can be shown at times when the children are all calm, and their attention can be drawn to the subject; and if these regulations are broken, all that is necessary will be to ask if it is kind and loving to do such things?

But it must never be forgotten that natural conscience always suffers when artificial duties are imposed. Hence the immoral effect of formality and superst.i.tion.

In a well-regulated Kindergarten there should be no punishments, but an understanding should be had with parents that sometimes the child is to be sent home for a day, or at least for some hours. The curtailment of the Kindergarten will generally prove an effectual restraint upon disorder, and it will not be necessary to repeat the penalty in a school year.

But I shall say no more upon moral and religious exercises, Mrs. Mann having treated this part of the subject so exhaustively. It is to be remembered, however, that she had in her school children who had strayed much farther from the kingdom of heaven than those who will generally make up the Kindergarten. But she shows the _spirit_ that should pervade all that is done to children at all times.

I saw, in observing the Kindergartens of Germany, that there was great moral education involved in the mutual consideration of each other, which the children learn to practise, in order to make the plays beautiful; and also in the constant idea kept before them, of making beautiful things for the purpose of giving pleasure to their parents and other friends, by giving them away on birthdays and Christmas and New-Year's Days. Moral education does not come by the hearing of the ear, but by generous life.

CHAPTER VIII.

OBJECT LESSONS.

I NOW come to Object Lessons, which should begin simultaneously with all the above exercises; for mental exercises are not only compatible with physical health, but necessary to it. The brain is not to be overstrained in childhood, but it is to be used. Where it is left to itself, and remains uncultivated, it shrinks, and that is disease. A child is not able to direct its own attention; it needs the help of the adult in the unfolding of the mind, no less than in the care of its body. Lower orders of animals can educate themselves, that is, develop in themselves their one power. As the animals rise in the scale of being, they are related more or less to their progenitors and posterity, and require social aid. But the human being, whose beat.i.tude is "the communion of the just," is so universally related, that he cannot go alone at all. He is entirely dependent at first, and never becomes independent of those around him, any further than he has been so educated and trained by his relations with them, as to rise into union with G.o.d. And this restores him again to communion with his fellow-beings, as a beneficent Power among its peers.

The new method of education gives a gradual series of exercises, continuing the method of Nature. It cultivates the senses, by giving them the work of discriminating colors, sounds, &c.; sharpens perception by leading children to describe accurately the objects immediately around them.

Objects themselves, rather than the verbal descriptions of objects, are presented to them. The only way to make words expressive and intelligible, is to a.s.sociate them sensibly with the objects to which they relate. Children must be taught to translate things into words, before they can translate words into things. Words are secondary in nature; yet much teaching seems to proceed on the principle that these are primary, and so they become mere counters, and children are brought to hating study, and the discourse of teachers, instead of thirsting for them. To look at objects of nature and art, and state their colors, forms, and properties of various kinds, is no painful strain upon the mind. It is just what children spontaneously do when they are first learning to talk. It is a continuation of learning to talk. The object-teacher confines the child's attention to one thing, till all that is obvious about it is described; and then asks questions, bringing out much that children, left to themselves, would overlook, suggesting words when necessary, to enable them to give an account of what they see. It is the action of the mind upon real things, together with clothing perceptions in words, which really cultivates; while it is not the painful strain upon the brain which the study of a book is. To translate things into words, is a more agreeable and a very different process from translating words into things, and the former exercise should precede the latter. If the mind is thoroughly exercised in wording its perceptions, words will in their turn suggest the things, without painful effort, and memory have the clearness and accuracy of perception. On the other hand words will never be used without feeling and intelligence. Then, to read a book will be to know all of reality that is in it.

I am desirous to make a strong impression on this point, because, to many persons, I find object-teaching seems the opposite of teaching!

They say that to play with things, does not give habits of study. They think that to commit to memory a page of description about a wild duck, for instance, is better than to have the wild duck to look at, leading the child to talk about it, describe it, and inquire into its ways and haunts! They do not see that this study of the things themselves exercises the perception, and picturesque memory, which is probably immortal, certainly perennial, while the written description only exercises the verbal memory. Verbal memory is not to be despised; but it is a consequence, and should never be the subst.i.tute for picturesque memory. It is the picturesque memory only which is creative.

There is another and profound reason why words should follow, and not precede things, in a child's memory. It will have a tendency to preclude the unconscious sophistry which takes the place of real logic in so many minds; and at all events will give the power to detect sophistry; for it necessitates the mind to demand an image, or an idea, for every word. It gives the habit of thinking things and principles, instead of thinking words merely;--of looking through rhetoric after truth and reality.

There is nothing perhaps which would conduce more to sound morality and earnestness of character, in this country, than that object-teaching, as proposed in Mr. Sheldon's "ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION," should pervade the primary schools. It would require a volume to go into object-teaching, in such detail as to serve as a manual for teachers; and happily the work of Mr. Sheldon's, just named, precludes the necessity of my doing so. It is published broadcast over our northern States; and every teacher, especially every Kindergarten teacher, should procure it, and give days and nights to the study of it, until its methods and matter are completely mastered. I have one or two exceptions to take, in respect to it myself, as will be seen in the sequel; yet I consider it not only an invaluable manual, but that it goes far to supply the place of the training school for teachers on the Pestalozzian plan, "for whose use I believe it was primarily intended."

Object-teaching should precede as well as accompany the process of learning to read. In Germany, even outside of Kindergarten, _thinking schools_ have long preceded _reading schools_, and yet learning to read German, in which every sound is represented by a different letter, and every letter has one sound, cultivates the cla.s.sifying powers, as learning to read English cannot. With children whose vernacular is English, it is absolutely injurious to the mind to be taught to read the first thing. I must speak of the reasons of this in another place, my purpose here being to show that object-teaching is necessary, in order to make word-teaching, whether by teacher's discourse, or by the reading of books, a means of culture at any period.

Every child should have the object to examine, and in turn each should say what is spontaneous. Out of their answers series of questions will be suggested to the teacher, who should also be prepared with her own series of questions,--questions full of answers.

The first generalization to which children should be led is into the animate and inanimate,--what lives and what exists without manifestation of life. The next generalization will be into mineral, vegetable, animal, and personal.

But you can begin with chairs, tables, paper, cloth, &c., coming as soon as possible to natural objects. Mrs. Aga.s.siz's "First Lesson in Natural History" is an excellent hint. Sea anemones, star-fishes, clams, and oysters are easily procured. If sea anemones, taken into a bottle of salt water, clinging to stones, look like mere mosses at first, on the second day it is pretty certain, that in their desire for food they will spread themselves out, displaying their inward parts in the most beautiful manner. Every child in the cla.s.s should have his turn at the object, if there are not objects enough for each,--should tell what he sees, and be helped to words to express himself. This, I must repeat, is the true way of learning the meaning of words; and leaves impressions, which no dictionary, with its periphrases and mere approximations to synonymes can give. Let a child himself hammer out some substance with a mallet, and he will never forget the meaning of malleable; and so of other words. As far as possible we should always use Saxon words, but it is the words that come from the Latin and Greek, which it is most necessary to teach the meaning of; and they should be taught by things themselves, which have them for names or qualities.

A good linguist will have an advantage here, by being able to trace the words through the original language up to nature; for every word is, in the last a.n.a.lysis, either a picture, whose original in nature is its definition, or a poem, which can be recognized by the general imagination. A child whose vernacular is English will easily see that a _bit_ is something bitten off, and so is smaller than the mouth; but that _morsel_ means a bit is not so obvious to one who does not know that _morsus_, also, is the perfect participle of the Latin verb for bite. That _acute_ means _sharp_ is plainer to a child who knows that _acu_ is the Latin for needle.

No time is lost which is given to this definition of words by the objects of nature and art, from which, or from whose attributes, words are derived. In words are fossilized the sciences, that is, the knowledge mankind has already attained of nature; and he who understands all the words in use, would know all that is known, nay, much that has been once known and long forgotten. But the study of objects not only gives significance to words, it educates the senses, and produces the habit of original attention and investigation of nature. These do not come of themselves, as we see in the instance of country children, who are ignorant of what is around them, because left to grow up among the objects of nature, without having their attention called to things in their minutiae, or their relations in extensu; nor led to clothe with words their perceptions, impressions, and reasonings.

Besides Mr. Sheldon's "Elementary Instruction," there is the "Child's Book of Nature," by Worthington Hooker, in three parts, which will be a great help to an object-teacher. It is published by the Harpers, and is the very best introduction of children to flowers.[D] Mrs. Mann's "Flower People" is also full of facts, carefully studied out. This is a charming book for children to read in, when they shall come to read. It is a great pity that the latest edition, published by Ticknor and Fields in 1862, is not ill.u.s.trated by the flowers spoken of. But perhaps these may be lithographed, and published in a card-case, to accompany it. Both the science and cultivation of flowers comes very naturally into the Kindergarten.

The greatest difficulty about object-teaching is, that it requires personal training, and wide-awake attention in teachers, of a character much more thorough than they commonly have. When it shall become general, as it certainly must, it will no longer be supposed that any ordinary person who can read and write, and is obliged to do something for a living, will be thought fit to keep a school for small children!

The present order of things will be reversed. Ordinary persons, with limited acquirements, will be obliged to confine themselves to older pupils, who are able to study books and only need to have some one to set their lessons and hear them recited; while persons of originality and rich culture will be reserved to discover and bring out the various genius and faculty which G.o.d has sown broadcast in the field of the race, and which now so often runs into the rank vegetation of vice, or wastes into deserts of concentrated mediocrity. Then this season of education will command the largest remuneration, as it will secure the finest powers to the work; and because such work cannot be pursued by any one person for many years, nor even for a short time without a.s.sistance, relieving from the ceaseless attention that a company of small children requires, for little children cannot be wound up to go like watches; but to keep them in order, the teacher must constantly meet their outbursting life with her own magnetic forces; while their employments must be continually interchanged, and mingled with their recreations.

Children ought to continue these Kindergarten exercises from the age of three to nine; and if faithfully taught, they could then go into what is called scholastic training, in a state of mind to receive from it the highest advantages it is capable of giving; free from the disadvantages which are now so obvious as to have raised, in our practical country, a party prejudiced against cla.s.sical education altogether.

The preceding chapter and the one on Geometry, which succeeds, are rather for the direction of children in the last than the first years of the Kindergarten; for they go over into the second stage of education.

Object-lessons, addressed more to the heart and imagination, grow directly out of the plays, as we have seen.

And, without any of the terms of Geometry, the sticklaying and the folding of paper give the child geometrical facts in a practical way; as well as counting, and all of arithmetic that precedes Colburn's "First Lessons," some of which can be taught even before teaching to read.

FOOTNOTE:

[D] Gray's _How Plants Grow_, is invaluable for a teacher.

CHAPTER IX.

GEOMETRY.

REV. DR. HILL, the present President of Harvard College, in his articles in Dr. Barnard's "Journal of Education," has set forth the importance of Geometry in the earliest education, giving the Science of Form precedence to that of numbers. Of course he does not mean that logical demonstration is to form one of the exercises of little children! but that observation of differences and resemblances of shape, and the combination of forms, should be inwoven with the amus.e.m.e.nts of children.

He invented a toy on the principle of the Chinese tanagram, (published by Hickling, Swan & Co., in Boston,) to further an exercise which begins in the cradle with the examination of the hands and feet.

The blocks are the first materials. Take the cube and ask how many faces it has; how many corners; and whether one face is larger than another or equal; and finally, lead the child to describe a cube as a solid figure with six equal sides, and eight corners. Then take a solid triangle from the box and draw out by questions that it has five sides and six corners, that three of its sides are equal, and two others equal; that the three larger sides are four-sided, and the two smaller sides are three-sided; and that the corners are sharper than those of a cube.

Make a.n.a.logous use of all the blocks, and of the furniture of the room, of the sphere and its parts, the cylinder, &c. Do not require the definition-formulas at first, but content yourself with opening the children's eyes to the facts which the formula afterwards shall declare.

Paper-folding can be made subservient to another step, just short of abstraction.