Chapter 12

The beginning of the forms of knowledge is in placing the points in regular order on the squared tables at the intersection of vertical and horizontal lines. Next, the child lays one space vertical lines, three points in a line, then two space lines with five points, then horizontal lines, angles, parallelograms, borders, etc., following out the school of linear drawing, and in this way progresses in an orderly manner to the designing of symmetrical forms. Curved lines of course are quite as easily represented as the straight, and really beautiful designs are often made by the children with them.

Tenth Gift Parquetry.

Tiny circles and squares of colored paper corresponding to the wooden lentils are also to be had with this gift, and afford a means of preserving the designs in permanent form. They are so small, however, as to give occasion for considerable patience in pasting them, and are rather difficult to arrange with regularity without first drawing the design. It is doubtful, in our opinion, if they may be considered to be of any particular educational benefit, if indeed they are not a positive harm to the child in that they require a too minute and long-sustained use of the finer muscles.

Objections to the Gift.

These strictures on the tenth gift parquetry bring us naturally to the criticisms lately made by eminent authorities upon some of the Froebel materials. The objection that many of them require too minute handling and too close attention on the part of children of the kindergarten age seems, as far as the gifts are concerned, to hold especial weight in regard to point-work.[79]

[79] The development of motor-ability in children and its furtherance or arrest by the kindergarten materials concerns the occupations more particularly, and as such will receive full consideration in a later volume.

We need not consider here the physio-psychological tests lately made of the early motor-ability of children and the results which these have shown, but simply concern ourselves with what we have seen and noted many times in daily kindergarten practice. Is it not true that the laying of beans and lentils one inch apart on the tables, for instance, is an occupation which requires very delicate handling on account of the smallness of the object, its easy mobility, and the exactness required to place it precisely at the crossing-point of vertical and horizontal lines? Is it not true that such work requires considerable effort from the kindergartner to make it interesting to the child? Is it not true that there is a cramp of the fingers, shown by a slight trembling, in getting hold of the tiny object and placing it, a cramp of the eye in foreseeing and following the movement, and a cramp of the body accompanying the tension of hand and arm? If all these observations are correct, or measurably so, if they hold with a majority of children, then point-laying as an occupation clearly needs considerable modification in the kindergarten.

What are then the objections to the point as illustrated in bean, coffee-berry, seed, and wooden lentil? In a word, that when represented as above, it becomes too small and too mobile. The difficulty of using these materials is immensely increased by the fact that a slight movement of the child's table will send them all on the floor, while even an ill-timed cough or sneeze, or puff of wind, will blow them out of position. Point-laying is quite difficult enough for the child's small powers under the best conditions, and need not be made more so by undue mobility in the materials with which it is carried on. This criticism would not hold of course as against large shells or pebbles or as against Miss Marwedel's hemispheres and ellipsoids.

How these Objections may be obviated.

The only good reason for using the small materials to which the preceding objections have been made is a very good one, viz., that if we are to take any concrete object to represent the point, it should be as small as possible, since the point is in reality an intangible something, having no one of the three dimensions. This reasoning seems to be logical enough, and it is surely equally so, to insist that the child shall at some time derive his own points from the cube and make them as small as possible, that he may the better understand their relation to line, plane, and solid. When once this relation is understood, however, and before it is suggested to his mind, why may he not use the larger materials, even though they do not illustrate the point as perfectly? Any lack in perfect representation would probably be more than compensated by the removal of the strain on the accessory muscles and the gain in artistic development. This latter point, indeed, needs special consideration, for there seems no doubt that the continued use of such small objects for design leads to accuracy and prettiness rather than breadth and power.

The Marwedel Materials.

If we throw out all the smaller materials used for point-laying, and it seems advisable so to do, we still have left smooth pebbles from one half to three fourths of an inch in diameter, and shells of any univalve, such as the "money-cowry" (_cyproea moneta_). These should be polished, as free from convolutions as possible, and not less than half an inch in diameter. To these we may add Miss Emma Marwedel's wooden ellipsoids and hemispheres, already mentioned, which are satisfactory in size, and add the delights of color.[80]

[80] _Marwedel's Materials for Child-Culture_. D. C. Heath & Co.

The hemispheres, which are about one half inch in diameter, come in eight colors and also in the natural wood, are pierced for stringing, and are similar to ordinary button-moulds, having of course one flat side.

The ellipsoids in the six rainbow hues, black gray, brown, and wood colors, resemble elliptical shells, having one flat side, are also pierced for stringing, and vary in length from three fourths of to something over an inch, being nearly an inch wide, perhaps, and a half inch thick.

The children are invariably delighted with both hemispheres and ellipsoids, and need no stimulus from the kindergartner in their use.

Mind-Pictures.

In some of Miss Marwedel's pamphlets on the use of these materials, she speaks of the mind-pictures which can be made with them, and which are of course quite possible with any of the other gifts. These mind-pictures, showing form and number groups, are drawn by the kindergartner on the blackboard, where they are left a second and then erased. They are then copied from memory, and the results compared, described, and criticised by the children. This constitutes a valuable mental exercise, and if the tests are simple at first and made gradually more difficult will be most valuable in increasing the memory-span as well as in developing language power.

Abuse of the Gift.

If some of the materials used in the kindergarten are unwisely chosen, and if this objection applies in the gifts, especially to the point, then the kindergartner has been, and still is, unnecessarily increasing her sum of error, for no one of the connected series of objects (save the stick) is commonly so forced upon the child. It is somewhat unusual for this reason to find a whole class of children really enjoying point-work, though several conscientious and industrious members of the group may be toiling away with praiseworthy diligence.

Sometimes the children's feeling toward the gift goes beyond indifference and passes into active dislike, but in either attitude of mind the beans, lentils, etc., are likely to be mistreated.

It is not that the work with them is not in itself pleasing to the child, but that it has been forced upon him _ad nauseam_, and that the kindergartner has lacked interest in presenting it. His own interest has in consequence gradually died out, and when once the fire is cold, who shall light it again?

That there is no need of this abuse of the gift is clear enough, and it can only come from entire lack of originality in using Froebel's materials, or from a mental or physical inertia on the part of the kindergartner, which causes her to prefer giving out such work as needs neither preparation nor previous thought.

READINGS FOR THE STUDENT.

Kindergarten Guide. _Kraus-Boelte_. Pages 439-53. The Kindergarten. _H. Goldammer_. 181-84. A System of Child-Culture. _Emma Marwedel_. 6-8. Hints to Teachers. _Emma Marwedel_. 49. Decorative Design. _Frank S. Jackson_. Art in Education. _Thos. Davidson_. Manual of Design. _Richard Redgrave, R. A._ Exercices et Travaux pour les Enfants. _Fanny Ch. Delon_. Manuel Pratique des Jardins d'Enfants. _J. E. Jacobs_ and _Mme. von Marenholtz-Bülow_.

GENERAL REMARKS ON THE GIFTS

As we close the series of talks upon Froebel's gifts and look back over the ground that has been covered, we see that a number of important subjects have been only lightly touched upon, while we have been altogether silent regarding others equally as vital. This is doubtless inevitable in any work upon the kindergarten which does not aim to be encyclopædic in character, but a few of the more serious omissions may be supplied before we close our consideration of the gifts and enter upon that of the occupations.

First, then, a word on the subject of attention.

Difficulty of holding Child's Attention.

It is not uncommon, when discussing any exercises with kindergarten materials which require dictation or guidance, to hear complaints of the difficulty of holding the children's attention. It may generally be said, doubtless, that when little children fail to give attention it is because they are not interested, and if the teacher finds the majority of her pupils listless, indifferent, and vagrant-minded, she may reasonably conclude that something is amiss either with the subject or with her presentation of it. The child is as yet too young to command his mental powers and "drive himself on by his own self-determination," and if we enforce an attention which he gives through fear, we lose the motive power of interest which Froebel sought to utilize in the plays of the kindergarten.

Dr. George P. Brown in a late article on "Metaphysics and Pedagogics"[81] says, "Every one admits that there is much that must be done by the child in his elementary education which is a task, for the reason that his ideas of its worth to himself cannot be sufficiently appreciated to arouse a lively and impelling interest in the doing of it," and he adds, "Garfield once complained that he had done so long those things in which he was interested that he was losing his power to do that which did not interest him, which suggests the danger of relying entirely upon interest as an incentive to learn."

[81] _Public School Journal_, July, 1895.

That there is a danger here cannot be denied, but it is one which need hardly be considered at the kindergarten age, when that interest which comes from continued agreement between the work in hand and the child's inner wants is absolutely essential to the gaining of knowledge. Mr. W. N. Hailmann puts the whole matter in a nutshell when he says: "If the kindergartner has the penetration to discover these inner wants, and the skill to adapt the circumstances and her own purposes to these, she will find it easy to secure and hold the child's attention. Without this penetration and skill, all else is unavailing. She may sing and cajole herself into hoarseness, she may smile and gesticulate herself into a mild sort of tarantism, or freeze herself at one end of the table into a statue of Suppressed Reproach,--if the instruction or dictation has no natural connection with the purposes of the children, these will remain uninterested or bored victims of her ill-directed enthusiasm."

Language Teaching.

The plays with the gifts open wide avenues for language teaching if conducted as Froebel intended. He says many wise things on this subject in his "Education of Man," and the following is of absolute application.

"Our children will attain," he says, "to a far more fundamental insight into language, if we, when teaching them, connect the words more with the actual perception of the thing and the object.... Our language would then again become a true language of life, that is, born of life and producing life; while it threatens otherwise, by merely outward consideration, to become more and more dead."[82]

[82] _Education of Man_, page 145.

From the first the child should be led to voice his small observations on the gifts in clear language and in approximately complete sentences, brief though they be. He can as easily say, "I would like a blue ball, please," if asked what color he prefers, as to jerk out a monosyllabic "Blue!"

After a little practice he will use a short sentence when comparing two objects, for instance, but as he naturally moves along the line of least resistance it is hardly to be expected that he will take the trouble to form complete sentences unless gently stimulated to do so. The stimulus must be gentle, however, and given at the right time, for any feeling that his words are criticised will lead him to self-repression, not expression.

In gift work, too, he explains to the kindergartner what he is inventing, and for what purpose; he weaves gossamer threads of fancy about the objects constructed, or describes the forms of beauty and knowledge he has built by dictation.

There is and should be constant interchange of conversation during the gift plays, and the kindergartner who directs them like a drill-sergeant, requiring her recruits only to be silent and obey, has entirely misconceived Froebel's idea.[83]

[83] It is a difficult thing to find the _via media_ between complete silence on the part of the children save when answering questions and a confusion of tongues like that at the building of Babel, but there is such a _via media_, and it can be found by those who seek it diligently.

It is undeniably much easier for the teacher to do all the talking, the children serving as audience, but the ideal to be reached is that she shall be the audience herself, or rather the chairman of the meeting, guiding the conversation, asking suggestive questions, and making wise comments.

Our language teaching, however, is not confined to the cultivation of greater powers of expression, for there is a direct gain in the child's vocabulary consequent upon his kindergarten experience. He absorbs many new words from his teachers, but many others he learns through his daily work and play, and these are his absolute possession,--the thing and the word together. An interesting series of experiments was once made in the San Francisco free kindergartens relative to the number of new words which the child had mastered and used easily and freely after three years in the child-garden. These included terms of dictation, geometrical terms, names of tools, colors, materials, plants, animals, buildings, and places, new and poetic words of songs, games, and stories, etc., and the experiments established the fact that the child's vocabulary was fully as great as that of his parents and decidedly more choice.

Relation of Word to Object.

It should be said here that there is great value to the child in learning to name things correctly from the very beginning. If the new word is a simple one, he can learn it with perfect ease, and then the object is properly labeled, so to speak, for future use.[84] Familiar names are sometimes used in the kindergarten when the correct term would be quite as easy to pronounce. This practice often arises from a false conception of symbolism, and is continued with an idea that it is pleasing to the child. Sometimes the pseudonyms are absolutely misleading, as in the frequent speaking of squares as _boxes_, which must, of course, confuse the child as to the real nature of a plane. There are many cases where the geometrical name of a form can easily be taught if it is given _after_ the object is clearly understood.[85]

[84] "At all stages of learning the mother tongue, the purely verbal exercises are more or less accompanied with the occupation of the mind upon things. If we suppose the child to become acquainted, in the first instance, with a variety of objects, the imparting of the names is a welcome operation, and the mental fusion of each name and thing is rapidly brought about. If the objects are in any way interesting, if they arouse or excite attention, their names are eagerly embraced. On the other hand, if objects are but languidly cared for, or if they are inconspicuous or confused with other things, we are indifferent both to the things themselves and to their designations." (Alexander Bain.)

[85] "Language is the necessary tool of thought used in the conduct of the analysis and synthesis of investigation." (W. T. Harris.)

"What we are really seeking is the meaning _and_ the word. One is of no value without the other in the education of the child. There is no such thing as a valuable observation and investigation of natural objects without language in which to embody the results at every step." (Geo. P. Brown.) _Report on Correlation of Studies by Committee of Fifteen_. With annotations by Geo. P. Brown.

There is a distinction here as to age, which should be noted. Though with babies of three years it is not only delightful, but necessary, to use objects symbolically, to give play-names to the lines they make, etc., with older children who are nearing the age of school instruction and therefore passing away from the "sense relations of things," it is just as essential to begin a more scientific nomenclature.

Value of Knowledge Gained by Individual Effort.

One of the commonest errors in the kindergarten, as well as one of the most pernicious, is that of assisting the child too much in all his work. This is perhaps more universally true of the plays with the occupations than with the gifts, but even in the latter direction the practice is far too widespread.[86]

[86] "Of course, there is great difference between the disciplinary value of that study in which the pupil solves his own difficulties and that teaching in which the teacher accompanies the pupil, supplying the needed information or suggestion at every step of his progress. The latter is not worth much for character building for the reason that it is not apt to become a part of the organized self.... The school cannot afford to expend much energy in acquiring such knowledge." (Geo. P. Brown.) _Report on Correlation of Studies by Committee of Fifteen_. With annotations by Geo. P. Brown.

The kindergartner often forms his sentences for the child, over-directs him when he is matching colors, gives names to the objects he constructs without waiting for him to do so, moves his blocks, sticks, tablets, rings into more accurate position, changes his spacing when incorrect, rearranges his inventions, selects the colors for his parquetry work,--and all for what reasons? Primarily, to produce a better effect, it is probable, glorying in the consciousness that the work on every child's table is exactly right, and blind to the truth that uniformity must always be mechanical; and secondarily, to quiet her own feeling of impatience, which sometimes comes from nervous exhaustion and sometimes from an over-eagerness to get a quantity of work done regardless of the method by which it is obtained.

There is a thirdly, too, which is that the inaccurate work, the awkward designs, the unfortunate blending of colors which the little one inevitably makes at first, so offend her artistic eye that she trembles with eagerness to set them right, forgetting that by so doing she is imposing her superior taste upon the child and thereby failing to develop his. We shall never see this matter clearly, nor know how to bear with the crudity of the child's work, until we learn that the crudity is natural and therefore to be respected, and that it is in a sense beautiful after all, for it is a stage of being.

This vice, for it is a vice, of assisting the child too much causes him to lose his own power of bravely and persistently overcoming difficulties, and makes him weak and dependent. It gives occasion for teachers to say, and apparently with justice, that kindergarten children need constant assistance in their school work, that they are always crying out for help, and seem incapable of taking a step alone.

That this is not true of all kindergarten children we know, but that it should be true of any is a disgrace to our interpretation of Froebel's system, which is, in reality, a very treasure-house of self-reliance, of self-development, and of independence of thought and action.

Value of Interrelation in Kindergarten Work.

One of the highest essentials of gift work is that it should not be isolated from other experiences of the child and concern itself merely with first principles of mathematics, with elements of construction, reproduction, and design, and with unrelated bits of knowledge.

Froebel says in the motto to one of the poems in the "Mutter-Spiel und Kose-Lieder,"--

"Whatever singly with a child you've played, Weave it together till a whole you've made. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Thus it will dawn upon his childish soul: The smallest thing belongs to some great whole."

And again,--

"Silently cherish your Baby's dim thought, That Life in itself is as unity wrought."

Nothing is more evident in all his writings, in his more formal works as well as in his autobiography, his volumes of letters and his reminiscences, than that his lifelong struggle was for unity in all things. He would have this unity expressed in simple concrete form in the kindergarten by a complete interrelation of all the activities of the child; and the gifts as "outward representations of his internal mental world" may be trusted to furnish us with an absolute test as to how far we are carrying out this principle in our teaching.

Whether or not the necessity of correlation decreases as age increases we need not discuss here, but that there is absolute need of it in the kindergarten probably no one will deny. If a single aim does not unify the kindergarten day, (or month, or season), it will be a succession of scrappy experiences, of surface impressions, no one of which can be permanent, because it was slight by itself and received no reinforcement from others. Such instruction only serves to dissipate the mind, to blot out the dim feeling of unity inscribed there by its maker, and to render the child incapable and undesirous of binding his thoughts into a whole.[87]

[87] "In the broad view we are safe in affirming that all truth is congruous, and that truth in one department of human knowledge will always reinforce truth in any other department. There is a unity in all truth. While it is true, as Dr. Harris affirms in his Report on the Correlation of Studies, that the student does not come into the full consciousness of this fact before he attains the university, is it not also true that he can be so taught that he will _feel_ this unity before he can think it, and that his feeling it will hasten the development of the power to think it?"--Geo. P. Brown, "Congruence in Teaching," _Public School Journal_, Sept., 1895.

What the subjects should be, around which the child's mental, physical, and spiritual activities may crystallize, furnishes a fruitful field for discussion; but, above all, they should be vital ones, for, as Miss Blow says, "Serious injury may be done the mind by developing concentric exercises which belong not to the centre, but the circumference of thought."