Friedrich Froebel's Education by development

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LIBRARY

UNITED STATES BUREAU OF

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — The spirit of that training of the human

BEING WHICH EDUCATES BY DEVELOPING DEMON- STRATED BY THE WAY IN WHICH LlNA LEARNED TO READ >. — . . . - . . . . 1

I

THE SPIRIT OF THAT TRAINING OF THE HUMAN BEING WHICH EDUCATES BY DEVELOPING, DEMON- STRATED BY THE WAY IN WHICH LINA LEARNED TO BEAD.

I have often been requested to give a written statement of the fundamental truths and principles of my system of fostering and training childhood and youth. I have also been asked to word this statement in such a manner that it can be easily understood. A further request has been made that I should include in this statement an account of the means and methods, object and aim, of this system of training which I call an educational whole, that educates by developing.

I have several times attempted to meet this demand, which seemed to me a just one; but my attempt has never given complete satisfaction to those who desired the statement.

A man generally likes to make himself intelligible concerning that which is the business of his life, and which he has at heart, as soon as it becomes of importance to the public. I have therefore tried to discover the cause of this non-satisfaction, especially as my verbal communications concerning the subject in question have been understood by my hearers.

Indeed, they have told me, times without number, that they fully recognized the truth of my statements, thought about them earnestly, and even partially carried them into practice, though with less clear insight, a smaller degree of perfection, and less understanding of the logical connection.

Aided by such precise statements, I could not fail to find the cause of misapprehension in the different effect which a verbal communication has as compared with a written one. The former is always connected with an object which brings me and my hearers together, and serves as a symbol that helps them to understand my statements. For the thought becomes perceptible, and so at once full of life, by the use of such an object.

This fact shows in a remarkable manner that not only the training and development of children and young people, but that of mankind in general, is (especially in early life) connected not merely with that which is perceptible, but with that which is, at the same time, perceptible and symbolic. The educational whole here presented receives its deep human foundation — a foundation which is

THE SYMBOLIC. 3

also natural and all-embracing — from the important statement just made. That is, the spirit, everlasting but invisible, is made perceptible and recognizable by means of the material through the sense (Sinn) and the symbol (Bild), through the symbolic (Sinnbildliche) as the connection between the spirit and the material.

Now, in order to give an intelligible explanav tion resting upon this foundation, and which can be generally understood by the people, it is necessary to find out such a general connecting object — ■ such a symbol, as it were. This object is speech as connected with visible signs (symbols made permanent) — it is learning to write and read. For the ability to read and write is now universal (at least in Germany), and therefore what is said about reading and writing must necessarily be universally intelligible to the people — at least I believe and hope so.

Therefore I now choose the presentation in the preceding chapter, " How Lina learns to write and read/ 7 * as the connecting and intermediate object of contemplation of my present communication about my educational whole. This selection is the more appropriate as the desire to learn to read and write is a direction of the awakening impulse to-

* See chap, xv, Pedagogies of the Kindergarten, vol. xxx, International Education Series.

ward employment and culture, which shows itself quite early in each German child. An educational whole which claims to be comprehensive and to meet the needs of mankind in general must proceed from something which belongs to all humanity. I therefore begin the presentation of the fundamental ideas and principles of this educational whole with this question, What is the signification of the child's peculiar impulse to learn to write and read? and what is the general significance of this impulse in the child and for the child ?

It is, in general (according to the stronger or weaker feeling of personality attained by the child), the effort to busy itself in this personality like the observant adults around it; the effort to prove that it also is a member of the great general life-whole, and, as far as possible, to introduce itself into and show itself in this life-whole. This same feeling urges the child on to wish to help its father (and still more its mother, who more fully enters into this wish) whenever circumstances allow. This feeling is twofold, for the little one feels itself at the same time a self-poised whole and a part depending on the great whole or totality of life which it perceives around it, and which it divines in itself.

This feeling, or, in other words, this presentiment of itself as a part-whole, certainly does stir in the child, however slightly. I consider the observation, acknowledgment, and fostering of this

UNITY WITH THE WHOLE. 5

feeling to be the foundation, the starting point — I might say, the germinating point — the heart and fountain of the true, developing, educating cultivation of the child and of the human being; or, to express it generally and in a single phrase, the education of man in general.

The good results of all true education depend on the careful notice, fostering, development, strengthening, and cultivation of this feeling on the part of the child that he is a whole, and yet also a part of all life; and on the avoidance of every violation, clouding, disturbance of it. It is the point of union of all things, and of each thing which is to be attained through education. Indeed it, singly and alone, first makes possible a true human, all-sided, life-united education. But through it such an education does become possible; for through it the child recognizes itself directly in the two relations of independence and dependence without needing to be instructed by any outward means. Without the direct recognition of those relations there is no genuine human education, as, in nature, no healthy, complete development is possible without observation of those two relations, and without the mute, unconscious living in accordance with these relations. The great, invisible working gardener of the universe, of nature, and of humanity shows us this in the education of all his children, as the active plant gardener does in tending the smallest pot garden. Therefore this twofold feeling or anticipation is the starting-point, the vital point of the true kindergarten. It is also the vital point of the developing educational training of the child, of the youth, of the human being, and of humanity up to all-sided life-union. Such training, verified by the kindergarten, is the all-sufficing way leading at once to completeness; or at least preparing for the possibility of, and entering upon the path which leads to completeness.

Through all this the second question obtrudes, How and through what is this feeling awakened on the part of the child of his twofold relation as a part-whole — a feeling which at first slumbers deeply within him, of which so much has been said, and which has been seen to be so important.

This feeling is awakened by almost everything that is done for or with the child. In manifold ways he feels and sees himself (especially through his frequent oppositeness to grown-up people) as a particular and individual thing in contradistinction to the general and collective. But this all-effective feeling is especially awakened when the child is encouraged to self -activity and to a developing busying of himself while with his parents (especially his mother), or at least in the company of real educators. In such company the child soon feels an invisible but uniting bond, which embraces all grown-up people, and even things. He feels a bond

READING AND WRITING A SOCIAL BOND. 7

which surrounds and unites all things for which he asks. But besides that invisible bond he soon remarks a visible and still more effective bond which connects the farthest as well as the nearest. This is the wonderful art of writing and reading, mute yet speaking, moving men in many ways, and bringing to them joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, laughter and weeping.

Thus the perception of his twofold relation is aroused in the child by his seeing and perceiving that writing and reading are a means of connecting the separate and single with the general, a means of uniting the single parts with each other. Letter writing especially awakens this perception in the child. What child does not like to write letters? How often the request, " Please, please give me some paper, dear father " (or " dear mother "), "I want to write a letter." George is now just three years old. Some time ago he sent to his father the scribbled or merely folded pieces of paper which he imagined to be letters. When his mother also was obliged to take a journey which would keep her away from him for a long while his most earnest request was, " Mother, write me a little letter." The kind mother agreed to do so, and sent folded sheets like little letters, on which the child's fancy read what suited him and what he expected, as if it were in the letter. This actually took place. Therefore our Lina's desire in the former chapter.

" Please, please, dear mother, give me some paper, I will also write a letter," is in harmony with the great laws of development and education.

Now, what is symbolically expressed in the life picture just brought forward as an answer to the questions before us concerning life and education?

First, the child feels early through his whole being what he is, and, through that which comes to pass around him and exerts an influence as a self-dependent, individual, and separate being, and as an active member of a great life-whole, he divines himself as a part-whole.

Second, he feels in like manner that he can exist only in this life-whole; can develop only through this; can become what he is to be only in life-union with this.

Third, therefore his desire and effort are to show himself as such a part-whole; he wishes and begs to be permitted to occupy himself as such.

Fourth, it is thus the spirit of the surrounding life which acts on the slumbering qualities and capacities (germs, heart centres, and starting points) in the child, as the sun's light, the earth's warmth, the materials of life and nourishment in the air and water act in spring on the seeds, germs, and sprouts of the plants. In the case of Lina in our little story it is the mother's loving fostering, the father's thoughtful notice, and the uncle's requirements and helpful sympathy.

THE CHILD IN THE SOCIAL WHOLE. 9

Total result, the child will and must be recognized as a member of the great life-whole. He is to be tended, developed, educated, trained, and treated as such in all-sided union of life. His wishes and expressions, all his indications of life, point toward this view of the child, which is also the meaning of the wish " Teach me to write."

Reference has been made to Pestalozzi's Influence of the Home. He places this influence at the summit of his educational means as the first requisite. My educational means have been brought into comparison with those of Pestalozzi. Comparisons are always favorable to the promotion and application of truth. I will therefore state, in respect to the point mentioned, that, as Pestalozzi claims for his child the influence of the home, so do I claim for mine the powerful might of all-sided life-union which accompanies it from childhood. This life-union consists of the management of the child and the observation of the human being in and according to all the relations of life — to the whole life-power — following the pattern of Nature, who treats the smallest seed and the least plant like the entire world-process and realizes God's image in nature.

I return to our Lina and to her learning to read and write in order in this also to perceive (symbolically) what is here stated.

With the feeling of the particular and the general, of the personal independence and of the dependence on the whole, and with the efforts thereby called forth to give itself up to this whole and to this general (as our Lina did by writing, indeed by the writing of a letter), the goal appears before the child at the same time with the wish, and is possessed of attraction and charm. This is proved by the fact that the child overleaps all limitations (means, way, and manner) in order to reach this goal.

That man, in looking toward the aim of his wishes and desires and keeping it in mind, frequently overlooks the proper means, the right path toward, and the best manner of attaining this aim, is a phenomenon and an experience proceeding, indeed, from the child world, but confirmed by all education of individuals as well as of nations and of humanity.

But this hurrying (from the germ to the fruit, from the wish directly to the fulfillment, from the desire to the aim, springing over all the necessary conditions which should be previously fulfilled) has had the saddest and most pernicious results in life in the education of the individual as well as in that of whole communities, in the education of the nations as well as in that of the human race — even in that of all humanity. This haste has had such sad results for the individual that he could not overcome them in the whole course of his life.

SAB RESULTS OF HASTE. H

Yet we see communities, nations, the human race — yes, all humanity — up to this instant suffering from this single error, which, by its pernicious results, inexorably brings chastisement to man. This is one of the most injurious errors, if not the most injurious one, in the education of the individual as well as of all men.

Yet though it is one of the most dangerous, it is, alas, also one of the least clearly recognized errors in education. But the means to avoid this error (so hurtful in its consequences in the education of children, of individual human beings, as well as of whole nations) are far less recognized and applied. And yet the means are so simple, being the opposite of the error — that is, stability.

What is it that teaches us to know this means in its application, to avoid this error in human education (when recognized) which leads to a constant chronic disease, and is, at the same time, so universally extended? It is the opposite here as always which instructs us by the connection it requires. Thus the opposite of human education, which is the constantly developing education of Nature, teaches us to avoid this error. And how? In Nature the impulse, the arousing and striving, the goal or aim, are always quite near to one another.* The way from the striving to the nearest

* Impulse and goal or aim are opposites. The arousing and striving form the connection. — Tr.

goal, from the impulse to the nearest aim, is always very short. For means and aim, way and goal, lie always very close together in the education of Mature; indeed, to the unpracticed eye they often seem to coincide.

Now, who teaches us to employ this means of constant development in human education? Lina's mother, who herself follows thoughtfully as well as consciously the constantly developing education of Nature. She shows us this education in the way in which she teaches writing and (immediately connecting its opposite with it) reading to her little daughter Lina.

First of all, she makes the child notice in a manner which is intelligent and capable of proof that in order to reach a goal or attain an aim conditions must be fulfilled, powers developed, and means appropriated, and that the employment of these means must be practiced beforehand in the right way. All are mere expressions of the mother, repeated and often confirmed to the child by the smallest, first, and best of its own actions and wishes (directly founded on fact). Having this confirmation, the child is not relegated to a remote, uncertain future in which the discovery is certain to come to it.

It is quite essential here to notice that with this matter of direct natural attraction, which is so important for the child's life, the mother (or the edu 1

LINA'S METHOD. 13

cator in general) meets with aid the endeavors even of the smallest child. For with many things which move before the child (for example, the ball which swings by a thread or string to and fro before it) the child looks (not constantly, bnt for a very short time) at the appearance of the swinging ball, bnt it seeks and looks for the cause of this swinging appearance — for the moving hand. This fact supplies the proof (even in the smallest child), arouses and shows (even in the child itself) the anticipation, that man is a being who questions and investigates the causes and origin of appearances and things. This fact is yet further confirmed by several phenomena and facts of the simple instinctive acts of children, about which I will say more by and by when we notice further these spontaneous actions.

We will now go further in our observation of the thoughtful way in which Lina's mother proceeded. We see that her fostering motherly feeling also goes further. She not only places means and object, way and aim, etc., as nearly as possible by one another, but she also makes the means so easily handled, so suited to the powers of the child, to its developing use of limbs and senses, that the employment of these means gives the child but little trouble (easily overcome by inclination and pleasure), since will and deed can thus coincide directly in one action.

All is just as easy for the child to remember as to do, because, according to the already oftenmentioned first law of cultivation in nature, here also in the art of writing, as in all art, the completest opposites are to be combined with one another —the living, sounding word and the dead, mute stick; the will of the child and the manageableness of the stick which is without will; the spirit and the material.

The little girl, anticipating all this, although as yet dimly, makes joyously her request, " Mother, teach it to me! "

But from this request (after appropriating the means) the little girl's gaze — confirming our remark made above — springs immediately to the aim, the object. " If any one could only read what I write," says the child sadly, having in view only the aim and object of the writing. " An experiment will test it, the doing will show it," answered the mother simply; thus instructing, educating the child by word and object, deed and explanation, by neither alone, but, as before remarked, by the opposites which are most intimately connected in the whole contemplation and perception, where the immaterial and material again present themselves in the recognition of what has been done in the reading as in all art.

With what does the mother again connect her instruction bv word and deed? Or, rather, from

LINA'S SELF-ACTIVITY. 15

what does the mother derive her instruction? Or, yet more precisely, how and from what does she develop the instruction desired by the child herself? First of all, she founds such instruction on the wish of the little girl, and lets it, as it were, grow out of that wish.

Even this taking up and noticing the child's wish by the mother is very important for answering our question. Therein lies the imitation of the above-asserted constancy of Nature (the constancy of the education of Nature) in the field, the province of human education and for education. The mother now resembles here in her action the sun, which in spring awakens the slumbering power in seeds and buds, which slowly rousing further nourishes and strengthens itself. And so it is to be with all human education.

Further, the mother develops this instruction, so much desired by Lina, not only from that which is personally experienced by the child, but also from and by means of her own direct feeling of personality. The mother connects her instructions with that which directly arouses this feeling in each human being. She demands the name of one familiar and beloved, the name of the father, lastly the little girl's own name, and so particularly connects the instruction with the child herself. She develops from the child's innermost nature, thus from the point, from the fountain where desire and fulfillment coincide, from the power of the soul, in which will and action are one. Therefore the will and deed of the little girl are in harmony with the wish and the requirement of the mother. For here Lina's mother has solved for us clearly and consciously, and thus completely (as each mother does instinctively with more or less obscurity, greater or less imperfection), the most important problem, the as yet little recognized secret of true developing education and genuine instruction, and she has at once practically applied this solution. She has drawn out both education and instruction in all-sided life-union from the life, the impulse, the wish and the will, the power and the individual activity of the child, as well as from the little girl's self-reliance and self-determination, and has done this by means of the child's own action. The mother's influence thus resembles that of the spring sun, which by w r armth awakens the life (the impulse, the power, the self-activity, and the self-determination) in each seed kernel, arouses in it the impulse to unfold according to its natural capacities that which lies in it by its own activity and all-sided union with Nature. It is enough to say that Lina's mother has solved with a word the problem and revealed the mystery. She has also put the solution immediately into practice. She has transformed the education and instruction, which before were foreign to the child,

SELF-EDUCATION. If

into self-edncation and self-instruction for her daughter Lina.

Lina's mother here solves with clearness and precision the problem and reveals the mystery of genuine education and instruction, since she turns them into self-education and self-instruction for her child. She has previously shown the harmfulness of springing from the wish to the aim without paying any attention to the intermediate links and requirements, and by observing the constancy in the education of ISTature, has disclosed the means for avoiding that harmfulness in human education. She here shows us still further another of the greatest and most injurious failures and wants of our methods of education and instruction up to the present time. Education and instruction, discipline and school, seek, as a rule, the grounds for determining their requirements and their management either wholly outside of the life of the children or, even if within the life of the human being, yet derived from a time which is, in respect to the child (the little charge, the pupil, the scholar), so remote, so far in the future, as to have for him no power at all of attraction, of arousing, and of development. That which the child, the pupil, is to do and learn must proceed from its power of will and action inwardly united to a doing, to a desire, by means of the direct, instantaneous effect of the total life united in itself.

Certainly this is shown by almost all our subjects of instruction, especially as applied to the mass of people. Our instructions in reading and writing, as also in counting and speaking, arithmetic and language, are especially feeble, as they mostly begin with the abstract with which instruction should close; hence the few abiding results of this instruction in life.

Therefore what is to have true, abiding and* blessing, instructive and formative effect on the child as pupil and scholar, and as a future active man — viz., independent employment — must not only be founded on life as it actually appears, must not only be connected with life, but must also form itself in harmony with the requirements of life, of the surroundings, and of the time, and with what they offer. It must especially have an arousing and wakening effect on the inner life of the child, and must thus spontaneously germinate from that life. This is the nature of the developing educational training of man, to follow and practice which I regard as the indispensable demand of the time (founded on the laws of Xature and the world, on the necessary laws of all the formations of life), and the maintenance of which I recognize as the demand of life. I hold it in its general comprehensive application as so highly important to the life of humanity and of the nations, that its realization and accomplishment (in proportion to the

THE METHODS OF LINA'S MOTHER. 19

degree in which it is connected with simple, unchangeable laws) should be the task of all educators, in all relations of life, and under all circumstances. These methods of education and training the kindergartens also represent consciously, and true kindergartners have this object firmly in view, carry it lovingly in their hearts, and strive for it in all that they do.

Let us now further observe the course of training which Lina's mother followed and which was founded on what has been before stated. Proceeding with womanly tact from that which is manifoldly double-sided, the name, the personality, which unites in itself person and thing, creating and receiving (writing and reading), self-employment and learning, etc., becomes again to the child in its manifold double-sideclness a type of herself while she thinks and speaks it, speaks and hears it, hears and writes it; having written, sees and reads it, makes it again audible, and so again leads back to the thought in the mind. We see here the spiritual and corporeal united in one body, and using it as a symbol we comprehend and recognize all which exists and lives. Here the progress has been from existence and life as such, from the spirit, which then as a sequence leads back again to the recognition of existence and life as such, and of the spirit of all which has appeared and is appearing.

And now we see with what deep womanly thought Lina's mother found her course of training not only in a name, but in the name of the child itself, and discovered how the way of training entered upon by herself and the child's own course of 'development coincide; how the laws, limitations, and requirements of the one are at the same time those of the other, and therefore the requirements of the mother are easy for the child to comprehend and to fulfill.

We further see how the mother has found in the name a means of perception, a symbol, as it were, by which to make the child recognize that the spirit is perceptible in the corporeal, and as it is perceptible in the corporeal can come forth from it and become active.

Through this course of proceeding the mother has also (which is of like importance with the preceding) obtained a means of bringing the child to conceive, perceive, and understand the working of the spiritual upon the spirit, and of even making it perceptible in itself (going through the corporeal, the body, as it were, from the body, acting again upon the spirit, and being felt and recognized by the spirit as spiritual). This takes place when the series of developments before given (that of the awakened thought visibly appearing in written, formed words; from this again come forth to perceptible spiritually reawakening thought) is several

NATURE REVEALS GOD. 21

times carried through with the child audibly and visibly (comparing inner cause and outer appearance, outer appearance and inner effect), as was the case with Lina in her repeated letter writing.

But now what is the further natural necessary result in simple continuous development of this course of training pursued by Lina's mother? The works speak, the things speak, the nature makes itself known from the form; by the form the spirit manifests itself. By that which has been produced and created the nature and spirit of the producer and creator make themselves known. As the world, the universe appears to be always becoming and constantly creating, it also appears to have become, to be created, it appears as a creation. It must therefore necessarily express, reveal, and manifest the nature of its original cause — the spirit of its Creator. If we now listen to the one great accord of the world, resolving in itself all distances, it sounds " good! " But good, in its completeness and perfection as it appears in the universe, as the harmony of the world, includes in itself the beautiful, the true, and the right. Therefore goodness in itself, and, as it were, complete in itself, must necessarily be the nature of the Creator of the world and of the universe. Nature therefore makes known the being of God; it renders his nature clear and perceptible to us. Thus Nature, being in itself single and also living by its own power, shows and testifies that, in all its rest, it is living; with all its changing existence, it is existing; with all its manifoldness, it is, in itself, single, and is thus the complete expression of the goodness of its Creator.