For the old education, which he calls “a hot-house education,” and in which the instruction, premature through language, smothers in their germs the native powers of the child, in order to excite his memory and his judgment by artificial means,—for this education he substitutes a free and cheerful education which cultivates the faculties of the child by love, and which makes a just estimate of his instincts. Books are suppressed, and lessons also. The child freely expands in play.
541. The Importance of Play.—With Frœbel, play became an essential element of education. This ingenious teacher knew how to make of it an art, an instrument for the development of the infant faculties.
“The plays of the child,” he said, “are, as it were, the germ of the whole life which is to follow, for the whole man develops and manifests itself in it; in it he reveals his noblest aptitudes and the deepest elements of his being. The whole life of man has its source in that epoch of existence, and whether that life is serene or sad, tranquil or agitated, fruitful or sterile, whether it brings peace or war, that depends on the care, more or less judicious, given to the beginnings of existence.”
542. Principal Needs of the Child.—Gréard, in a remarkable study on the method of Frœbel, reduces the aspirations of the child to three essential instincts:—
1. The taste for observation:—
“All the senses of the child are on the alert; all the objects which his sight or his hand encounters attract him, interest him, delight him.”
2. The need of activity, the taste for construction:—
“It is not enough that we show him objects; it is necessary that he touch them, that he handle them, that he appropriate them to himself.... He takes delight in constructing; he is naturally geometrician and artist.”
3. Finally, the sentiment of personality:—
“He wishes to have his own place, his own occupation, his own teacher.”