Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class; and Moral Culture of Infancy. Mary Tyler Peabody Mann
I gladly meet the demand of the public for a second edition of the "Guide," because its defect is not in its spirit and general idea, seeing that it has awakened an interest in Kindergartens all over the United States, as numerous letters from all parts have proved to me; but in my having somewhat confused what belongs to the second and third stages of primary education, with a preliminary process, which it is necessary not only to begin with, but to keep distinct for a considerable time, until the habit of mind is formed of asking clearly what is going to be done before attempting to do it. What I missed cannot be supplied by any book; for this preliminary process can only be learned from the living teaching of the Normal class. I make some revisory notes, also change some thirty pages, and gladly embrace the opportunity, which the popularity of my "Guide" gives me, to make known, as far as it goes abroad, that, when I came home from Europe, I found what I had seen to be the indispensable condition of an effective introduction of Froebel's art into either the private or public education of America; viz., a training-school for Kindergartners, actually established by Madame Kriege in Boston (127 Charles Street), in connection with a Kindergarten to be taught by her daughter, fresh from the school of Berlin, founded by the Baroness Marienholtz, a noble lady who has devoted her pen, her fortune, the prestige of her rank, and even her personal services, to the diffusion of Kindergarten culture on the continent of Europe.
The so-called Kindergarten which I had established, was gladly given up to make room for this genuine one; and I have the highest expectations from the Normal training. Already several teachers, who had made experiments of their own, which had taught them the need of this special instruction, have engaged themselves as Madame Kriege's pupils; and the spread of the demand for Kindergartners will, I think, keep her Normal class always full. I cannot but hope that the time may come when the Normal schools of all our States may be endowed with a professorship of Kindergarten culture adequately filled.
Omitting my own preface to my first edition, I retain as explanation of the origin of the letters on moral culture, which make the last part of the "Guide," and give it its greatest value to mothers, Mrs. Mann's
POSTSCRIPT.
"I have been urged to publish these letters, written twenty years ago, as an appendix to a Kindergarten Guide, because the school herein described was a groping attempt at something of the same kind, and had left very pleasant memories in the hearts of the children referred to—now no longer children, but some of them men and women nobly and beautifully acting their parts on earth as parents; and others—having died martyrs' deaths for human freedom in the desolating war that now ravages our beloved country—angels in heaven.
"If an inborn love of children and of school-keeping are qualifications for judging of the best means of educating them, I may claim to have known something of the theory and practice best adapted to that end. My object was to put them in possession of all their faculties. Many improvements in methods, and many facilities in means, have been added to the resources of teachers since these letters were written. Physical training is felt to be of the greatest importance, in preference to the ancient mode of shutting children up many hours in close rooms, and repressing all natural and joyous life. The principle is discovered of educating by directing the activities. Hence the Kindergarten.
"M. M.
"Concord, Mass., 1863."
AMERICAN KINDERGARTEN.
CHAPTER I.
KINDERGARTEN—WHAT IS IT?
What is a Kindergarten? I will reply by negatives. It is not the old-fashioned infant-school. That was a narrow institution, comparatively; the object being (I do not speak of Pestalozzi's own, but that which we have had in this country and in England) to take the children of poor laborers, and keep them out of the fire and the streets, while their mothers went to their necessary labor. Very good things, indeed, in their way. Their principle of discipline was to circumvent the wills of children, in every way that would enable their teachers to keep them within bounds, and quiet. It was certainly better that they should learn to sing by rote the Creed and the "definitions" of scientific terms, and such like, than to learn the profanity and obscenity of the streets, which was the alternative. But no mother who wished for anything which might be called the development of her child would think of putting it into an infant-school, especially if she lived in the country, amid
"the mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,"
where any "old grey stone" would altogether surpass, as a stand-point, the bench of the highest class of an infant-school. In short, they did not state the problem of infant culture with any breadth, and accomplished nothing of general interest on the subject.
Neither is the primary public school a Kindergarten, though it is but justice to the capabilities of that praiseworthy institution, so important in default of a better, to say that in one of them, at the North End of Boston, an enterprising and genial teacher has introduced one feature of Froebel's plan. She has actually given to each of her little children a box of playthings, wherewith to amuse itself according to its own sweet will, at all times when not under direct instruction—necessarily, in her case, on condition of its being perfectly quiet; and this one thing makes this primary school the best one in Boston, both as respects the attainments of the scholars and their good behavior.
Kindergarten means a garden of children, and Froebel, the inventor of it, or rather, as he would prefer to express it, the discoverer of the method of Nature, meant to symbolize by the name the spirit and plan of treatment. How does the gardener treat his plants? He studies their individual natures, and puts them into such circumstances of soil and atmosphere as enable them to grow, flower, and bring forth fruit—also to renew their manifestation year after year. He does not expect to succeed unless he learns all their wants, and the circumstances in which these wants will be supplied, and all their possibilities of beauty and use, and the means of giving them opportunity to be perfected. On the other hand, while he knows that they must not be forced against their individual natures, he does not leave them to grow wild, but prunes redundancies, removes destructive worms and bugs from their leaves and stems, and weeds from their vicinity—carefully watching to learn what peculiar insects affect what particular plants, and how the former can be destroyed without injuring the vitality of the latter. After all the most careful gardener can do, he knows that the form of the plant is predetermined in the germ or seed, and that the inward tendency must concur with a multitude of influences, the most powerful and subtile of which is removed in place ninety-five millions of miles away.
In the Kindergarten, children are treated on an analogous plan. It presupposes gardeners of the mind, who are quite aware that they have as little power to override the characteristic individuality of a child, or to predetermine this characteristic, as the gardener of plants to say that a lily shall be a rose. But notwithstanding this limitation on one side, and the necessity for a concurrence of the Spirit on the other—which is more independent of our modification than the remote sun—yet they must feel responsible, after all, for the perfection of the development, in so far as removing every impediment, preserving every condition, and pruning every redundance.
This analogy of education to the gardener's art is so striking, both as regards what we can and what we cannot do, that Froebel has put every educator into a most suggestive Normal School, by the very word which he has given to his seminary—Kindergarten.
If every school-teacher in the land had a garden of flowers and fruits to cultivate, it could hardly fail that he would learn to be wise in his vocation. For suitable preparation, the first, second, and third thing is, to
"Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher."
The "new education,"