The Child under Eight Part 1

The Child Under Eight.

by E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith.

PREFACE

The _Modern Educator's Library_ has been designed to give considered expositions of the best theory and practice in English education of to-day. It is planned to cover the princ.i.p.al problems of educational theory in general, of curriculum and organisation, of some unexhausted aspects of the history of education, and of special branches of applied education.

The Editor and his colleagues have had in view the needs of young teachers and of those training to be teachers, but since the school and the schoolmaster are not the sole factors in the educative process, it is hoped that educators in general (and which of us is not in some sense or other an educator?) as well as the professional schoolmaster may find in the series some help in understanding precept and practice in education of to-day and to-morrow. For we have borne in mind not only what is but what ought to be. To exhibit the educator's work as a vocation requiring the best possible preparation is the spirit in which these volumes have been written.

No artificial uniformity has been sought or imposed, and while the Editor is responsible for the series in general, the responsibility for the opinions expressed in each volume rests solely with its author.

ALBERT A. COOK.

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, KING'S COLLEGE.

AUTHORS' PREFACE

We have made this book between us, but we have not collaborated. We know that we agree in all essentials, though our experience has differed. We both desire to see the best conditions for development provided for all children, irrespective of cla.s.s. We both look forward to the time when the conditions of the Public Elementary School, from the Nursery School up, will be such--in point of numbers, in freedom from pressure, in situation of building, in s.p.a.ce both within and without, and in beauty of surroundings--that parents of any cla.s.s will gladly let their children attend it.

We are teachers and we have dealt mainly with the mental or, as we prefer to call it, the spiritual requirements of children. It is from the medical profession that we must all accept facts about food values, hours of sleep, etc., and the importance of cleanliness and fresh air are now fully recognised. We do, however, feel that there is room for fresh discussion of ultimate aims and of daily procedure. Mr. Clutton Brock has said that the great weakness of English education is the want of a definite aim to put before our children, the want of a philosophy for ourselves. Without some understanding of life and its purpose or meaning, the teacher is at the mercy of every fad and is apt to exalt method above principle. This book is an attempt to gather together certain recognised principles, and to show in the light of actual experience how these may be applied to existing circ.u.mstances.

The day is coming when all teachers will seek to understand the true value of Play, of spontaneous activity in all directions. Its importance is emphasised in nearly all the educational writings of the day, as well in the Senior as in the Junior departments of the school, but we need a full and deep understanding of the saying, "Man is Man only when he plays." It is easy to say we believe it, but it needs strong faith, courage, and wide intelligence to weave such belief into the warp of daily life in school.

E.R. MURRAY.

H. BROWN SMITH.

PART I

THE CHILD IN THE NURSERY AND KINDERGARTEN

CHAPTER I

"WHAT'S IN A NAME?"

It is an appropriate time to produce a book on English schools for little children, now that Nursery Schools have been specially selected for notice and encouragement by an enlightened Minister for Education.

It was Madame Michaelis, who in 1890 originally and most appropriately used the term Nursery School as the English equivalent of a t.i.tle suggested by Froebel[1] for his new inst.i.tution, before he invented the word Kindergarten, a t.i.tle which, literally translated, ran "Inst.i.tution for the Care of Little Children."

[Footnote 1: Froebel's _Letters_, trans. Michaelis and Moore, p. 30.]

In England the word Nursery, which implies the idea of nurture, belongs properly to children, though it has been borrowed by the gardener for his young plants. In Germany it was the other way round; Froebel had to invent the term _child garden_ to express his idea of the nurture, as opposed to the repression, of the essential nature of the child.

Unfortunately the word Kindergarten while being naturalised in England had two distinct meanings attached to it. Well-to-do people began to send their children to a new inst.i.tution, a child garden or play school.

The children of the people, however, already attended Infant Schools, of which the chief feature was what Mr. Caldwell Cook calls "sit-stillery," and here the word Kindergarten, really equivalent to Nursery School, became identified with certain occupations, childlike in origin it is true, but formalised out of all recognition. How a real Kindergarten strikes a child is ill.u.s.trated by the recent remark from a little new boy who had been with us for perhaps three mornings. "Shall I go up to the nursery now?" he asked.

The first attempt at a Kindergarten was made in 1837, and by 1848 Germany possessed sixteen. In that eventful year came the revolution in Berlin, which created such high hopes, doomed, alas! to disappointment.

"Instead of the rosy dawn of freedom," writes Ebers,[2] himself an old Keilhau boy, "in the State the exercise of a boundless arbitrary power, in the Church dark intolerance." It must have been an easy matter to bring charges of revolutionary doctrines against the man who said so innocently, "But I,--I only wanted to train up free-thinking, independent men."

[Footnote 2: Author of _An Egyptian Princess_, etc.]

It was from "stony Berlin," as Froebel calls it, that the edict went forth in the name of the Minister of Education entirely prohibiting Kindergartens in Prussia, and the prohibition soon spread. At the present time it seems to us quite fitting that the bitter attack upon Kindergartens should have been launched by Folsung, a schoolmaster, "who began life as an artilleryman." Nor is it less interesting to read that it was under the protection of Von Moltke himself that Oberlin schools were opened to counteract the attractions of the "G.o.dless" Kindergarten.

Little wonder that the same man who in 1813 had so gladly taken up arms to resist the invasion of Napoleon, and who had rejoiced with such enthusiasm in the prospect of a free and united Fatherland, should write in 1851:

"Wherefore I have made a firm resolve that if the conditions of German life will not allow room for the development of honest efforts for the good of humanity; if this indifference to all higher things continues--then it is my purpose next spring to seek in the land of union and independence a soil where my idea of education may strike deep root."

And to America he might have gone had he lived, but he died three months later, his end hastened by grief at the edict which closed the Kindergartens. The Prussian Minister announced, in this edict, that "it is evident that Kindergartens form a part of the Froebelian socialistic system, the aim of which is to teach the children atheism," and the suggestion that he was anti-Christian cut the old man to the heart.

There had been some confusion between Froebel and one of his nephews, who had democratic leanings, and no doubt anything at all democratic did mean atheism to "stony Berlin" and its intolerant autocracy.

For a time, at least in Bavaria, a curious compromise was allowed. If the teacher were a member of the Orthodox Church, she might have her Kindergarten, but if she belonged to one of the Free Churches, it was permissible to open an Infant School, but she must not use the term Kindergarten.

Froebel was by no means of the opinion that, if only the teacher had the right spirit, the name did not matter. Rather did he hold with Confucius, whose answer to the question of a disciple, "How shall I convert the world?" was, "Call things by their right names." He refused to use the word school, because "little children, especially those under six, do not need to be schooled and taught, what they need is opportunity for development." He had great difficulty in selecting a name. Those originally suggested were somewhat c.u.mbrous, e.g.

_Inst.i.tution for the Promotion of Spontaneous Activity in Children_; another was _Self-Teaching Inst.i.tution_, and there was also the one which Madame Michaelis translated "_Nursery School for Little Children_."

But the name Kindergarten expressed just what he Wanted: "As in a garden, under G.o.d's favour, and by the care of a skilled intelligent gardener, growing plants are cultivated in accordance with Nature's laws, so here in our child garden shall the n.o.blest of all growing things, men (that is, children), be cultivated in accordance with the laws of their own being, of G.o.d and of Nature."

To one of his students he writes: "You remember well enough how hard we worked and how we had to fight that we might elevate the Darmstadt creche, or rather Infant School, by improved methods and organisation until it became a true Kindergarten.... Now what was the outcome of all this, even during my own stay at Darmstadt? Why, the fetters which always cripple a creche or an Infant School, and which seem to cling round its very name--these fetters were allowed to remain unbroken.

Every one was pleased with so faithful a mistress as yourself,... yet they withheld from you the main condition of unimpeded development, that of the freedom necessary to every young healthy and vigorous plant....

Is there really such importance underlying the mere name of a system?--some one might ask. Yes, there is.... It is true that any one watching your teaching would observe _a new spirit_ infused into it, _expressing and fulfilling the child's own wants and desires._ You would strike him as personally capable, but you would fail to strike him as priestess of the idea which G.o.d has now called to life within man's bosom, and of the struggle towards the realisation of that idea--_education by development--the destined means of raising the whole human race...._ No man can acquire fresh knowledge, even at a school, beyond the measure which his own stage of development fits him to receive.... Infant Schools are nothing but a contradiction of child-nature. Little children especially those under school age, ought not to be schooled and taught, what they need is opportunity for development. This idea lies in the very name of a Kindergarten.... And the name is absolutely necessary to describe the first education of children."

For an actual definition of what Froebel meant by his Nursery School for Little Children or Kindergarten, it is only fair to go to the founder himself. He has left us two definitions or descriptions, one announced shortly before the first Kindergarten was opened, which runs:

"An inst.i.tution for the fostering of human life, through the cultivation of the human instincts of activity, of investigation and of construction in the child, as a member of the family, of the nation and of humanity; an inst.i.tution for the self-instruction, self-education and self-cultivation of mankind, as well as for all-sided development of the individual through play, through creative self-activity and spontaneous self-instruction."

A second definition is given in Froebel's reply to a proposal that he should establish "my system of education--education by development"--in London, Paris or the United States:

"We also need establishments for training quite young children in their first stage of educational development, where their training and instruction shall be based upon their own free action or spontaneity acting under proper rules, these rules not being arbitrarily decreed, but such as must arise by logical necessity from the child's mental and bodily nature, regarding him as a member of the great human family; such rules as are, in fact, discovered by the actual observation of children when a.s.sociated together in companies. These establishments bear the name of Kindergartens."

Unfortunately there are but few pictures of Froebel's own Kindergarten, but there seems to have been little formality in its earliest development. An oft-told story is that of Madame von Marenholz in 1847 going to watch the proceedings of "an old fool," as the villagers called him, who played games with the village children. A less well-known account is given by Col. von Arnswald, again a Keilhau boy, who visited Blankenberg in 1839, when Froebel had just opened his first Kindergarten.

"Arriving at the place, I found my Middendorf[3] seated by the pump in the market-place, surrounded by a crowd of little children. Going near them I saw that he was engaged in mending the jacket of a boy. By his side sat a little girl busy with thread and needle upon another piece of clothing; one boy had his feet in a bucket of water was.h.i.+ng them carefully; other girls and boys were standing round attentively looking upon the strange pictures of real life before them, and waiting for something to turn up to interest them personally. Our meeting was of the most cordial kind, but Middendorf did not interrupt the business in which he was engaged. 'Come, children,' he cried, 'let us go into the garden!' and with loud cries of joy the little folk with willing feet followed the splendid-looking, tall man, running all round him.

[Footnote 3: One of Froebel's most devoted helpers.]

"The garden was not a garden, however, but a barn, with a small room and an entrance hall. In the entrance Middendorf welcomed the children and played a round game with them, ending with the flight of the little ones into the room, where each of them sat down in his place on the bench and took his box of building blocks. For half an hour they were all busy with their blocks, and then came 'Come, children, let us play "spring and spring."' And when the game was finished they went away full of joy and life, every one giving his little hand for a grateful good-bye."

Here in this earliest of Free Kindergartens are certain essentials.

Was.h.i.+ng and mending, the alternation of constructive play with active exercise, rhythmic game and song, and last but not least human kindliness and courtesy. The shelter was but a barn, but there are things more important than premises.

Froebel died too soon to see his ideals realised, but he had sown the seed in the heart of at least one woman with brain to grasp and will to execute. As early as 1873 the Froebelians had established something more than the equivalent of the Montessori Children's Houses under the name of Free Kindergartens or People's Kindergartens. It will bring this out more clearly if, without referring here to any modern experiments in America, in England and Scotland, or in the Dominions, we quote the description of an actual People's Kindergarten or Nursery School as it was established nearly fifty years ago.

The moving spirit of this inst.i.tution was Henrietta Schroder, Froebel's own grand-niece, trained by him, and of whom he said that she, more than any other, had most truly understood his views.