Education in the Home, the Kindergarten, and the Primary School

by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

I cannot sufficiently regret that I have lost my original memoranda. They were transcribed from notes that his mother made, who was watching every word said, with the most intense interest. She always had pencil and paper at her side, because the danger of hemorrhage caused her to avoid speaking. She wrote down with care the very words, as if they were, as indeed they were, a divine Revelation. Whatever he accepted or expressed with joy, she felt was true, knowing as well as she did the past emptiness of his understanding, and the dreariness of his feeling as an individual. But I can perhaps remember enough to show you the method I took, which was truly the very method of conversation that Frœbel proposes we should have with children, prompted by the Wisdom of love, which so profoundly respects its object that it gives it opportunity to be itself by not obtruding. The reason that we do not get the lesson that childhood can give us is that we thrust our finite minds between the child and the Divine, instead of limiting ourselves to putting the child into the point of view to see for itself what of course though essentially one, is perhaps of different aspect to each. I made it a point to be very quiet, and to exhibit no surprise at his questions or mistakes, but to lead him by my questions to the answers, and the corrections of mistakes which must needs arise from one-sidedness. The entire respect with which I listened to what he said gave him complete possession of and confidence in his own mind. One laugh at any incongruity he uttered (as Dr. Seguin would tell you) would have shut him up perhaps forever. How often children's thinking is thus nipped in the bud!

The circumstances in this instance were favorable to real conversation. In addition to my love of psychological observation in general, and my love and interest in this child in particular, was that which I felt in the mother, whose own childhood had been so shadowed by her human environment that it had not taught her what only childhood can teach with its uneclipsed vision of the Father's face, of which Christ speaks and warns the adult not to offend (or, as the revised version translates it, cause to stumble). On her account, as well as on my own and the child's, I was careful not to put my thoughts into his head, but merely lead him to the standpoint from which he could see the truth for himself. It is because these conditions made for once an opportunity for a genuine conversation between intuitive childhood and such maturity of experience as I had attained, realizing Frœbel's ideal of the conversation of the kindergarten, that I am desirous to give it to you as a hint of how you should proceed—though, of course, you would probably never have so exceptional an opportunity; because the children that come to you will generally have minds already misty with half-defined ideas of God, received from the vague, half-defined minds of the imperfectly educated adults, conveyed to the children either in that careless or dogmatic manner in which they are usually talked to, not with.

Another advantage I had with this child was, that besides the arrested development arising from his mother's timid plan with him, he inherited from both parents, and perhaps from remoter ancestry, an individuality of mind that was not at all imaginative; which did not, however, exclude him from spiritual truth, for that is not the work of imagination, but is discerned by the spiritual sense, being as objective as what is discerned by the five senses (a transcendental objective, not a material one). The respectful interest with which I treated him gave him a happy confidence in his own thought, which was my opportunity for observing the natural order of mental development. In short, the conversation we had was a genuine one as between equals, unless, indeed, he was the superior in giving to me the divine laws of the spiritual order. He often surprised me by his next question, and was so disarmed of all fear by my consideration and tenderness, that he revealed that which is always the individual's secret, and I gained as much as he did by the conversations, and certainly I gained certainty in what was previously only conjecture on my part. I was sometimes obliged to say I did not know, and remember his asking me with surprise, "Don't you know everything?" "Oh, no!" said I. "Only our good friend knows everything and gives us our thoughts all the time. Doesn't he give new thoughts to you every day?"

"Yes, he gives me a great many new thoughts all the time," he replied with animation. On another occasion, when I had become perfectly exhausted in answering his questions, I said to him:—

"I am very tired, but I will answer that question, provided you will not ask me another before dinner."

As he walked away he said, "Oh, I wish I had asked another question instead of that!"

"Well," said I, "what? Perhaps I will answer that one."

Turning back, he said eagerly, "Will our good friend answer all my questions when I go into the sky?"

I said, "Yes, every one; for he knows everything, and can never be tired."

The expression of complete satisfaction with which he went away from me was most expressive.