The Child under Eight Part 4

If early education, consist in fostering natural activities, there can be no doubt that Froebel hit upon the activity most prominent of all in the case of young children, viz. the impulse to investigate. For his crest, the little child should share in the "motto given to the mongoose family, in Kipling's _Rikki-Tikki_, 'Run and find out.'"

Most writers on the education of young children have emphasised the importance of what is most inadequately called sense training, and it is here that Dr. Montessori takes her stand with her "didactic apparatus."

Froebel's ideas seem wider; he realises that the sword with which the child opens his oyster is a two-edged sword, that he uses not only his sense organs as tools for investigation, but his whole body. His pathway to knowledge, and to power over himself and his surroundings, is action, and action of all kinds is as necessary to him as the use of his senses.

"The child's first utterance is force," says Froebel, and his first discovery is the resistance of matter, when he "pushes with his feet against what resists them." His first experiments are with his body, "his first toys are his own limbs," and his first play is the use of "body, senses and limbs" for the sake of use, not for result. One use of his body is the imitation of any moving object, and Froebel tells the mother:

If your child's to understand Action in the world without, You must let his tiny hand Imitative move about.

This is the reason why Baby will, never still, Imitate whatever's by.

At this stage the child is "to move freely, and be active, to grasp and hold with his own hands." He is to stand "when he can sit erect and draw himself up," not to walk till he "can creep, rise freely, maintain his balance and proceed by his own effort." He is _not_ to be hindered by swaddling bands--such as are in use in Continental countries--nor, later on, to be "_spoiled by too much a.s.sistance_," words which every mother and teacher should write upon her phylacteries. But as soon as he can move himself the surroundings speak to the child, "outer objects _invite_ him to seize and grasp them, and if they are distant, they invite him who would bring them nearer to move towards them."

This use of the word "invite" is worthy of notice, and calls to mind a sentence used by a writer on Freud,[14] that "the activity of a human being is a constant function of his environment." We adults, who are so ready with our "Don't touch," must endeavour to remember how everything is shouting to a child: "Look at me, listen to me, come and fetch me, and find out all you can about me by every means in your power."

[Footnote 14: _The Freudian Wish_, Edwin Holt.]

If we have anything to do with little children, we must face the fact that the child is, if not quite a Robinson Crusoe on his island, at least an explorer in a strange country, and a scientist in his laboratory. But there is nothing narrow in his outlook: the name of this chapter is deliberately chosen, the whole world is the child's oyster, his interests are all-embracing.

From his first walk he is the geographer. "Each little walk is a tour of discovery; each object--the chair, the wall--is an America, a new world, which he either goes around to see if it be an island, or whose coast he follows to discover if it be a continent. Each new phenomenon is a discovery in the child's small and yet rich world, _e.g._ one may go round the chair; one may stand before it, behind it, but one cannot go behind the bench or the wall."

Then comes an inquiry into the physical properties of surrounding objects. "The effort to reach a particular object may have its source in the child's desire to hold himself firm and upright by it, but we also observe that it gives him pleasure to touch, to feel, to grasp, and perhaps also--which is a new phase of activity--to be able to move it.... The chair is hard or soft; the seat is smooth; the corner is pointed; the edge is sharp." The business of the adult, Froebel goes on to say, is to supply these names, "not primarily to develop the child's power of speech," but "to define his sense impressions."

Next, the scientist must stock his laboratory with material for experiment.

"The child is attracted by the bright round smooth pebble, by the gaily fluttering bit of paper, by the smooth bit of board, by the rectangular block, by the brilliant quaint leaf. Look at the child that can scarcely keep himself erect, that can walk only with the greatest care--he sees a twig, a bit of straw; painfully he secures it, and like the bird carries it to his nest. See him again, laboriously stooping and slowly going forward on the ground, under the eaves of the roof (the deep eaves of the Thuringian peasant house). The force of the rain has washed out of the sand smooth bright pebbles, and the ever-observing child gathers them as building stones as it were, as material for future building. And is he wrong? Is he not in truth collecting material for his future life building?"

The "box of counters, and the red-veined stone," the brilliant quaint leaf, the twig, the bit of straw, all the child's treasures--these are the stimuli which, according to the biologist educator, must be supplied if the activities appropriate to each stage are to be called forth.

Every one knows for how long a period a child can occupy himself examining, comparing and experimenting.

"Like things," says Froebel, "must be ranged together, unlike things separated.... The child loves all things that enter his small horizon and extend his little world. To him the least thing is a new discovery, but it must not come dead into the little world, nor lie dead therein, lest it obscure the small horizon and crush the little world. Therefore the child would know why he loves this thing, he would know all its properties. For this reason he examines the object on all sides; for this reason he tears and breaks it; for this reason he puts it in his mouth and bites it. We reprove the child for naughtiness and foolishness; and yet he is wiser than we who reprove him."

This experimenting is one side of a child's play, and the things with which he thus experiments are his toys, or, as Froebel puts it, "play material." Much of this is and ought to be self found, and where the child can find his own toys he asks for little more. The seaside supplies him with sand and water, stones, sh.e.l.ls, rock pools, seaweed, and he asks us for nothing but a spade, which digs deeper than his naked hands, and a pail to carry water, which hands alone cannot convey.

The vista of the sand is the child's free land; where the grown-ups seem half afraid; even nurse forgets to sniff and to call "come here"

as she sits very near to the far up cliff and you venture alone with your spade....

Even indoors, a child could probably find for himself all the material for investigation, all the stimuli he requires, if it were not that his investigations interfere with adult purposes. Even in very primitive times the child probably experimented upon the revolving qualities of his mother's spindle till she found it more convenient to let him have one for himself, and it became a toy or top.

Froebel, who made so much of play, to whom it was spontaneous education and self realisation, was bound to see that toys were important. "The man advanced in insight," he said, "even when he gives his child a plaything, must make clear to himself its purpose and the purpose of playthings and occupation material in general. This purpose is to aid the child freely to express what lies within him, and to bring the outer world nearer to him, and thus to serve as mediator between the mind and the world." Froebel's "Gifts" were an attempt to supply right play material. True to his faith in natural impulse, Froebel watched children to see what playthings they found for themselves, or which, among those presented by adults, were most appreciated. Soft little coloured b.a.l.l.s seemed right material for a baby's tender hand, and it was clear that when the child could crawl about he was ready for something which he could roll on the floor and pursue on all fours. As early as two years old he loves to take things out of boxes and to move objects about, so boxes of bricks were supplied, graded in number and in variety of form.

Not for a moment did Froebel suggest that the child was to be limited to these selected playthings, he expressly stated the contrary, and he frequently said that spontaneity was not to be checked. But from what has followed, from the way in which these little toys have been misused, we are tempted to speculate on whether these "Gifts" supplied that definite foundation without which, in these days, no notice would have been taken of the new ideas, or whether they have proved the sunken rock on which much that was valuable has perished. The world was not ready to believe in the educational value of play, just pure play. Nor is it yet. For the new system in its "didactic" apparatus out-Froebels Froebel in his mistake of trying to systematise the material for spontaneous education. Carefully planned, as were Froebel's own "gifts,"

the new apparatus presents a series of exercises in sense discrimination, satisfying no doubt while unfamiliar, but suffering from the defect of the "too finished and complex plaything," in which Froebel saw a danger "which slumbers like a viper under the roses." The danger is that "the child can begin no new thing with it, cannot produce enough variety by its means; his power of creative imagination, his power of giving outward form to his own ideas are thus actually deadened."

"To realise his aims, man, and more particularly the child, requires material, though it be only a bit of wood or a pebble, with which he makes something or which he makes into something. In order to lead the child to the handling of material we give him the ball, the cube and other bodies, the Kindergarten gifts. Each of these gifts incites the child to free spontaneous activity, to independent movement."

Froebel would have sympathised deeply with the views of Peter as expressed by Mr. Wells in regard to Ideals, which he, however, called toys:

"The theory of Ideals played almost as important a part in the early philosophy of Peter as it did in the philosophy of Plato. But Peter did not call them Ideals, he called them 'toys.' Toys were the simplified essences of things, pure, perfect and manageable. Real things were troublesome, uncontrollable, over-complicated and largely irrelevant. A Real Train, for example, was a poor, big, clumsy, limited thing that was obliged to go to Redhill, or Croydon, or London, that was full of unnecessary strangers, usually sitting firmly in the window seats, that you could do nothing with at all. A Toy Train was your very own; it took you wherever you wanted, to Fairyland, or Russia, or anywhere, at whatever pace you chose."[15]

[Footnote 15: _Joan and Peter_, p. 77.]

Froebel asks what presents are most prized by the child and by mankind in general, and answers, "Those which afford him a means of developing his mind, of giving it freest activity, of expressing it clearly." For her ideas as to educative material Dr. Montessori went, not to normal life, not even to children, but to what may he called curative appliances, to the material invented by Seguin to develop the dormant powers of defective children. She herself came to the study of education from the medical side, the curative. Froebel, with his belief in human instinct, naturally went to what he called the mother's room, which we should call the nursery, and to the garden where the child finds his "bright round smooth pebble" and his "brilliant quaint leaf." No one would seek to under-value the importance of sense discrimination, but it can be exercised without formalism, and it need not be mere discrimination. It is in connection with the Taste and Smell games that Froebel tells the mother that "the higher is rooted in the lower, morality in instinct, the spiritual in the material." The baby enjoys the scent, thanks the kind spirit that put it there, and must let mother smell it too, so from the beginning there is a touch of aesthetic pleasure and a recognition of "what the dear G.o.d is saying outside." As to how sense discrimination may be exercised without formality, there is a charming picture in _The Camp School_:

"And then that sense of _Smell_, which got so little exercise and attention that it went to sleep altogether, so that millions get no warning and no joy through it. We met the need for its education in the Baby Camp by having a Herb Garden. Back from the shelters and open ground, in a shady place, we have planted fennel, mint, lavender, sage, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, herb gerrard and rue. And over and above these pungently smelling things there are little fields of mignonette.

We have balm, indeed, everywhere in our garden. The toddlers go round the beds of herbs, pinching the leaves with their tiny fingers and then putting their fingers to their noses. There are two little couples going the rounds just now. One is a pair of new comers, very much astonished, the other couple old inhabitants, delighted to show the wonders of the place! Coming back with odorous hands, they perhaps want to tell us about the journey. Their eyes are bright, their mouths open."

In Chapter II. we quoted the biologist educator's ideal conception of the surroundings best suited to bring about right development. Let us now visit one or two actual Kindergartens and see if these conditions are in any way realised by the followers of Froebel.

The first one we enter is certainly a large bright room, for one side is open to light, with two large windows, and between them gla.s.s doors opening into the playground. There is no heap of sand in a corner, nor is there a tub of water; for the practical teacher knows how little hands, if not little feet, with their vigorous but as yet uncontrolled movements would splash the water and scatter the sand with dire effects as to the floor, which the theorist fondly imagines would always be clean enough to sit upon. But there is a sand-tray big enough and deep enough for six to eight children to use individually or together. As spontaneous activity, with its ceaseless efforts at experimenting, ceaselessly spills the sand, within easy reach are little brushes and dustpans to remedy such mishaps. The sand-tray is lined with zinc so that the sand can be replaced by water for boats and ducks, etc., when desired.

The low wall blackboard is there ready for use. Bright pictures are on the walls, well drawn and well coloured, some from nursery rhymes, some of Caldecott's, a frieze of hen and chickens, etc. Boxes for houses and shops are not in evidence, but their place is taken by bricks of such size and quant.i.ty that houses, shops, motors, engines and anything else may be built large enough for the children themselves to be shopkeepers or drivers, and there are also pieces of wood to use for various purposes of construction. There is no cooking stove, but simple cooking can be carried out on an open fire, and when a baking oven is required, an eager procession makes its way to the kitchen, where a kindly housekeeper permits the use of her oven. There is a doll's cot with a few dolls of various sizes. There are flowers and growing bulbs. There are light low tables and chairs, a family of guinea pigs in a large cage, and there is a cupboard which the children can reach.

Water is to be found in a pa.s.sage room, between the Kindergarten and the rooms for children above that stage, and here, so placed that the children themselves can find and reach everything, are the sawdust, bran and oats for the guinea pigs, with a few carrots and a knife to cut them, some tiny scrubbing-brushes and a wiping-up cloth. Here also are stored the empty boxes, corrugated paper and odds and ends in constant demand for constructions.

In the cupboard there are certain shelves from which anything may be taken, and some from which nothing may be taken without leave. For the teacher here is of opinion that children of even three and four are not too young to begin to learn the lesson of _meum_ and _tuum_, and she also thinks it is good to have some treasures which do not come out every day, and which may require more delicate handling than the ordinary toy ought to need. For this ought to be strong enough to bear unskilled handling and vigorous movements, for a broken toy ought to be a tragedy. At the same time it is part of a child's training to learn to use dainty objects with delicate handling, and such things form the children's art gems, showing beauty of construction and of colour.

Children as well as grown-ups have their bad days, when something out of the usual is very welcome. "Do you know there's nothing in this world that I'm not tired of?" was said one day by a boy of six usually quite contented. "Give me something out of the cupboard that I've never seen before," said another whose digestion was troublesome. The open shelves contain pencils and paper, crayons, paint-boxes, boxes of building blocks, interlocking blocks, wooden animals, jigsaw and other puzzles, coloured tablets for pattern laying, toy scales, beads to thread, dominoes, etc., the only rule being that what is taken out must be tidily replaced. This Kindergarten is part of a large inst.i.tution, and the playground, to which it has direct access, is of considerable extent. There is a big stretch of gra.s.s and another of asphalt, so that in suitable weather the tables and chairs, the sand-tray, the bricks and anything else that is wanted can be carried outside so that the children can live in the open, which of course is better than any room. In the playground there is a bank where the children can run up and down, and there are a few planks and a builder's trestle,[16] on which they can be poised for seesaws or slides, and these are a constant source of pleasure.

[Footnote 16: See p. 55.]

In another Kindergarten we find the walls enlivened with Cecil Aldin's fascinating friezes: here is Noah with all the animals walking in cheerful procession, and in the next room is an attractive procession of children with push-carts, hoops and toy motor cars. When we make our visit the day is fine and the room is empty, the children are all outside. The garden is not large, but there is some s.p.a.ce, and under the shade of two big trees we find rugs spread, on which the children are sitting, standing, kneeling and lying, according to their occupation.

One is building with large blocks, and must stand up to complete her erection; another is lying flat putting together a jigsaw; another, a boy, is threading beads; while another has built railway arches, and with much whistling and the greatest carefulness is guiding his train through the tunnels. The play is almost entirely individual, but very often you hear, "O Miss X, _do_ come and see what I've done!" After about an hour, during which a few of the children have changed their occupations, those who wish to do so join some older children who are playing games involving movement. This may be a traditional game like Looby Loo, or Round and round the Village, or it may be one of the best of the old Kindergarten games. After lunch the was.h.i.+ng up is to be done in a beautiful new white sink which is displayed with pride.

Our next visit is to a Free Kindergarten. The rooms are quite as attractive, as rich in charming friezes as in the others, and the furnis.h.i.+ng in some ways is much the same. But here we see what we have not seen before, for here is a large room filled with tiny hammock beds.

The windows are wide open, but the blinds are down, for the children are having their afternoon sleep.

Here, as in all Free Kindergartens, the children are provided with simple but pretty overalls which the parents are pleased to wash. House shoes are also provided, partly to minimise the noise from active little feet, but princ.i.p.ally because the poor little boots are often a painfully inadequate protection from wet pavements. The children are trained to tidy ways and to independence. They cannot read, but by picture cards they recognise their own beds, pegs and other properties.

They take out and put away their own things, and give all reasonable help in laying tables and serving food, in was.h.i.+ng, dusting and sweeping up crumbs, as is done in any true Kindergarten.

In the garden of this Free Kindergarten there is a large sand-pit, surrounded by a low wooden framework, and having a pole across the middle so that it resembles a cuc.u.mber frame and a cover can be thrown over the sand to keep it clean when not in use.

Froebel's own list of playthings contains, besides b.a.l.l.s and building blocks, coloured beads, coloured tablets for laying patterns, coloured papers for cutting, folding and plaiting; pencils, paints and brushes; modelling clay and sand; coloured wool for sewing patterns and pictures; and such little sticks and laths as children living in a forest region find for themselves. Considered in themselves, apart from the traditions of formality, these are quite good play material or stimuli, and Froebel meant the time to come "when we shall speak of the doll and the hobby horse as the first plays of the awakening life of the girl and the boy,"

but he died before he had done so. In the _Mother Songs_, too, we find quite a good list of toys which are now to be found in most Kindergartens.

Toys for the playground should be provided--a sand-heap, a seesaw, a substantial wheel-barrow, hoops, b.a.l.l.s, reins and perhaps skipping-ropes. Something on which the child can balance, logs or planks which they can move about, and a trestle on which these can be supported, are invaluable. It was while an addition was being made to our place that we realised the importance of such things, and, as in Froebel's case, "our teachers were the children themselves." They were so supremely happy running up and down the plank roads laid by the builders for their wheel-barrows, seesawing or balancing and sliding on others, that we could not face the desolation of emptiness which would come when the workmen removed their things. So, for a few pounds, all that the children needed was secured, ordinary planks for seesawing, narrower for balancing and a couple of trestles. One exercise the children had specially enjoyed was jumping up and down on yielding planks, and this the workmen had forbidden because the planks might crack. But a sympathetic foreman told us what was needed: two planks of special springy wood were fastened together by cross pieces at each end, and besides making excellent slides, these made most exciting springboards.

For representations of real life the children require dolls and the simplest of furniture--a bed, which need only be a box, some means of carrying out the doll's was.h.i.+ng, her personal requirements as well as her clothes; some little tea-things and pots and pans. A doll's house is not necessary, and can only be used by two or three children, but will be welcomed if provided, and its appointments give practice in dainty handling. Trains and signals of some kind, home-made or otherwise; animals for farm or Zoo; a pair of scales for a shop, and some sort of delivery van, which, of course, may be home-made.

There must also be provision for increase of skill and possibility of creation. If the Kindergarten can afford it, some of the Montessori material may be provided; there is no reason, except expense, why it should not be used if the children like it, and if it does not take up too much room. But it has no creative possibilities, and even at three years old this is required. Scissors are an important tool, and an old book of sample wall-papers is most useful; old match-boxes and used matches, paste and brushes and some old magazines to cut. Blackboard chalks and crayons, paint-boxes with four to six important colours, some Kindergarten folding papers, all these supply colour. Certain toys seem specially suited to give hand control, _e.g._ a Noah's Ark, where the small animals are to be set out carefully, tops or teetotums and tiddlywinks, at which some little children become proficient. The puzzle interest must not be forgotten, and simple jigsaw pictures give great pleasure. It is interesting to note here that the youngest children fit these puzzles not by the picture but by form, though they know they are making a picture and are pleased when it is finished. The puzzle with six pictures on the sides of cubes is much more difficult than a simple jigsaw.

All sorts of odds and ends come in useful, and especially for the poorer children these should be provided. Any one who remembers the pleasure derived from coloured envelope bands, from transparent paper from crackers, and from certain advertis.e.m.e.nts, will save these for children to whose homes such treasures never come. A box containing sc.r.a.ps of soft cloth, possibly a bit of velvet, some bits of smooth and s.h.i.+ning coloured silk give the pleasure of sense discrimination without the formality of the Montessori graded boxes, and are easier to replace.

Some subst.i.tute for "mother's b.u.t.ton box," a box of sh.e.l.ls or coloured seeds, a box of feathers, all these things will be played with, which means observation and discrimination, comparison and contrast, and in addition, where colour is involved, there is aesthetic pleasure, and this also enters into the touching of smooth or soft surfaces. Softness is a joy to children, as is shown in the woolly lambs, etc., provided for babies. A little one of my acquaintance had a bit of blanket which comforted many woes, and when once I offered her a feather boa as a subst.i.tute she sobbed out: "It isn't so soft as the blanket!"

In one of Miss McMillan's early books she wrote: "Very early the child begins more or less consciously to exercise the basal sense--the sense of touch. On waking from sleep he puts his tiny hands to grasp something, or turns his head on the firm soft pillow. He _touches_ rather than looks, at first (for his hands and fingers perform a great many movements long before he learns to turn his eyeb.a.l.l.s in various directions or follow the pa.s.sage even of a light), and through touching many things he begins his education. If he is the nursling of wealthy parents, it is possible that his first exercises are rather restricted.

He touches silk, ivory, muslin and fine linen. That is all, and that is not much. But the child of the cottager is often better off, for his mother gives him a great variety of objects to keep him quiet. The ridiculous command, 'Do not touch,' cannot be imposed on him while he is screaming in his cradle or protesting in his dinner chair; and so all manner of things--reels, rings, boxes, tins, that is to say a variety of surfaces--is offered to him, to his great delight and advantage. And lest he should not get the full benefit of such privilege he carries everything to his mouth, where the sense of touch is very keen."[17]

[Footnote 17: _Early Childhood_: Swan Sonnenschein, published 1900.]

Among the treasures kept for special occasions there may be pipes for soap-bubbles, a prism of some kind with which to make rainbows, a tiny mirror to make "light-birds" on the wall and ceiling, and a magnet with the time-honoured ducks and fish, if these are still to be bought, along with other articles, delicately made or coloured, which require care.

Pictures and picture-books should also be considered; some being in constant use, some only brought out occasionally. For the very smallest children some may be rag books, but always children should be taught to treat books carefully. The pictures on the walls ought to be changed, sometimes with the children's help, sometimes as a surprise and discovery. For that purpose it is convenient to have series of pictures in frames with movable backs, but brown-paper frames will do quite well.

The pictures belonging to the stories which have been told to the children ought to have a prominent place, and if the little ones desire to have one retold they will ask for it.