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

by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

Hence it is not enough, though it is indispensable, to guide children's activity while it is still irreflective to spontaneously make forms of beauty and use with its playthings and materials of occupation; but after they have made something, you are to make them stop and look back (not every time, but often), and go over in thought, and put into words, what they have done, and lead them to observe all the properties and relations of the thing that are obvious to the childish sense; and when you have thus secured an impression of the means by which order is attained, you have given an experimental knowledge of there being a spiritual order; that is, a world of individual laws and a law-giver independent of human will and meant to lift it into the divine. Those of you who are Friends will agree with me that human beings can manifest no spiritual beauty or moral power, except so far as they listen to the Shepherd of souls in the holy pause of the hours of worship, a voice always suggesting loving activity. And cannot you see, that no artistic production, no intellectual work, is possible without listening, in the pause of reflection for the word of the law of beauty or use, that the Creator of the intellect gives? and which makes art and science the worship of God with the mind?

The most important, the crowning work of the kindergartner, is to secure to the child this moment of reflection in the midst of his play and work on all planes of life; and you do so by sympathetically playing with him and gently guiding his unthinking, impulsive activity, and asking him what he has done and is going to do, and not letting him do anything till he seeks to do the symmetrical or, at least, the useful thing. It is not every movement that will produce the satisfactory result. It is thus that the child learns that there is a greater mind than his own, or even than his teacher's mind, present with him guiding the intellect, for artistic principles flow into the mind from an Eternal source, no less than do moral and spiritual principles. In short, the true method of the intellect is the perpetual gift of a very present God, as much as the true method of the heart and soul.

Man, then, in the last analysis, is a creative being; and the Frœbel education has for its final object, to give him the dominion over everything in the earth; put all the cosmic forces into his hands,—as well as to bring him into the communion of love with his fellows; thus lifting his whole nature to the height of sitting down with our Elder brother on the throne, with the Universal Father.

You should keep this great idea before you, and it will enable you to use the technique that you have been learning, with a certain freedom as well as fidelity, guiding these playful exercises in such an order as you may find agreeable and salutary for them; and to check caprice, you must insist that, in these appointed times, they do the appointed things, or do nothing, for they will generally conclude to do the thing in hand, rather than do nothing while all their companions are doing their work; and when they are doing nothing, they will have time for reflection, and to hear the inward voice of law, with the opportunity voluntarily to accept it. Thus does God give to all his children "to have life in themselves," and to bring out their whole likeness to Himself, which proves that they are not his bond slaves,—like the lower animals,—but sons. If there are not in the universe two leaves that are alike, still less are there two souls that are alike. But leaves and souls, after all, are alike in more than they are different. You can provide action for all the instincts that children have in common, and create a common consciousness to a certain extent, which is the common sense; but what is peculiar to each, and makes the independent individual, is his own secret, and you can only help that to flower and fruitage by giving him the conditions of free, independent action, opening the inward eye and sharpening the inward ear for communication with Him who alone can adequately guide the will to the satisfaction of all the sensibilities of the heart, and the powers of intellect, and all the creative energies: but the religious and moral principles I shall endeavor to define are general, not peculiar to, but inclusive of, the kindergarten plan of education. To have these principles clear and disengaged from the accidental associations of the various denominations of the church, all of which (and also with many of those outside of any visible church) unite in that faith in God, and that disinterested love of humanity, which was historically enacted on earth by Jesus Christ, and into which every child born on the earth should be brought before he is old enough to appreciate those intellectual distinctions which make different creeds; because then the kindergartner will be able to meet children on the high plane of life where their angels (does not that mean their spiritual instincts or ideals?) behold the face of the Father, and only then will the kindergartner practically enter into Frœbel's method of living with the children, and communing with their innocence.

I see a great deal of this practical application in the kindergartens kept by the well-trained kindergartners; and especially when they are mothers, who unquestionably make the best kindergartners (other things being equal), because it is easier for mothers to divine the consciousness of their children. In the opening hour of the kindergarten, when the kindergartner interchanges the songs and hymns which the children choose, or at least agree to, with real free conversation, in which each child has a chance to tell what is uppermost in his little mind, the very most important work of the kindergartner is done. It has been my privilege to listen to much of this in the kindergartens kept severally by the mothers, who make the children feel that they are interested in whatever they say, however apparently trivial is the subject, and who answer genially, connecting it with something else, and so organizing the reflective powers of the children, that everything they think is seen to be a part of the process of moral, religious, and even intellectual growth.

The possibility of doing this will prove to any one who has any heart and imagination that it is no mere poetic phrase, but a profound spiritual truth, that "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," that children do "come from God who is their home, trailing clouds of glory," and for a time

"are still attended
By the vision splendid,"

although too often

"The man beholds it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

Of course all the opening conversation need not be on the moral and religious planes, but some of it should lead into explanations of nature and of the common life of this work-day world, improving dexterity and common sense; but one can hardly talk with children about anything, in a genuine way, that does not bring out of them some religious or moral expression. I think it is in connection with these conversations to which the children furnish by their spontaneous confidences the vital points, round which the thoughts of the whole little company shall revolve, that the teacher can connect her own story-telling.