Education in The Home, The Kindergarten, and The Primary School Part 14

Wherever the kindergarten has been fairly tried, its results have been lively enjoyment by the little pupils of their "school" hours, and readiness to receive not as drudgery, but with delight, all opportunities of acquiring knowledge. This readiness, it is believed, would less often change into a hatred of lessons, if the subsequent school-teaching did not too commonly despise those indications of natural taste and fitness which Frbel, in his system, has carefully interpreted and obeyed. The kindergartens for the poor, already established at Queen Street, Salford, and in the Workpeople's Hall, Pendleton,--where visitors are at all times most heartily welcomed,--will convince any one that this system is able to give a truly humanizing and religious training to children of the least favored cla.s.s, gathered in large numbers even out of very neglected homes. By inspecting these schools also, intelligent persons will form an idea of the ingenuity and beauty of the processes by which this natural and simple training is effected. Thus too will be understood, that the kindergarten system, which in relation to its pupils is the simplest and easiest possible because it travels along, not athwart, their natural tastes, is, as respects its professors, very far removed indeed from every-day facility and _rule of thumb_. It demands in those who aspire to teach, a sincere love of children and an earnest devotion to duties which bring much pleasure when well performed, and it demands besides that they be willing to give up sufficient time and labor to become thoroughly instructed in the principles, and sufficiently practised in the use, of a machinery which, while beautifully simple in idea, is complicated in detail. A great and increasing demand for teachers thoroughly trained in this system exists, as well for families as for kindergarten schools proper, and for infant schools commonly so called.

To supply this demand is the purpose of the training school.

NOTE B, TO PAGE 81.

_Letter from Michelet to the Baroness Marenholtz von Bulow._

MARCH 27, 1859.

By a stroke of genius Frbel has found what the wise men of all times have sought in vain,--the solution of the problem of human education.

And again: Your first explanation made it clear to me that Frbel has laid the necessary basis for a new education for the present and future.

Frbel looks at human beings in a new light, and finds the means to develop them according to natural laws, as heretofore has never been done. I am your most faithful advocate, and speak constantly with friends and acquaintances about this great work that you have undertaken. Several journalists and writers will mention it in their papers. Dispose of all my power to aid you. The amba.s.sador of Hayti, Monsieur Ardoin, minister of instruction, is ready to return to Port au Prince, and wishes to make your acquaintance. He will come to see you to-morrow. For the inhabitants of that island, in process of reorganization, Frbel's method may do a great deal. I have asked several persons to aid in this work. Niffner and Dolfus are writing, at present, a great work on education, and will be happy to give a place to your cause. I send you a letter for Isodore Cohen; you must see him.

You, personally, can do more than all speeches, recommendations, and writings together. I shall come to you shortly to hear more about Frbel. I would like to have a comparison drawn between him and Pestalozzi. Your written communications interest me highly. Let me have some German works about Frbel. I read German and know how to guess at incomprehensible things. I would like to know about the continuation of his method for more advanced years, especially for girls, and await impatiently the appearance of your manual. The more I investigate the heads of children of different ages, the more important Frbel's method appears to me, as it begins in early childhood, when the most important changes in the brain take place. All my sympathies are with your work.

_Letter from the Abbe Miraud, author of voluminous works, one of them being "La Democratic et la Catholicisme."_

JULY, 1858.

We have to fulfil a great mission in common. I shall be most happy to procure for Frbel's theory, _which I accept fully_, a hearing. To appreciate this theory in all its grandeur, richness, and utility, the shade of pantheism it seems to contain is no hindrance to me; it seems inseparable from the German mind. I accept the obligation to work for the ideas of Frbel according to my ability, of course within the limits of orthodox Catholicism, to which I am devoted from faith and reason.

You must certainly go with me to Rome, that we may work together there.

If you resolve to do so, I will meet you at Orleans. You would find in Rome a good opportunity for _propaganda_. My friends there would aid us, but without your presence nothing can be done. Italy needs a regeneration by education. Let us work where the most rapid diffusion is certain.

_Mons. A. Guyard, a Parisian author writes:_

JUNE 14, 1857.

The more I hear you about Frbel's method, the more my interest increases, and the deeper my conviction becomes that by this means a basis is laid for a new education for the salvation of humanity. Accept my warmest and most sincere wishes for the propagation of Frbel's method. He is great, perhaps the greatest philosopher of our time, and has found in you what all philosophers need, that is, a woman who understands him, who clothes him with flesh and blood, and makes him alive. I think, I believe, indeed, that an idea in order to bear fruit, must have a father and a mother. Hitherto, all ideas have had only fathers. As Frbel's ideas are so likely to find mothers, they will have an immense success. When the ideas of the future have become alive in devoted women, the face of the world will be changed.

_Lamarche of Paris, philanthropist and writer on social and religious subjects, after listening to the lectures upon Frbel given by Madam Marenholtz in Paris, wrote on:_--

PARIS, March 4, 1856.

Your last lecture has unmistakably shown that Frbel's method, in a religious point of view, surpa.s.ses everything that has. .h.i.therto been done in education. And this is the main point from which a method of education is to be judged for its aim is to awaken love to G.o.d and man--the foundation upon which Christianity rests. Education has. .h.i.therto done little to awaken this love of man in the young soul, from which all piety flows. This is the reason we find so much skepticism and indifference in human society, and which is the source of most of the existing misery, and of the want of order and lawfulness. These sad results are the condemnations of those methods of education that suppress the human faculties, or force them into wrong channels, or arbitrarily superimpose something instead of aiding free development. It is the sad mistake of our moralists who, without faith in a Heavenly Father, do not understand human nature, and replace _revealed_ religion with human tenets.... Frbel has found the missing truth, in first awakening the child's senses and capacities by the simplest means, and making him feel in nature the loving Creator, before he taxes his intellect with religious dogmas, which are beyond the intellect of childhood, and only confuse it. To lead it through the love of G.o.d, the Heavenly Father of us all, to the love of the neighbor, by acting and doing, is the natural and simple way which Frbel has pointed out, and we shall owe it to him, if before our children are four or five years old, before they can read books, they learn the great law of humanity, _Love to G.o.d and the neighbor_.

Again: Frbel's discovery, or invention, furnishes the means to follow the natural order of all development for human beings, by which alone they will come to the knowledge of, and at last to union with, their Heavenly Father. This is the way which Christianity prescribed eighteen hundred years ago, but into which education has not understood how to lead us, because it has put statutes instead of actual experience, and has not let the study of nature, as the work of G.o.d, _precede_ statutes.

Frbel leads education again into the path intended by G.o.d, which, in the course of universal development, will lead to the happiness of the individual, as well as of the whole of society. In the human being itself are the rich mines, the development of which our false modes of education have hitherto made impossible. May mothers have faith in G.o.d, the Heavenly Father of their children, and that he has given them the capacity for good, which will crush the head of the serpent, and bring the kingdom of G.o.d upon earth.

NOTE C, TO PAGE 84.

In the second part of my _Guide to Kindergarten and Moral Training of Infancy_, published by E. Steiger, 25 Park Place, New York, is an account of how I actually first began to teach to read on this method, that may be of practical aid to one teaching _After Kindergarten--what?_ The first kindergartner who tried the method, in the course of the first half-hour led her children to write on their slates (in imitation of what she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter, giving the power, not the name, of each as she wrote) words enough to involve the whole alphabet; namely, _cars_, _go_, _bells_, _sing_, _dizzy_, _old_, _hen_, _fixes_, _vest_, _jelly_, _jars_, _puss_, _kitty_. The words were in a column, and after they were written, the children recognized each word, p.r.o.nouncing it right when she pointed to it on the blackboard. But she was surprised the next day to find they remembered every one, and they had so clear an idea of the correspondence of the letters and sounds, that, long before they had finished writing at her dictation the words of the first vocabulary, they read at sight any word of it, no matter how many syllables it had. In fact, at the end of the first week she wrote and asked me for the groups of exceptions, and, beginning with the smallest group, which is most exceptional, in a few weeks they could all read.

But I would not advise this rapid acquisition of the whole language in so short a time. It is better to pause on the meaning of the words,--not asking them to define them by other words, but asking them to make sentences in which they put the word, which will show whether or not they understand its meaning. A great deal more than mere p.r.o.nunciation may be taught children while learning to read.

NOTE D, TO PAGE 102.

History of Printing, an unfinished ma.n.u.script of which he found in the Antiquarian Library of Worcester.

NOTE E, TO PAGE 110.

The story, as I paraphrased it, was this. The drop of water speaks, "Once I lived with hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of brothers and sisters, in the great ocean. There we all took hold of hands, and played with each other; and the winds played with us, and took us up on their backs, making us into little waves and great waves. But sometimes, when the winds were not there, we would spread ourselves out smooth like a looking-gla.s.s, and look up into the sky; and the moon and the stars would look down upon us, and the ocean would look just like the sky.

"And we wanted to go up into the sky; and so, when the sun sent down his sunbeams, and the moon sent down her moonbeams, and the stars sent down their starbeams, some of us would jump up on their backs, and ride up into the sky. But soon they would be tired of us, and shake us off; and down we fell, and then we would catch hold of hands, and make ourselves into clouds; and when the clouds got to be so heavy that the air could not hold them up, we would let go of hands, and fall down in drops of rain. But sometimes the clouds would stay up, and sail round; and one day the cloud that I was in, b.u.mped up against a mountain, and we all fell out, down into the little holes of the mountain, and I soon found I was alone in the dark; but I saw a light a little ways off, and so I ran along and came to the light, which was outside the mountain. And as I stood there, I saw a great many of my sisters and brothers standing at just such holes as I was looking out of; and when we saw each other, we burst out laughing, and ran to each other, and took hold of hands, and made a little brook that ran down the sides of the mountain into a meadow full of flowers; and we ran about the meadow, watering the roots of all the flowers to make them grow, for we wanted to do as much good as we could; and then we thought we would run on, and see if we could not find our old home in the ocean, where we left hundreds of brothers and sisters; but as I got rather tired, I thought I would stop and rest awhile on this flower-leaf. But now I am rested. So good by; I will jump off, and run home as fast as I can with the rest."

This story I had to tell over and over again at the time, which I did in the same words; and now, when I again repeated it in the same words, he liked to hear it over and over again, looking at the picture in the book while I told it.

NOTE F, TO PAGE 167.

I here insert the version of the Lord's Prayer and the _Song of the Weather_, which have been found so effective in the religious nurture, and which, if used in the simple, unsanctimonious manner I have so earnestly suggested, will preclude the necessity of talking to the children in prose. These songs explain themselves to the child's heart and imagination.

OUR FATHER, who in Heaven art, Thy name we dearly love; We'd do thy will with all our heart, As done in heaven above.

Give us this day our daily bread, Forgive the wrong we do, And we'll not mind when treated ill, That we may be like you.

Help us avoid temptation's snare; Deliver us from evil ways; For thine's the kingdom and the power, All glory and all praise.

SONG OF THE WEATHER.

THIS is the way the snow comes down, Softly, softly falling.

G.o.d, he giveth his snow like wool, Fair, and white, and beautiful.

This is the way the snow comes down, Softly, softly falling.

_Chorus._

Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works, Wheresoever falling; All their various voices raise, Speaking forth their Maker's praise.

Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works, Wheresoever falling.

This is the way the rain comes down, Swiftly, swiftly falling; So he sendeth his welcome rain.

On the field, and hill, and plain, This is the way the rain comes down, Swiftly, swiftly falling.

(_Repeat the chorus._)

This is the way the frost comes down, Widely, widely falling; So it spreadeth all through the night, s.h.i.+ning, cold, and pure, and bright, This is the way the frost comes down, Widely, widely falling.

(_Chorus._)

This is the way the hail comes down, Loudly, loudly falling; So it flieth beneath the cloud, Swift, and strong, and wild, and loud, This is the way the hail comes down, Loudly, loudly falling.

(_Chorus._)

This is the way the cloud comes down, Darkly, darkly falling; So it covers the s.h.i.+ning blue, Till no ray can glisten through, This is the way the cloud comes down, Darkly, darkly falling.

(_Chorus._)