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

by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

There is another faculty of the individual, besides understanding, and which is to be discriminated from it—fancy. Vivid and clear sensuous impressions are the foundation of fancy, as well as of understanding. But the will, acting among these impressions in a wild and sovereign way, is fancy; while the will arranging impressions according to the order of nature, is understanding. Frœbel has provided for the development of the understanding the occupations, as he calls the regular production of forms, transient and permanent. Nothing can be produced which satisfies the æsthetic sense, except by following the laws of creation. To analyze these productions will give experimental understanding of those laws. In superintending the occupations, the kindergartner must, therefore, see that the child does things in the right order, and gives an account of what he does in the right words; for words, the first works of human art, have a great deal to do with the development of the understanding, lifting man into a sphere above that of the mere animal. After a thing is made, or an effect produced and named, it must be made a subject for analysis; and it can easily be made so, because children's attention is easily conciliated to what they themselves have done or produced. Putting their own action into a thing, makes it interesting to them; and they can make an exhaustive analysis of it, because, in addition to its appearances, they know the law of its being, which was their own method, and the cause of its being, which was their own motive. From analyzing their own works, children can, in due time, be led to analyze works of nature. And here the kindergartner has great room for the exercise of judgment, in the selection of suitable objects.

Frœbel advised that objects for lessons should be taken from the vegetable creation; and that children should be interested in planting seeds and watching growth, becoming acquainted with its general conditions, observing which are within the scope of their own powers to provide, and which are beyond human power; thus leading the understanding through nature, outward and inward, to God.

If we see that the work done is artistic, and that the objects of nature analyzed are beautiful, this culture of the understanding may refine and elevate the taste, and beautify the fancy.

For the fancy is to be carefully cherished by the kindergartner. It is not amenable to direct influence perhaps, but not beyond an indirect influence. The soundness of the understanding is conducive to a beautiful play of fancy, which is a peculiarly human faculty; for we have not a particle of evidence that any animal below man has this kind of thinking, which delights in transcending the facts of nature in its creations, and sometimes sets the laws of nature at defiance. But we must defer to another paper the many things we have to say in regard to the imagination and its culture.

CONSCIENCE.

We have given a few hints by way of answering the questions on psychology, which must come up, to be considered by a kindergartner who is intent on understanding the "harp of a thousand strings," from which it is her duty to bring out the music.

We have found that the human being comes into the world with an æsthetic nature, which is to be vivified by the presentation of the beauties of nature and art, in such a way as to insure reaction of the will in creations of fancy; for only so can sensibility to beauty be prevented from degenerating into sensuality. If the fancy remains wholly subjective, it loses its childish health and leads astray. It should have objective embodiment in song, dance, and artistic manipulation of some sort. Now, artistic manipulation of any kind necessitates the examination of natural elements and the discovery of the laws of production, which are, of course, identical with the organic laws of nature that bear witness to an intelligent Creator.

To excite the human understanding to appreciate names, and classify things for use and giving pleasure, it is necessary to present things to children gradually, first singly, and then in simple rhythmical combinations, so that they may have time to find themselves personally, and not be overwhelmed with a multitude of impressions. A real lover of children will quickly find out that they like to take time "playing with things," as they call it; and that there is a special pleasure in discovering differences in things; that a new distinct perception of any relation of things delights the child, as the discovery of a principle delights the adult mind. The fanciful plays of the kindergarten, whether sedentary or moving, cultivate the imagination, the understanding, and the physical powers in harmony, and more than this, they cultivate the heart and conscience, because the moving plays have for their indispensable condition numbers of their equals, and everything they make is intended for others. The presentation of persons, as having the same needs and desires of enjoyment as themselves, proves sufficient to call into consciousness the heart and conscience, just as immediately and inevitably as the presentation of nature and art calls into activity the understanding and imagination.

Because nature and human kind are so vast that, as a whole they daunt the young mind, even to the point of checking its growth, it is necessary that some one, who has had time to analyze it in some degree, should call attention to points; and it is the consummate art of education to know what points to touch, so that the mind shall make out the octave; for, unless it does so, it will not act to purpose. As exercise of the limbs is necessary to physical development, and the act of perceiving, understanding, and fancying, with actual manipulation of nature, is necessary to intellectual development; so is kindness and justice acted out, to the development of the social and moral nature or conscience.

But there is something else in man than relations to external nature and fellow-man. This self-determining being, who moves, perceives, understands, fancies, loves, and feels moral responsibility to the race in which he finds himself a living member, is only consciously happy when he is magnanimous, which he can only be, if he feels himself a free power in the bosom of infinite love; in short, a son of the Father of all men! "We are the offspring of God" is the inspiration alike of heathen poet and Christian apostle.