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

by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

On the other hand, I do not wish to produce any artificial sentimentality on this subject. It is my belief that the average woman is sufficiently gifted by nature to make a good kindergartner, if she will give her nature fair play, by cultivating religious and moral sentiment; and will take pains to develop her intellect by the study of nature's laws in at least one department of science—that of vegetable physiology for instance, the materials of which are everywhere. One who could not be educated to become a kindergartner, should never dare to become a mother; for she would not know even how to choose the assistance necessary to her for the work that ought to be done for every child by somebody. While I would discourage, and if possible effectually frighten every one from professing kindergartning who is morally disqualified by sordid aims, or by making it a means to another end than itself, I welcome the young and ardent to this beautiful womanly work, which, to do well, requires of them to do the very best thing for their own intellect and heart, and which, more certainly than anything else, will give them the secret of Power and Beauty.

It was my privilege, a year or two since, to pass a week in one of the schools of the feeble-minded; and I there saw six women, some of them quite young girls, devoted to the terrible work of waking up Will and Perception in those poor prisoners of mal-organization, so many of them frightful to look upon. They were doing their work under the strongest sense of humanity and religion. It would have been impossible to do it at all, as they were doing it, had they had no other inspiration than the pay they were receiving. The main reward was in their having some success in waking up the mind. In their countenances something angelic was dawning; and this was not my fancy merely, for I heard the same remark made again and again, by persons who went there as I did. I do not think one of these women wished to leave the good work; and if acting on a mind-cherishing principle was so interesting, and productive of such reactive effects, in such sad circumstances, how much more may be expected from working upon children fairly gifted! The charm of the sadder work was, that, like kindergartning, it stimulated to profound study of the laws of mental nature, in order to work reverently among them, instead of arbitrarily, in defiance or irreverence of them. To do this made these women feel that they were working with God; and this made them practical saints. But why cannot we believe that God is present, and acting with us, and wooing us to act with Himself, in the joyous paradise of life, as well as in chambers of disease, and among the wretched? Is He not the God of the living and joyful, as well as of the dying and sad? Why is the church-yard only a grave-yard? Why should it not always be a kindergarten?

One of the pleasantest observations that I made of the kindergartens of Germany—and I went to the very best ones, those kept by the kindergartners whom Frœbel had trained—was the happy absorption of the teachers in the children; their sympathy with them; the utter companionship between them. I never saw a punishment; I never heard a Don't (or its German equivalent); but when anything went wrong, there was always a pause, and sometimes questions were asked; and all seemed to wait till the inward guide had been brought out into consciousness (whether the thing in hand was social action or artistic work). Perhaps it might be harder work to govern American children. Their vivacious temperament, their lively energies, need "conscious law" as a curb, rather than as a spur. But all the more is it necessary for the American kindergartner to vivify the invisible guide; she should present order to the mind, by her genial questioning and conversation over the work in hand, rather than exert an arbitrary power which might stimulate the reaction of obstinacy or the subterfuges of cunning. To govern is not the whole thing. The question is how we govern; whether we so govern as to make a cringing slave, a cunning hypocrite, or an intelligent, law-abiding, self-respecting, willing servant of God. I have seen a magnetic teacher produce a marvellous obedience, and apparent order, by his imposing presence and keen satire. He imagined that he governed by moral power; but as soon as he was out of the schoolroom, the children were the victims of their own impulses, to which seemed given a stronger spring by the enforced repression. There is no order which is more than skin deep, unless it be the free, glad obedience of the child to a law, which he perceives to be creative because it enables him to do something real. Nothing short of the union of love and thought can produce spiritual power, i.e., creativeness. It is only spiritual power that inaugurates order—the Eternal Beauty may be inaugurated in childhood and among childish toys.

There is reason, on their own account, why we want our pupils, in this art of kindergartning, to be in their disposition and circumstances above merely pecuniary motive for entering on the work; and that is, because it will be long before the work will pay much in money. I need not adduce any other proof of this than our experience in Boston; where, for four years, the rarely gifted, thoroughly educated, religiously devoted Alma Kriege poured out her young energies on classes of less than a score of children; bringing her a pittance so small that she had to fill up the rest of her hours, which ought to have been given to recreation and culture, with other work, in order to pay for rent and necessary bread. Our rich and cultivated people will not forego a little more upholstery than is necessary, or a style of dress that makes the laundry bill—to say nothing of the mantua-maker's and milliner's—larger than the school bill, in order to give the required remuneration to the kindergartner for spending herself on their children in exhausting study and labor. But the truth is, people do not really believe that anything better can be done for children than to kill the time between the mother's arms and the season when they are to be taught to read; and so this precious interval, when the habits of thought and affection are forming, is given up to be filled by chance, risking life-long difficulties for the child.

Now, what is to reform this state of things? Nothing but the self-sacrificing work of kindergartners, who, for the sake of enlightening these benighted parents, will do their work faithfully, steadily refusing to undertake the care of those whom their parents will not trust to Frœbel's system. The refusal will not seldom force the truth on the parents—who, when they know it, will be glad to know it. I do not say to any particular person, it is your duty to wear yourself out and half starve, for the sake of keeping a kindergarten. It is only you who are sufficiently free from other obligations, to give yourselves the privilege and luxury of working with God, on the paradisaical ground of childhood, who should enter this field. If you can make it your object to study how to avoid offending those who are beholding the face of the Father in heaven, by not hindering, but bringing them to Christ, which means helping them to grow as He did, in grace as in stature, and in favor with God and man, till like Him they become redeemers of their brethren from bondage, and can help to make earth the kingdom of heaven; then you may hope, in your day and generation, to initiate kindergartning, and make the way smooth for those that follow. When the true thing is initiated, it will pay even in money; for parents will see that it is invaluable.

It is twenty-two years since Frœbel died. He had made a band of kindergartners, and set them at work. They all began with small pecuniary reward. It was at first a starving business. In Europe it is more difficult than it is here, to induce women of culture and position to undertake any work which is paid for with money. Frœbel's genius had overcome this prejudice in a few instances. The ladies of one wealthy family in Hamburg became his pupils, one of whom introduced it into England, though under some great disadvantages. The Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow is the most important person inspired by Frœbel; and the circumstances of her introduction to him are even picturesque. Being in feeble health, she went into an obscure village for rest and retirement; and one day asked the woman with whom she boarded, if anything interesting was going on among the villagers. The woman replied that there was "one queer thing, a natural fool who played about among the children, who followed him, and were very much taken up with him." The Baroness hardly heeded this singular assertion; but some time after, being abroad for exercise, she saw a white-haired man under a tree, with a group of children around him; and, thinking this might be the "natural fool," she drew near, and was soon arrested by what she heard, and joined the little throng herself. Subsequent interviews with Frœbel—for it was he—made a new era in her life, and she corresponded with him closely till his death. She has since been his chief apostle. After years of earnest work, with tongue and pen, she succeeded in getting rid of the injunction against his schools, made by the Prussian Government, which was jealous of what claimed to be an improvement on their world-renowned Reform. Since this injunction was taken off, she has worked, by means of a normal school which she helped to found in Berlin, in which she lectured gratuitously many years, fighting earnestly against just such deteriorations of the system as have already begun to appear in this country. Some of the pseudo-kindergartens use the plays and occupations there, as here, in the most superficial way. When children work by patterns, or are shown—instead of being told in words—how to do things, they merely imitate, with as little accompaniment of intellectual action as a monkey; and neither the mind nor the character will be developed, but rather dissipated and weakened. Others, especially in this country, use the plays in the intervals between lessons or reading,—which, being taught before the mind has been regularly developed by success in doing things, and before the meaning of words has been learned in an adequate manner, are confused with a chaos of unrelated particulars, that it will take years of self-education, by and by, to grow out of; and, in short, only a few vigorous natures fortunately situated ever surmount the difficulty.

But the work of the Baroness has not been in vain; and she writes in a late letter that a government decree has just been made in Austria, ordering that all the children between four and six years of age should be sent to kindergartens; and that every normal school must give kindergarten training, and every teacher, whether of that or the following stages of education, must be made acquainted with Frœbel's principles and practices. This great step is the final result of the agitation of the subject for the last few years in Europe, which began in the first Philosophers' Congress at Prague, in 1867. The dying out of the teachers instructed by Frœbel himself was manifestly producing a deteriorating effect in the quality of kindergartners; and his most intelligent and devoted disciples proposed to the Congress an effort for the revival of his science and art in its pristine purity and power.

It is most desirable that such falsification and deterioration do not get ahead in America. But there is impending danger of it, and it can only be prevented by establishing and keeping up adequate training-schools, and so informing public opinion, that it shall not be tolerated in the community to call by the sacred name of kindergarten anything short of it. There will necessarily be infant schools of an inferior quality for a long time, because it will take time to make common an adequate education in the art of kindergartning; but let such be called play-schools. Pretenders in this profession should be frowned upon by all good people, as pretenders in the clerical profession are. They do more harm than bad clergymen can, because the subjects of their teaching are more helpless and undefended, and can do nothing for themselves.

The experience I have had in my apostolate in this cause, has brought me to the conclusion that in America the best way to proceed is, to induce the public authorities to have kindergartning taught in the State and city normal schools, and to open public kindergartens as fast as there are adequate teachers for them.

Everything depends on the quality of the first kindergartners we train—their spiritual, moral and intellectual quality—which must be such as to operate in two ways: first, to do for the children the right thing; secondly, to educate the community to require it done as a general thing. Many characteristics of America give great encouragement. We are not dragged back, as they are in Europe, by old customs, whose roots are intertwined with the heart-strings of inherited sentiment. Our patriotic hearts fasten themselves on the great future that our fathers died to inaugurate. We must justify their ideal of universal equality, by an equal education, an equal opportunity for development of all our people. "The spirit that makes all things new," as the heart of childhood craves, and its hand is eager to enact, is "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," to make alive the human heart. Therefore we leave behind us—more and more—those conventions of the Old World that have made even the great work of educating rank as inferior to that which wields the sword of war. Some people groan at seeing how the growing facilities of getting money, which our institutions give to every man and woman of energy, is effacing the old distinctions of rank. But if our Culture may be made universal, by employing part of this money in making public education adequate, what ground will be left for distinction of rank? What pretext for exclusion will there be, when there are none rude and uncultivated to be excluded? That any distinction of ranks came among the children of God is incidental to free agency. Children know nothing of them—till we profane their golden age of innocence by revealing them. (Appendix, [Note A].)