There is such a thing as making children, I will not say too conscientious, but too conscious; and this is often done by well-meaning parents and teachers, who make them look upon themselves personally as objects of God's pleasure or displeasure. This will be avoided by using a symbol, like the story of Adam and Eve, which touches the imagination, and saves them from the reactions of personal pique. A judicious teacher, who knows how to paraphrase as she reads, and to skip what is mere prosaic statement, (and no one who cannot do this, is fit to read to children,) can make use of many other passages of the Old and New Testament, and of "Pilgrim's Progress," to give to children the whole doctrine of religious self-control, and inspire them to the highest moral issues.
Spiritual life, strictly speaking, can only be prepared for by the best education. Its characteristic and essence consists in that action of the heart and reason which does not come from human prompting. But it can be prepared for, by awakening in the child such an aspiration and felt necessity for virtue, as well as general idea of God, as makes prayer to the Father of Spirits spontaneous and inevitable. I am in the habit of speaking of God to children as the Giver of love and goodness, and of the power of thought and action, rather than as the Creator of the outward world, and have found that the tyrannizing unity of the soul's instinct did the rest.
In what is called religious education, teachers often do great harm, with the best intentions, to finely strung moral organizations. Encouragement to good should altogether predominate over warning and fault-finding. It is often better, instead of blaming a child for short-coming, or even wrong-doing, to pity and sympathize, and, in a hopeful voice, speak of it as something which the child did not mean to do, or at least was sorry for as soon as done; suggesting at the same time, perhaps, how it can be avoided another time. Above all things, an invariable rule in moral education is not to throw a child upon self-defence. The movement towards defending one's self and making excuses, is worse than almost any act of overt wrong. Let the teacher always appear as the friend who is saving or helping the child out of evil, rather than as the accuser, judge, or executioner. Another principle should be, not to confound or put upon the same level the trespasses against the by-laws of the Kindergarten, made for the teacher's convenience, and those against the moral laws of the universe. The desirableness of the by-laws that we make for our convenience can be shown at times when the children are all calm, and their attention can be drawn to the subject; and if these regulations are broken, all that is necessary will be to ask if it is kind and loving to do such things? But it must never be forgotten that natural conscience always suffers when artificial duties are imposed. Hence the immoral effect of formality and superstition.
In a well-regulated Kindergarten there should be no punishments, but an understanding should be had with parents that sometimes the child is to be sent home for a day, or at least for some hours. The curtailment of the Kindergarten will generally prove an effectual restraint upon disorder, and it will not be necessary to repeat the penalty in a school year.
But I shall say no more upon moral and religious exercises, Mrs. Mann having treated this part of the subject so exhaustively. It is to be remembered, however, that she had in her school children who had strayed much farther from the kingdom of heaven than those who will generally make up the Kindergarten. But she shows the spirit that should pervade all that is done to children at all times.
I saw, in observing the Kindergartens of Germany, that there was great moral education involved in the mutual consideration of each other, which the children learn to practise, in order to make the plays beautiful; and also in the constant idea kept before them, of making beautiful things for the purpose of giving pleasure to their parents and other friends, by giving them away on birthdays and Christmas and New-Year's Days. Moral education does not come by the hearing of the ear, but by generous life.
CHAPTER VIII.
OBJECT LESSONS.