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INTRODUCTION. |
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resenting its construction, the child offers it for sale, and the following conversation occurs between the seller and buyer:
" What's there to pay V 4t Three cents, I say !" " Three cents to pay, too dear, I say."
One penny pays for the frame of the wooa; One penny pays for the little smooth board; One penny pays for the work about it; Who will not pay this may go without it. The man who gladly gives up his life for his country is the ideal patriot. Hence, the soldier is the truest symbol of the State, and patriotic feeling is stirred in children's hearts by allowing them to represent soldiers. Marching, with drums and flags, to national airs, should be an occasional exercise in all Kindergartens, and the distinctive feature of the programme on all anniversaries of important crises in the nation's history.
There are some advocates of the kindergarten who object to the soldier games. I can only think they must have missed their symbolic significance, and associated them rather with the cruelty of war than with the heroism of patriotic self-sacrifice. The young mind feels not the horrors but the poetry of battle ; the heart of the boy soldier thrills not with the idea of killing others, but with the lofty feeling that he, too, may be counted worthy to die for the state. The following song, to which I add a part of Froebel's own commentary, will illustrate how he symbolizes the church:
'4 The light within the window gleams, All through the little church it streams. Behold the door is open now, That all within the church may go. And every one who enters there To be attentive must prepare. Now, hearken ! While the organ's tone, Through solemn isles is born along,
Lo, la, la! And the bell upon the tower, Calls in lovely tones the hour,
Bim, bam, baum ! The tuneful bell, the organ's swell,
Lo, lo, la, la ! Must every heart with rapture thrill, Bim, bam, baum !" " In playing this game, the fore arms held as straight up and down as possible, represent the door posts, and the hands turned towards each other unite to form a kind of arch, the four fingers of one hand are somewhat spread out over the four fingers of the other hand, and that represents a window over the door. The two thumbs stand up like bell towers."
All spontaneous expressions of the child's life are symbolic and point through outward appearance to inward ground. Hence, their charm and their touching significance.
What the child dimly anticipates and darkly and unconsciously seeks, is the unity veiled in the manifoldness of life. Because he knows it not, he often falters and fails in his search. Because he deeply feels it, all manifestations in which he recognizes it draw him with magnetic power. |
For this reason all assemblies of men have for him an irresistible attraction. He recognizes that a common thought is stirring many minds—a common feeling thrilling many hearts—and filled with a presentiment of the unity of mankind, he responds with sympathy to the uncomprehended idea. Where many are gathered together he loves to be, though he knows not in whose name nor for what cause they have assembled. Hence, the eager desire of the little child to be taken to church, and his enioyment of the uncomprehended services. He is attracted not by what is said and sung, but by the feeling that all are singing the same song, and that in prayer and sermon all are swayed by the same thought. The community of mind and the mysterious spiritual power of participation are prophesied to his blind yet eager hope ; he feels himself a member of the organic whole, and is startled by a presentiment of the total life."
Later he will want to know the meaning of what he has seen and heard. Moved by the pervading feeling he will wonder what it is. Quickened by the common thought he will aspire to comprehend it. Then, through the beauty of flowers and the glad life of birds, through the whisperings of the wind and the glory of the light, through the love of father and mother, and the voiceless longings of his own soul he may be pointed to God.
I have endeavored to present the system of Froebel from the standpoint of his own central thought. Let us briefly summarize the results attained.
I. The aim of the Kindergarten is to influence the total being of the child. It aids him to know, to feel and to follow the truth. It seeks to create mental and moral tendencies, and to stimulate a healthy and harmonious growth.
II. Recognizing the necessity of self activity, the Kindergarten trains the child's productive power through a wisely organized and suggestive material—recognizing the necessity of reverence it rouses this feeling by presenting the deepest truths oflife in those symbolic forms which appeal to the heart and imagination of the child as they appealed to the unconscious sentiment of primitive man.
III. The key to Froebel's aim is found in his own emphatic words. " The law of all things is one, for God is himself the law." The key to his method is found in the parallel between the development of the individual and that of the race.
IV. Both idea and method find their ultimate interpretation in the process of thought. God, seeking his own reflection, creates man in his image ; man beholding himself in the glass of nature, in the glass of history, and in the glass of his own action and products, struggles towards a complete self-consciousness.
Among the inspired utterances of a book whose wisdom we are still far from fathoming, we find two significant descriptions of the fool: "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God—The fool foldeth his hands." Both kinds of folly curse the age in which we live. Against both Froebel urges us to guard the rising generation, preparing the children through spiritual presentiments for spiritual insight, and through the habit of creative work for lives o joyous activity and achievement.
SUSAN E. BLOW. |
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