Dickens As an Educator

by James L. Hughes

Then followed troublous times, and patriotic war in Germany, where even poets fought against the enemy with lyre and sword. The quick instincts, and high, generous impulses of Frederick Froebel were engaged at once, and he went out to battle on behalf of Fatherland in the ranks of the boldest, for he was one of Lützow’s regiment—a troop of riders that earned by its daring an immortal name. Their fame has even penetrated to our English concert rooms, where many a fair English maiden has been made familiar with the dare-devil patriots of which it was composed by the refrain of the German song in honour of their prowess—“Das ist Lützow’s fliegende, wilde Jagd.” Having performed his duty to his country in the ranks of its defenders, Froebel fell back upon his love of nature and his study of triangles, squares, and cubes. He had made interest that placed him in a position which, in many respects, curiously satisfied his tastes—that of Inspector to the Mineralogical Museum in Berlin. The post was lucrative, its duties were agreeable to him, but the object of his life’s desire was yet to be attained.

For the unsatisfied cravings of his childhood had borne fruit within him. He remembered the quick feelings and perceptions, the incessant nimbleness of mind proper to his first years, and how he had been hemmed in and cramped for want of right encouragement and sympathy. He remembered, too, the ill-conditioned people whose disputes had been made part of his experience, the dogged children, cruel fathers, sullen husbands, angry wives, quarrelsome neighbours; and surely he did not err when he connected the two memories together. How many men and women go about pale-skinned and weak of limb, because their physical health during infancy and childhood was not established by judicious management. It is just so, thought Froebel, with our minds. There would be fewer sullen, quarrelsome, dull-witted men or women if there were fewer children starved or fed improperly in heart and brain. To improve society—to make men and women better—it is requisite to begin quite at the beginning, and to secure for them a wholesome education during infancy and childhood. Strongly possessed with this idea, and feeling that the usual methods of education, by restraint and penalty, aim at the accomplishment of far too little, and by checking natural development even do positive mischief, Froebel determined upon the devotion of his entire energy, throughout his life, to a strong effort for the establishment of schools that should do justice and honour to the nature of a child. He resigned his appointment at Berlin, and threw himself, with only the resources of a fixed will, a full mind, and a right purpose, on the chances of the future.

At Keilhau, a village of Thuringia, he took a peasant’s cottage, in which he proposed to establish his first school—a village boys’ school. It was necessary to enlarge the cottage; and, while that was being done, Froebel lived on potatoes, bread, and water. So scanty was his stock of capital on which his enterprise was started, that, in order honestly to pay his workmen, he was forced to carry his principle of self-denial to the utmost. He bought each week two large rye loaves, and marked on them with chalk each day’s allowance. Perhaps he is the only man in the world who ever, in so literal a way, chalked out for himself a scheme of diet.

After labouring for many years among the boys at Keilhau, Froebel—married to a wife who shared his zeal, and made it her labour to help to the utmost in carrying out the idea of her husband’s life—felt that there was more to be accomplished. His boys came to him with many a twist in mind or temper, caught by wriggling up through the bewilderments of a neglected infancy. The first sproutings of the human mind need thoughtful culture; there is no period of life, indeed, in which culture is so essential. And yet, in nine out of ten cases, it is precisely while the little blades of thought and buds of love are frail and tender that no heed is taken to maintain the soil about them wholesome, and the air about them free from blight. There must be Infant Gardens, Froebel said; and straightway formed his plans, and set to work for their accomplishment.

He had become familiar in cottages with the instincts of mothers, and the faculties with which young children are endowed by Nature. He never lost his own childhood from memory, and being denied the blessing of an infant of his own, regarded all the little ones with equal love. The direction of his boys’ school—now flourishing vigorously—he committed to the care of a relation, while he set out upon a tour through parts of Germany and Switzerland to lecture upon infant training and to found Infant Gardens where he could. He founded them at Hamburg, Leipzig, Dresden, and elsewhere. While labouring in this way he was always exercising the same spirit of self-denial that had marked the outset of his educational career. Whatever he could earn was for the children, to promote their cause. He would not spend upon himself the money that would help in the accomplishment of his desire, that childhood should be made as happy as God in his wisdom had designed it should be, and that full play should be given to its energies and powers. Many a night’s lodging he took, while on his travels, in the open fields, with an umbrella for his bedroom and a knapsack for his pillow.

So beautiful a self-devotion to a noble cause won recognition. One of the best friends of his old age was the Duchess Ida of Weimar, sister to Queen Adelaide of England, and his death took place on the 21st of June, three years ago, at a country seat of the Duke of Meiningen. He died at the age of seventy, peaceably, upon a summer day, delighting in the beautiful scenery that lay outside his window, and in the flowers brought by friends to his bedside. Nature, he said, bore witness to the promises of revelation. So Froebel passed away.

And Nature’s pleasant robe of green,
Humanity’s appointed shroud, enwraps
His monument and his memory.

Wise and good people have been endeavouring of late to obtain in this country a hearing for the views of this good teacher, and a trial for his system. Only fourteen years have elapsed since the first Infant Garden was established, and already Infant Gardens have been introduced into most of the larger towns of Germany. Let us now welcome them with all our hearts to England.

The whole principle of Froebel’s teaching is based on a perfect love for children, and a full and genial recognition of their nature, a determination that their hearts shall not be starved for want of sympathy; that since they are by Infinite Wisdom so created as to find happiness in the active exercise and development of all their faculties, we, who have children round about us, shall no longer repress their energies, tie up their bodies, shut their mouths, and declare that they worry us by the incessant putting of the questions which the Father of us all has placed in their mouths, so that the teachable one forever cries to those who undertake to be its guide, “What shall I do?” To be ready at all times with a wise answer to that question, ought to be the ambition of every one upon whom a child’s nature depends for the means of healthy growth. The frolic of childhood is not pure exuberance and waste. “There is often a high meaning in childish play,” said Froebel. Let us study it, and act upon hints—or more than hints—that Nature gives. They fall into a fatal error who despise all that a child does as frivolous. Nothing is trifling that forms part of a child’s life.

That which the mother awakens and fosters,
When she joyously sings and plays;
That which her love so tenderly shelters.
Bears a blessing to future days.