Report on education

CHAPTER I. The Cradle and the Creche

The Nursery ; Young Mother'' s first Manual; Lessons from Experience; Pre-education ; Form of the Cradle; Enlargement; Uses; Ornamentation; Effects; Necessiig of the Cr'l'che; Nursing, a Progressive Art.

Cahanis.

I. Introduction. An inquiry into the conditions of popular education in several countries can only serve to furnish the elements of comparison between what is done at home a.nd what is done abroad, in view of improving home education. In this light, the writer looked at the school-collections exhibited in Vienna, but soon perceived that the most imp6rtant data were missing, — some not being susceptible of transportation or of representation by specimens, others having been mtentionally withdrawn. Withdrawn ! why ?

To educate children for themselves is rare in Europe, and it is considered rather Quixotic. The youth of the people are merchantable commodities, soon to be credited to the party which puts its stamp upon them. Therefore, where they are worth having, they are picked up as eagerly as nuggets. Priests pretend to teach them to think, only to impose upon them a belief which implies obedience to their craft; Kaisers claim their direction, not to elevate them, but to put them among their droves of subjects; bourgeois and manufacturers give them a minimum of instruction, just sufficient to insure their working dependence, and to qualify their own sons to be fed at the public expense; while the workingmen themselves — demoralized by such examples — put their apprentices at menial employment, and cheat them out of their rightful professional training.

For these and other causes, the Section of Education of the Vienna exhibition was so incomplete as to seem to preclude, at first sight, the idea of making any report upon it. But, considering that completeness is not the sifie qua non of human eftorts, the writer thought of gathering, in and out of the Welt-:iusstellung , as many facts as circumstances would permit, and of forming from them a judgment, which subsequent observers could complete, confin-n, or reject.

From this stand-point, v/e consider European children as in four groups : those who receive no education ; those who do not receive the education they need; those who receive an education vv^iich disqualifies them for work; and those whose education prepares them for work. From another point of view, we saw that the European children enter the school younger, are trained longer, and are advanced farther than the Americans. As a consequence of this last contrast, we shall have less to say about the primary and grammar schools, and more about the infantile and the professional. We will leave the other consequences to issue naturally from observation.

Since singularly strenuous and successful efforts have been made to overcome the apparently impassable barriers which separate from the world some afflicted children, namely, the deaf-mutes and the idiots, we will append an account, somewhat historical, but mainly philosophical, of these methods, in the belief that, being positive, they can be applied to ordinary children. Ha\'ing no room for an introduction, we would refer to the History of Education, by Philobiblius, (Dr. L. P. Brockett,) as the best substitute for it,

2. The Cradle. At the Vienna Exposition [Wiener Welt- Slusstellung) there was a "PaviUou ch V Enfanf^ room replete with the necessaries of the nursery — and, also with its superfluities — intended altogether to represent the unbounded v»ishes of a mother for her baby's comfort and happiness. ' This palace of luxurious nursing ought to have ben furnished with a little manual ol what is necessary to protect and to prepare life before nati\ity.

During this first period, the ieelings come mainly through reflex impressions from the mother — a process which not only lays the foundation of health and vitality, but which forms the deeper strata of the moral dispositions and of the so-called innate ideas. The managers of the world "from behind the screens" know this; for it is the time at which they impose on plebeian women pilgrimages and ecstatic neuvailies, and keep those of a higher class under more stringent impressions. Here in Vienna, for instance, from the times of the Emperor Charles V. till quite recently, when an heir to the throne was expected, the Empress was given in charge of a special director, who would regulate all her actions and surroundings, in view of commencing the course of submissive education of the contingent monarch, as early as the first evolution from the yolk-substance of the human egg, during embryogenesis. Similar influence is now claimed for an object diametrically opposed to the degenerescence thus arrived at in the house of Hapsburg. It can be attained by advice, printed either in book-form, or on scrolls, as are the sentences of the Koran. But Avhatever may be the form given to this magna cTiarta of the rights of the unborn, let it be found precisely where these rights ought to be kept most sacred, in the nursery ; where their enforcement wouldfprotect the mother and elevate her function, at the same time that it would insure her fruit against the decay resulting from wrong pre-natal impressions.

We know that a cold contact with the mother makes the foetus fly to the antipode of its narrow berth; that a rude shock may destroy it, or originate life-long infirmities; that fear to the mother is terror or fits within; that harsh words vibrate as sensibly in the liquor of the amnion as in the fluid of the labyrinth of the ear. For instance, when a mother has lulled her home sorrows with strains of soothing music, her child, too often an idiot, shows wonderful musical proclivities floating through the wreck of his mind.

Pre-natal impressions need not be of a depressing order to leave their mark. Elation of feelings or high aspirations may too impress the foetus morbidly, as well as otherwise. Example : A couple of artists marry under the most exalted feelings of their art. Their first daughter, now oet 12, is a dreamy thing, with a brilliant but vague eye. Her ordinary movement is of brushing up and away, as in the act of smoothing the tones of an oil painting; in her hands, searching for delicate contrasts, and unable of muscular exertion, her idiocy seems to be concentrated. In the process of development of this artist-couple music became the ideal, and their second daughter is extraordinarily gifted in it; otherwise an ordinary child. — Later, the same elation of art-feeling soaring in a larger horizon, the third daughter is an exponent of the philosophy that all art culminates in the elevation of man himself. She, only 4 years old, intuitively prepares her own personations of excellence in artistically studied attitudes, after having arranged, on and around herself, the luxuries of the house most befitting her part; an ordinary child, too, in other respects.

The impression, resented by the mother, may be transmitted to her infant, and die away or not, when he is weaned. Example :

Madam R , now of i ith street, New York, being alone

with her sick husband in a country-house, saw, at night, somebody, wrapped in a sheet, trying to force an entrance. She, unarmed and unaided, cried out, pushed and piled heavy furniture against the door, and succeeded in repulsing the intruder. She soon after gave birth to a healthy male child, but who, at the hour at which this struggle had taken place, would scream as if in terror. At all other times he was good-humored, but no medical treatment could prevent him fromi awakening and screaming at that precise hour. This habit disappeared, when he was taken from the breast of his mothther. Become a man, he has shown endurance and bravery.

The impressions of the mother can be communicated to her child, since they leave their imprints on our much more hardened tissues and features when grown up. When twins come from different sacs, they are often unlike ; when from the same sac, they almost mvariably resemble each other. As a proof that this resemblance is mainly due to the identity of their pre-natal impressions,let us follow this further, as in the example

of the brothers E Born with characteristics almost identical,

brought up under the same tuition and habits, in the college St. Louis, they continued to look so much alike, that greeting or punishment would often meet the one instead of the other. One entered the atelier of De Laroche; the other went into some moneyed business. New impressions modified their features: one grew sensitive, the other rich; and their likeness disappeared in a corresponding ratio, until, when seen last, they hardly looked like thirtieth cousins.

Physicians will testify, that, when our hands receive a newcomer, we read quite plainly upon his featurs on what sort of feelings he was bred by that intra-uterine education whose imprints trace the channel of future sympathies and abilities. Therefore, if it is noble work to educate or to cure the insane, the idiot, the hemiplegic, the epileptic, and the choreic; how much higher is the work of preventing these degeneracies in the incipient being by averting those commotions which storm him in the holy region intended for a terrestrial paradise during the period of evolution ! To teach Him reverence toward the bearer of his lace, to instruct Her in the sacredness of bland and serene feelings during the God-like creative process^ is educating two generations at once. This is the highest education of the nursery.

From this, the true cradle of mankind, let us look at that made for the baby. There was no end of them in the Pavilion de V Enfant; and we may 'find more philosophy in them than the upholsterer intended. Therein the infant will at first but continue his ovum-life; and for this the cradle must be fitted. Let us see. The head is bent, the extremities are drawn up, and the body shaped like a crescent. This attitude gives to the muscles the greatest relaxation, and to the cartilages, which cap the bones, the position most favorable to nutrition and growth. Generally, the baby rests on the right side, to free from pressure and to facilitate the movements of the heart. In this mode of reclining, the left hemi-cerebrum will contain more blood than the right, which is compressed by the pillow. Attitudes, concordant \\'ith the sleepy habits of the first months and the activity of the minddurin g this long sleepiness, indicate the future preponderance of the mental operations of the left over the right side of the brain, the approaching superior nutrition and dexterity of the right over the left hand, and even the later causation of more frequent paralysis on the left. For the present, and for some time yet, baby \\ill live mainly in his sleep; during which, more than when awake, he will be seen angry, smiling, or thinking, in the shape of well-defined dreams.

How important it is, then, that the cradle be formed in accordance with these natural indications ! A transitory abode between the pelvis and the bed; a warm, soft, yet supporting recipient, ampler than the former, better defined in its shape than the latter, with curves less short than circles and more varied than ovals. A perfect egg, vertically split, would make two such cradles, or nests, suited either for child or bird.

But as soon as the nursling awakes to the world, and wants to be introduced to everything, his couch must be enlarged and enlivened, and must look more and more like a school and play-room. Otherwise, it becomes a prison, whence, Tantalus-like, he looks at his surroundings. Here is his first lesson of practical sociability. To see and not be able to reach, to perceive images with no possibility of seizing the objects, renders him impatient, fretful, or unconcerned, and opens an era of exaction upon others, or of diffidence of himself, or of indifference tor any attainment, which unavoidably ends in immorality or incapacity, or in both. Viewed from this stand-point, these cradles, so varied, so elegant, so easy to keep clean and to carry from the light of the window by day to the recess of the alcove at night — the best being of French and Austrian manufacture — are yet very imperfect in their bearing on education. Let us mark some of their short-comings.

Little ones have an instinctive horror of isolation. Whoever studies them knows that, when they awake, they look, not, at first, with staring eyes, but with searching hands; they seek not for sights, but for contacts. This love of contact, whence results the primary education of the most general sense, the touch, is ill-satisfied with the uniformity of the materials at hand, as exemplified at Vienna or Paris. (In November 1874 I saw a similar exhibition, a Pavilion de V Enfant, in the Champs Elysees, but it was no improvement on that of the Prater.)

In this respect, the child of poor people fares better, having the opportunity of amusing himself for hours in experiencing the rude or soft, warm or cold contacts of his miscellaneous surroundmgs; whereas the hand of the offspring of the rich finds all around the sameness of smooth tissues, which awake in his mind no curiosity; he calls for some one to amuse him, gets first angry, then indifferent, and does not improve his main and surest sense of knowledge, the touch.

But soon other senses are awakened. Audition — of which hereafter — and vision, for the enjoyment of which the cradle becomes a kind of theatre. For a mother must be very destitute or despondent, who does not try to enliven it with some bright things laid on or flapping above. One may benevolently smile at the extravagancies of colors and patterns intended to express this feeling, but will also find in them a serious warning.

Physiologically viewed, this is a grave matter. The form of the cradle demands fitness; its ornamentation requires a more extended knowledge. When planning it, a mother must ren^ember that the fixity of the eye upon some object — particularly upon a bright one, and more so if that object is situated upward and sideways from the ordinary range of vision — and, through the eye, the fixedness of the mind while the body is in a state of repose, constitute a concurrence of conditions eminently favorable to the induction of hypnotism, and its terrible sequels, strabismus and convulsions, — of hypnotism, which, when unsuspected and not controlled is often mistaken for natural sleep.

Psychologically viewed, the decoration of the cradle is of equal moment. To surround an infant with highly wrought or colored figures often grotesque, or at least untrue to nature, may, by day, attract more attention than his faculties of perception can safely bestow, hence fatigue of the brain or vv^orse, a resort to the solution presented the early teachers of supernaturalism; but it \viD, by night, evoke other than the perceptive and rational powers, for when the lights and shadows of dusk alter all the forms and deepen every color, the faculty of imprinting images being led astray, it photographs distorted imprints, from confused, often moving, sometimes rustling, ornaments. It is then that the perception of the impossible, by the sight and hearing mainly, educates the senses to feed the mind on hallucinations, and prepares it to believe them instead of inquiring into their causes, till it comes to the fatal credo guia absurd am. The seeds of most of the insanities are sown at or before this time.

These were the first impressions that forced themselves upon my mind in the Pavilion de V Enfant. PI ere is, in a few words, a resume of them : Paucity of the material upon which the inexperienced yet inquisitive baby can exercise, with interest and profit, his sense of touch; profusion, bad taste, and dangerous disposition of the objects which speak to the eye, if not always with the intention, at least with the almost uniform result, of giving wrong or dan-- gerous impressions.

Attention was next called to what had been done, and to what had been left undone, for the cultivation or the satisfaction of the other senses of the infants. But here it was soon perceived that our inquiries went beyond the sphere of what was exhibited. Perfumes were there as an attenuation, and music as a distraction; nurseryarrangements intended rather for the mother's and nurse's comfort than for baby's improvement. We left this attractive place with another grief.

3. The Creche.— This Facillon de V Enfant ought to have contained at least one model creche.

Creche is the French name of the public nursery where working-women leave their little ones in the morning, and whence they bring them home at night. The creche ! Horrid necessity ! Beginning of the communistic inclined plane upon which those, who pay and do not receive rents, slide with a fearful rapidity; yet a kind institution for those already fallen into the gulf. Since, therefore^ creches must be, the writer suffered from not seeing their latest improvement represented at the Vienna Welt-^USStelluna next to the appliances of the most luxurious nursing. There could have been tested the action of colors, of light, and its various attributes^ on the organ of vision; the influence of varied sounds, of harmonies and melodies on the virgin audition, the mind, and the sympathetic centres; the power of primary perceptions to awaken first ideas, to impel the determinations of the will, and to raise the various passions; the effects of diet upon those passions; the effect of modification of food and digestion; the influence of rest and sleep on the body's temperature, on the pulse and respiration; the influence of the artificial, the moist, or the dry heat of the nursery on the too precocious development of the nervous centres; and, subsequently, on the prevalence of chronic or acute meningitis, diphtheria, and croup; besides many other problems whose solutions depend on the early study of phenomena, which can be found in the creche as surely as those of disease are found in hospitals. In this respect, let us bear in mind that the rich man can never flatter himself that he does a gratuitous charity, since from its poor recipient comes many times its worth in useful experience, directly benefiting the would-be benefactor.

We do not overlook the fact that many mothers, particularly among those both educated and ft-uitful, pay the closest attention to these questions, and become expert therein, as they do in nursing their sick; but as they ^lack the means of record and transmission of their observations, thei experience dies, so to speak, with each generation. Hence the nursing of babies continues to be a work of devotion, but does not become the co-ordinate and progressive art it ought to be in well-organized creches opened to criticism by public exhibitions. Thus in Vienna, at least, this opportunity was lost.

The child, soon two years old, is up, sees, hears well enough, talks, though imperfectly, walks, though totteringly. Let us follow him where he can yet teach us something, in the Salle d! ^syle and in the Kindergarten.

Chapter 2. The Salle D'Asyle

Mothers as teachers; The salle d?asyle; Effect on the child; Plan; Curriculum; Remarks] Motives; Definition.

4. Mothers as teachers. — There are mfant-schools of various grades, from the most ragged to the most select; the average of them are the Salle d\'^syle and the Kindergarten; both are intended for the child, when he is once on the war-path of curiosity.

But cannot he learn from his mother, instead of going abroad so soon, and while so incapable of self-support, that, off her knees or arm, the physiological heat soon recedes from the surface of his skin? Cannot she teach him as well as rear him, give him the food of the mind and the food of the body, so appropriately comprehended in the word "nurture ?" No; at least, few can. Women cannot do it, because they lack time and knowledge. Millions of them have sold their whole lives for a paltry pittance; thousands of others have been taught the basest absurdities instead of the realities which their children thirst for. Hence the children of the most numerous class are compelled to go to the Salle d' Plsyle, while the richer are sent to the /kindergarten.

5. The Salle d'plsyle, being open to the needy, receives them younger; the Kindergarten, being a pay-school, receives them later. These differences generate in the sequel many other distinctions, the comparison of which will be the more satisfactory for being commenced at the earliest opportunity. Therefore, we would advise the study of the plsyle prior to that of the G-arten ; and we would not even counsel making a first visit in the middle or at the end of a scholastic term, when one can only see the order, ^ routine, and monotony resulting from a settled discipline; but rather ' visit it at the beginning of a session, when the ancients (six to seven years old) have left for the primary, and the freshme?l (two to tliree) come in totteringly, giving the observer a vivid idea of their first and novel impressions. And how could these impressions be otherwise than novel ? New scenery, new language, new rules meet them. The most sensible change, however, comes from the difference in the character of the personal contacts experienced. Only yesterday how frequently did he leave unfinished a piece of mischief, to be kissed and warmed at the contact of motlier's larger breast, softer frame and superior heating power ? To-day, at the command of a distant index, he is filed among the many, and has to stand by himself as isolated as a statue on a monumental column.

\^'hat will he do, then? As isolation would be vacuum, he will adapt his own mode of association with that of his new fellows, and thereby give us our first lesson in the art of grouping children according to sociability at difterent ages.

As soon as the little ones are together, they coalesce in two forms. Seated, they support each other sidewise, not unlike young c^x feeble birds on the perch at nightfall. Standmg, they range in a one-line procession, like the globules of the blood m the act of circulation. These rudimentary forms of association of the infant, which can also be observed in their first attempts to play, have certainly been taken into account, either instinctively (^con aniore) or philosophically (by the inductive process) in the organization of the dalles d'Asyle. Aside from all theories, it is a fact that the material, the training, and part, at least, of the living motors of the ^sylf are in accord with the psycho-physiological conditions of the incoming pupils. Here, at least, the school has been mide for the child, and the child has not yet been manipulated to fit the school.

Considering the great difficulties attending the building of these .'^syles where they are most needed, in cities where air and room are^only desiderata; the novelty of the social venture, which looked so much like rearing babies without mother's milk; the liability of falling into the pedagogic routines so deeply rooted elsewhere; and, moreover, the preying of pardsans on the asyluni, with the view of impressing the innocent with the stamp-mark of their hatreds, are some of the risks encountered, and partly avoided in the creation and management of the Salles (VAsyle in most of the European cities.

There was in Vienna no complete model of Salhs (VAsyle, but several of their accessories, as seats, cards, images, and books; therefore, we deferred forming an opinion on them, till we sav/ their operation in large places Hke Brussels and Paris.

We found them arranged with a great similarity of plan. A yard carefully drained and gra\-eled, open to the sun if possible, and planted with trees, discreedy shading its contour; a few shrubs and flowers withal in their season. In the entrance-hall, the children, who come about 9 o'clock, leave their cloaks, caps, and baskets, they wash or are washed, eat, and play, when the weather does not permit them to go into the yard. The Salle itself (Italian Sala, our school-room, the Gemian Qarte/l) is composed of one or two large rooms partly filled with seats and pardy open for exercises. The benches are low, long, straight, and movable; or curved, graded, and connected by aisles easy to ascend, or to walk along, in single file. Near by are a few cradles for those who may need to lie down. There are two stands to hold the images or tableaux, a chest for safe-keeping of the objects to be used in teaching, and two straw or cane chairs. The rest of the room is level, unincumbered, and ready for the exercises, in which the children make their serpent-like evolutions. The number of children should not exceed fifty, but may reach seventy, a hundred, or even two hundred. Happily, at 12 o'clock, they are seated at a meal of soup, and something warm, and, besides, have delicacies from their baskets. This meal, for which the families pay a half-penny, when they can afford it, is the renewal of the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes; but as it takes place daily none sees it in its true light. — The servant, who prepares it, also attends to the wants of the little ones from 9 a. m. to 5 p. m.

During these eight hours, the principal and her apprentice-assistant are continually engaged in teaching and training. They have a salary of from $200 to $380. Their duties are to receive and make tidy the incomers, to make them sit, stand up, raise their hands, fold their arms, turn right, left, march softly, or in measure, around the stands, to the graded seats, and then to be seated. Then a prayer is said in dislocated periods by the multitudinous voices; a hymn is sung by the vvilling ones, standing. They are seated again, questioned on theogony, theology, subordination to the church, and the like, (but not in all the pisyles alike); then ofi"for a well-earned walk, objects, colors, forms-lessons, playing ball or other game, with accompaniment of selected songs, cantative numeration, the use of the abacus [bouUer), walking again; reading, listening to stories; then a good meal; washing of hands and faces, play in the yard or hall, and repetition of the exercises, till the mother or sister comes to take them home. On this curriculum, and on its various divergent or even opposite tendencies, many observations and long dissertations could be made; few and short must be ours.

li the object was a direct and formal teaching, it would be too comprehensive, as containing too many matters, and as addressed to too many grades of comprehension — from two to seven years — without reckoning idiosyncrasies. Both difticulties might be obviated by separasting the lessons, or by separating the ages; but, happily, economy has prevented; so that the Salle d' Plsj/le fashioned itself more after the characters of childhood than upon the set antecedents of other schools; the great teacher is imitation, which constantly and silently carries the newcomers in the wake of the old stock.

6. Motives. — This character is particularly noticeable in the way in which children are brought to the front. In other schools, the avowed or principal motive is duty ; scholars ougfd to work, ought to learn. Here the impulse is curiosity, which is awakened only when, the child being ripe for imitation, his teacher has only t o touch the proper chord at the proper time, and he will rise an d follow in the wake of others. These are the means by which each in his turn, sooner or later, cornes to the front, and begins his active life at his own hour. You see him, at first timidly raise his small finger to indicate that he, too, will have something to say. If the teacher fails to notice it, the finger timidly returns under the apron, not to show itself agaui mayhap for months to come. But once out — I mean the mind which rose behind the finger and which will not ^'dowTi" — he begins to take an interest in the curriculum, and whenever he comprehends, or thinks he comprehends, being in sympathy with the general movement of the school, he will give free expression to his communion in the ideas which agitate the minds of the mass. This observation, moreo\-er, shows that the upraising of each individual mind is not to be exclusively attributed to the teacher's cleverness and zeal; but is as much, if not altogeter, tlie result of the action of the synergy of the mass upon the inertia of the individual : the traniing power of the whole on the unit. Thus there is nothing compulsory, artificial, or unnatural in that double-motive process which helps the child to take his share of the curriculum within the limits of his taste and capacity; these motives are both of the natural order, spontaneous curiosity and simultaneous entrailieilltnt.

But I am aware that other means of influence, or stimuli, are at work.

The political stimulus is not ashamed to show itself in the Sdlls d' Asijle, there to develope a taste for the ribbons and crosses which have been borne by the French mandarins, apparent!}- not without effect, as talismans against Prussian bullets; but which excite in children the pride of trinkets and an ambitition for meretricious distinctions. And the so-called religious influence, stealthily boring its way into the Salle d\'isule, operates, too, by the action of pagan objects and idolatrous worship; acts on the inexperienced senses, by the teaching of supernatural causes and effects, by the lowering of the natural sciences, and by the falsification of the lessons of history, in order to give young morality an incurable wryness.