CHAPTER V.

THE KINDERGARTNER.

THE first requisite to a Kindergarten is, of course, the Kindergartner, fully intelligent of childhood, and thoroughly trained herself in everything that the child is to do.

The first Kindergartner was Froebel himself; who, in the course of a long life, studied into the science of childhood, and worked out a series of artistical exercises, which aim to educate that is, draw forth· the powers of children from a more profound depth than ordinary education respects. But instead of beginning with putting checks upon childish play, he took the hint of his method from this spontaneous activity; and began with genially directing it to a more certainly beautiful effect than it can attain when left to itself. A large part of the art of primary school-teaching hitherto, has consisted in keeping children still, and preventing them from playing.

It was Froebel's wisdom to accept the natural activity of childhood as a hint of the Divine Providence, and to utilize its spontaneous play for education. And it is this which takes away from his system that element of baneful antagonism which school discipline is so apt to excite, and which it is such a misfortune should ever be excited between the

young and old. Nothing is worse for the soul, at any period of life, than to be put upon self-defence; for humility is the condition of the growth of mind as well as morals, and ensures that natural self-respect shall not degenerate into a petty wilfulness and self-assertion. The divine impulse of activity in children should not be directly opposed, but accepted and guided into beautiful production, according to the laws of

creative order, which the adult has studied out in nature, and genially presents in playing with the child.

But such playing is a great art, and founded on the deepest science of nature, within and without; and therefore Froebel never established a Kindergarten without previously preparing Kindergartners by a normal training, which his faithful disciples have scrupulously kept up. And if only genius and love like his own could in one lifetime have discovered the science and worked out the processes of this culture, yet Yundreds of pupils of these normal classes have proved, that any fairly gifted, well-educated, genial - tempered young woman, who will devote a reasonable time to training for it, can become a competent Kindergartner.

Nothing short of this will do; for none of the manuals which have been written to guide already trained experts, can supply the place of the living teacher. Written words will not describe the fine gradations of the work, or give an idea of the conversation which is to be constantly had with the children. It would be less absurd to suppose that a person could learn to make watches by reading a description of the manufacture in an encyclopædia, than to suppose a person could learn to educate children by mere formulas.

Indeed, it is infinitely less absurd. For a child is not finite mass to be moulded, or a blank paper to be written upon, at another's will. It is a living subject, whose own cooperation or at least willingness-is to be conciliated and made instrumental to the end in view. Would a Cremona violin be put into the hands of a person ignorant of music, to be tuned and made to discourse divine harmonies? How is it, then, that the "harp of a thousand strings which God puts into the hands of every mother, in perfect tune - is so recklessly committed, first to ignorant girl-nurses, and then to the least educated teachers? Looking at children's first schools, it would seem that anybody is thought skilful enough to begin a child's education! It takes a long apprenticeship to learn to play on the instrument with seven strings, in

order to bring out music. But it is stupidly thought that anybody can play on the greater instrument, whose strings thrill with pleasure or pain, and discourse good or evil, as they are touched wisely or unwisely!

Froebel struck the key-note of the music of the spheres, which human life is destined to become, when he announced, as a first principle, that the well-thought-out wisdom of the ideal mother's love is the science of education; and that this science of sciences is founded on self-knowledge; by which he did not mean (any more than did Socrates, or that older sage who engraved "know thyself" upon the temple of Delphi) individual idiosyncrasy, but the very self which Jesus Christ said all men must become, when he set a little child in the midst, and declared that no one could enter his kingdom, that did not become as one; and when, another time, he called and blessed little children, because, as he said, of such was the kingdom of heaven; and again, more significantly still, when he warned from "offending (it might be better rendered perverting) these little ones; because,” as he added, “their spirits do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." To know the soul before it has been warped by individual caprice and circumstance, is the science of sciences, on which is to be founded the art of arts; viz., that of educating the child so that its individuality may develop, not destroy, its sense of universal relations. And here I must pause to say, that it is simply astonishing that when most of us believe, as our religion, that Jesus Christ embodied in himself the wisdom, as well as love, and even power of God, "without measure," his words about children are passed over with so little inquiry into the depths of their meaning. What can it mean that their spirits always behold the face of the Father

short of the very

philosophy of Gioberti, that the newly-created soul commences its consciousness in the eternal world, with a reciprocal vision of God remembered in the heart through life, and constituting the divine term of conscience, which is the CON

STANT, while the human term is of only fitful growth. As

Wordsworth says,

"Our Life's Star

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar!

Not in entire forgetfulness

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing boy,

But he beholds the light and whence it flows;

He sees it in his joy :

The youth, who daily from the East

Must travel, still is nature's priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended."

But Froebel does not, like Wordsworth, make it strictly inevi table, however it may have hitherto been common, that

for he teaches that the parental sympathy and instruction of those adults who have attained

"The faith that looks through death

In years that bring the philosophic mind "

should intervene; which is just Kindergarten culture; preserving the heart's vision of the truths that

"We are toiling all our lives to find "

unshadowed; while the organs of the human mind gradually bring to bear God's manifestation in nature, which, point by point, forms the human understanding, by making an intellectual consciousness of what the heart knows.

Because the science of education is the analysis and gauging of love by intellect, Froebel sought the true form of the art of education in the method of the mother's love, which he

studied out with a philosophic earnestness. Not that any mother could tell him the secret. It cannot be put into formulas, nor does it come by intuition into the scientific form in which a Kindergartner needs to have it. Froebel, in watching the mother, saw that she was "led in a way she knew not." But he divined the meaning of that way, and its issues, and gives it to the Kindergartner.

The beginning of a child's life is its learning the fact and uses of its body. Here, as everywhere, human action blindly gropes for knowledge. The child cannot even find the breast to suck, but sucks what is nearest, compelling the mother to give it the breast by automatic motions which she understands; or by cries which awaken her heart. Gradually these reciprocal instincts open upon the child the first thing it knows; namely, that it is dependent for the means of life. For a child knows, in its heart, for a long time before it reflects and gets the thought, that not in itself, but outside of itself, is the source of its life. Of course, it is bodily life merely that it seeks at first, trying to incorporate the without with the within by eating every thing; the organs for this action on the outward world being first developed. But if it is regularly fed and kept comfortable, the eye will be satisfied with seeing, the ear with hearing, the hand with handling.

Now it is no less the instinct of the mother to make the baby's body the first plaything, than to feel its own body is the first pleasure of the child. To use its organs in play is the first action in which the voluntary combines with the instinctive animal impulse.

The first distinctive human intelligence a child expresses, is the recognition of its mother's smile. Its higher life begins in the reciprocation of that smile. No mere animal smiles! The mother's heart also goes to meet the child's faith with vocal expressions of tender joy; the heart of the child is awakened by tones which emparadise it, and it answers by like tones. There is nothing among the lower animals like this conversation of mother and child, by looks and tones,