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KINDER GARTEN TRAINING.
A PAPER
BEAD AT THE SOCIAL SCIENCE CONGBESS,
AT
GLASGOW, 1874..
BY
E. A. MANNING.
LONDON:
EDWARD STANFORD* 6, 7, & 8, CHARING CROSS, S.W.
■
1874.
Price Sixpence.
��KINDER GARTEN TRAINING.
In the last few years the Kinder Garten system of
training infants, invented by Frobel, has been
noticed and studied by many who are interested
in practical education. Introduced into England
more than twenty-five years ago, this method at
first attracted little attention; but now Frobel’s
idea in its beauty and harmony has taken strong
hold of many minds, and the value of his plans,
which are so skilfully adapted to children’s tenden
cies, is gradually being more and more recognised.
Private Kinder Gartens are springing up in various
places; school boards begin to establish them
as a preparation for the elementary course; while
in Manchester there is already a training school
for teachers. In Frobel’s own country, the number
of Kinder Gartens has increased to five hundred.
Some of his pupils (among them the Baroness Marenholtz-Bulow) have devoted themselves zealously to
their establishment; and from Germany teachers
have been sent to Italy, where the system has great
success. In Belgium, France, and Russia, children
are being brought under this influence. In the
United States, greatly through the exertions of Miss
Peabody, Kinder Gartens are becoming numerous.
B
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Many good G-uides too have been published, the
result of actual experience in teaching, the best of
which are by Wiebe, Kohler, Goldammer, Octavie
de Masson and Madame Ronge ; and Miss Peabody
edits a little monthly magazine, called the 4 Kinder
Garten Messenger.’*
But, notwithstanding this progress, we still hear
it asked what Kinder Gartens are; and even those
who are familiar with the occupations and games
often do not well understand Frobel’s leading ideas.
The principle of his system seems still to be too
much in the background, whereas it is just that
which ought to be entered into, if we wish to judge
fairly of the merits of his plans. In this paper,
then, I shall first explain Frobel’s principle, in doing
which I shall have to say a little about himself;
and secondly, I shall describe the practical system
of training which he invented in accordance with
that principle.
I. Frobel’s fundamental idea of education was
that it consists in securing a gradual and harmo
nious development of the child’s nature. And how
is this to be obtained ? His answer is, “ Not by a
routine course of school lessons, but by the pleasur
able, well-directed exercise of its various faculties.”
He saw that children are growing and learning,
even if they are not sent to school. But he did
1 This magazine can be procured in England by communicating with
Miss Snell, 17, Strawberry Bank, Pendleton, Manchester.
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not wish them to be left to themselves. He saw
also that the help of experienced minds is needed,
in order to guide and train all this natural action.
The work of teachers, therefore, lies first in observing
children’s own efforts, and next in directing those
efforts to good and sure results. Self-education
thus assisted, and thus only, leads to the desired
end—the free and full development of the physical,
mental, and moral nature. Frobel was not the
first to assert these views about education, and
he shared them with Pestalozzi and others of his
time; but being deeply impressed with them, he,
like Pestalozzi, spent a great part of his life in
carrying them into practice. The son of a country
pastor in Thiiringen, he tried several kinds of em
ployment, till the decided bent of his mind towards
teaching induced him to help in a school at Frank
fort, and afterwards he collected some village boys
not far from his early home, with the desire of
training them to lead good and useful lives. He
had not then thought of Kinder Gartens, but he
conducted his school on the principle that I have
stated, viz. that true education is simply the careful
guidance of natural growth.
After some years, Frobel, having fully taken
hold of this principle of aided self-development,
began to consider whether it could not be acted on
before the usual school age. He became convinced
that the first few years of a child’s life are alb
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important, as laying the foundation of health and
disease, giving the direction to its mental habits,
and moulding its tempers, dispositions, and tastes.
In dealing with his boy-pupils, he was led to see
that he might have had far more success with them
if they had not been comparatively neglected up
to seven years old. Like Pestalozzi, he had the
highest appreciation of early home-training, and
he had no desire to set infants to tasks. But it
occurred to him that if the education which they
were joyously giving themselves could be gently
and kindly guided by a teacher, under suitable
conditions, and with the advantage of companion
ship, mind and body might be brought into a good
state of preparation for the studies and the duties of
after years. Thus he arrived at the idea of Kinder
Gartens.
It is easy to see how naturally the name Kinder
Garten was adopted by Frobel. In all his thoughts
on education the illustration constantly present to
his mind was that of the growth of plants. He used
to say, “ The tree is my teacherand he held the
work of the gardener to be very similar to that of
the educator. In an often-quoted passage he ex
presses himself thus : “ As the farmer and gardener
treat their seeds in accordance with Nature, and in
harmony with her laws, so we should educate the
child and man according to their being, according
to the inherent laws of life, in harmony and unity
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with Nature and with the Supreme Being, Source of
all life.” The gardener imparts no force, establishes
no laws, but after making himself acquainted with
the nature of the plants under his care, secures for
them, by his watchful toil, plenty of light, air, water,
and space, sure that the leaves, flowers, and fruit
will appear in due time. And so, in the case of
children, the teacher first acquires a true ideal of
what they may become, and afterwards simply
gives scope for the quickening and strengthening
of their varied capacities. When then Frobel had
planned a training place for infants, he called it a
childrens garden, expressing thus his educational
principle, and conveying a beautiful idea of the
kind of influences to be exerted there, such influ
ences as may reasonably be compared to the sun
shine, rain, and good soil by means of which plants
thrive and grow. I may add that no forcing is con
sistent with his system. Open-air gardening he
accepted as a comparison, but not the artificial
methods which promote rapid results; for he knew
that all healthy development is slow.
But Frobel would have certainly failed in his
practical schemes if he had not thoroughly under
stood children, and one cannot help being struck
with the wholeness of his view as to their nature.
He seems to leave out no characteristic—to forget
no latent power. The child that he already trains
in imagination is just the merry, happy, bright,
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inventive, active, loving child that everyone de
lights to see. Himself of an affectionate disposition,
he could sympathize with the desires and interests
of the youngest minds; and when he was forming
his plans of training, he used to mix much with
little children, noticing their ways with one another,
and the ways with them of their mothers and nurses.
And besides kindness and simplicity of heart, he
brought to bear on the subject of education a keen
and philosophic mind. He observed not only
children, but men and nations too; and he found
that facts in individual growth were confirmed by
facts in the more extended growth of communities.
He thought deeply on all human relations and
duties, seeking everywhere for unity in variety,
and for harmony through obedience to Divine laws.
Gentle, thoughtful, poetical, and religious-minded,
he was well qualified to show how children should
be prepared for life, and I think it is rare to meet
with anyone who, as fully as he did, realized all
their characteristics.
What did he find those characteristics to be ? I
will shortly enumerate the chief of them. 1. An
unceasing bodily activity, which leads children to
jump, run, climb, tumble, and scramble about—the
natural means of promoting physical growth. 2. An
inquisitive faculty of observation, impelling them to
investigate the world in which they are come to live,
with the untiring energy of African explorers; and
Frobel saw that they do this in a most practical
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manner, mainly by feeling and handling the objects
of their attention. 3. Constructiveness-, the fond
ness for making things, whether mud-pies, boats, or
dolls’ clothes. ‘ 4. A love of the beautiful, shown
in a susceptibility to the influence of harmony in
sound, form, and colour, and of all external nature.
5. The social tendency ; the delight of having com
panions, and of being sympathized with in their
joys and troubles.
6. A constant playfulness,
evinced by the glee and enthusiasm which animate
their hourly life. Frobel dwelt much on this point;
for he felt that play (by which, however, he did not
mean aimless play) is the congenial atmosphere of a
little child. 7. A growing moral nature—passions,
affections, and conscience, which need to be con
trolled, responded to, and cultivated. Here then
are seven distinctive characteristics, common in
varying degrees to all children, and it was these
that Frotel determined to try to develop.
I have now described the foundation on which
Frobel built his Kinder Garten teaching, viz. the
principle that true education consists in the judicious
guidance of self-education; and I have shown, too,
that he desired to apply this principle to the train
ing of very young children, and that his acquintance
with a child’s nature was remarkably full and com
plete.
II. Secondly, I will briefly describe Frobel’s prac
tical plans, which have already been so widely
adopted.
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1. .The Gifts. Impressed with the idea that a
little child must begin to learn through the handling
of objects, and also through play, he arranged a
series of toys which he called gifts. These are as
different as possible from the dazzling mechanisms
that attract children to the windows of toy-shops.
Frobel studiously avoided recommending toys which,
being finished off, leave no room for the exercise of
fancy. I think he would have sighed over the Christ
mas and birthday presents that are now showered
upon children. But modest as his gifts are in appear
ance, they have an endless capability for giving enjoy-,
ment, and enjoyment of a higher kind than the gay
little omnibus, or the talking French doll. Children’s
eyes glisten with pleasure when they are allowed
to play with them, and the teacher, by their use,
stimulates the observing and inventive powers, and
conveys the rudiments of arithmetic and geometry.
There is a regular gradation in the gifts, most care
fully thought out by Frobel, by means of which
each dawning faculty is provided for, and the child
is led from the most elementary ideas to the more
abstract and complicated. The first gift is a coloured
worsted ball. Being apparently full of life, a ball
is a real companion for an infant. It not only
amuses it, and helps to teach command of limbs and
muscles, but it supplies the groundwork of first
lessons about colour and substance. Very pretty
symmetrical games can be played with this gift, to
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music or counting ; as, for instance, by placing the
children in a circle, and letting them pass the balls
from one to another, the arms being raised and
lowered alternately. The second gift consists of a
plain wooden ball or sphere, a cube, and a cylinder.
The child is now led to observe new forms, and
becomes familiar with corners, sides, edges, and
angles. The third and fourth gifts are again in
advance. Each is a cube, divided in the one case
into eight smaller cubes, in the other into eight
parallelograms. Frobel planned three modes of use
for these blocks and bricks: making forms of daily
life, such as a chair, a tower, a column, &c.; making
forms of beauty—flat shapes which in a simple and
striking way can be evolved out of one another (in
one of the Kinder Garten Guides as many as eighty
of these are given)—and using them for lessons
about number. The fifth and sixth gifts are further
subdivided, and are therefore available for more
elaborate erections and figures. They also lead to
higher arithmetical and mathematical teaching.
Sometimes all the sets of bricks are used together,
so that bridges, houses, railroads, &c., can be formed.
The children are in every way encouraged to exercise
their own invention, and the teacher talks to them
familiarly about the objects represented.
2. The Occupations. The value of these is proved
by the great delight that they afford, the ingenuity
that they call forth, and the habits of industry that
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they encourage. Everyone who has visited a Kinder
Garten when the occupations were going on, must
have remarked the- zest of the children, and their
proud surprise at the results of their own perse
verance. I can only name them, without indicating
the clever way in which they also lead up to one
another. The first is stick-laying, that is, making
outline forms with tiny sticks; then drawing, which
begins with the representation of these outlines on
a slate, and goes on to the copying of the forms of
printed letters and of natural objects. Pea-work;
uniting the sticks by means of softened peas, so as
to make little articles of furniture, as well as mathe
matical figures. Paper-folding, by which a succes
sion of objects are formed out of a sheet of paper.
Paper-cutting; a few symmetrical cuts when the
paper has been folded into a triangle, giving an
astonishing variety of results. Perforating of card
board, the designs when finished being worked by
the children with worsted. Mat-making; the inter
weaving of coloured strips of paper so as to make
little mats. Lastly, Modelling in clay. This begins
with the simplest forms, but by degrees the children
learn to imitate nature, and they often show great
skill in these early attempts at sculpture. The occu
pations not only satisfy the desire to make something,
but they develop the artistic faculty. As Frobel
looked in the child for the germ of every capacity of
the grown man, he did not fail to give scope for the
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expression of ideas through creations of fancy. He
stands perhaps alone in attempting the cultivation
of art-power in very young children. I may mention
here that he made a great point of accustoming
children to express themselves in clear tones, and
in language closely fitted to their thought, and also
that reading is taught in Kinder Gartens by a natural
method, which avoids the labour of spelling. The
power of accurate observation gained by so much
familiarity with form, makes a child attain the art
of reading with singular ease and rapidity.
3. Another part of the training consists in laying
the basis of Scientific Knowledge. The child’s atten
tion is drawn to objects. He is led to distinguish their
likenesses and their differences, according to the Pestalozzian method, and thus he acquires the elements
of geography, physics, and natural history. Frobel
would not allow such teaching to be given in a dry
manner. He wished a garden to be attached to
every one of these schools, that the children might
study for themselves the nature of plants, and he liked
them to live as much as possible in the open air, and
to have the care of flowers and of animals. In the
lessons, the teacher chooses subjects connected with
the children’s daily experience, and has recourse to
pictures and anecdotes. Science, while unimpaired
as to accuracy, is conveyed through the medium of
poetry and affection. For the knowledge is imparted
in order to satisfy the child’s eager wish to be at
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home in nature, and to take his rightful place in
relation to the outer world.
4. Music was much relied on by Frobel, for he
had a profound belief in its beneficial influence. He
remarked that the youngest children have a tendency
to express themselves in singing, and he was aware
of the almost magical effect on their moral nature of
melodious sounds. He therefore introduced music,
with or without words, in every available way into
his system. As harmony was his constant end and
aim, no wonder that the harmony of sound had a
special attraction for him.
5. Again, the Games are very prominent in a
Kinder Garten. These are of a dramatic kind,
tending to remind children of phases of life and of
the ways of animals, and being performed by a
large number, and in rhythmic order, their effect is
animating and harmonizing. As an example, I will
describe the game called “ The Pigeon-house.”
Three-fourths of the children place themselves in a
circle round the others, who represent the pigeons.
Those outside begin to sing-T
“We open the pigeon-house again,
And. set the merry flutt’rers free ”—
at the same time enlarging the circle, and raising
hands and arms, so as to allow the pigeons to
escape. The pigeon-children run out, imitating the
flapping of birds’ wings, and the song continues—
“ They fly on the fields and grassy plain,
Delighted with joyous liberty.”
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After a while, the circle goes on to sing—
“ And when they return from their merry flight,
We shut up the house, and bid them ‘good-night.’”
At once the pigeons run back, pass under the raised
arms of the circle, and are closed in again. Other
plays are “ The Peasant,” “ The Windmill,” “ The
Bees,” &c. It is quite inspiriting to see the mer
riment caused by these games. The children’s
imagination is pleased; their limbs are healthily
and gracefully exercised; they are exhilarated by
companionship; and they learn to realize the value
of combination for the production of results.
6. There is one more point that I must refer to.
It is the moral training that a Kinder Garten
supplies. The teacher aims indirectly at placing a
moral standard before the children’s minds, by the
tone she gives to all the lessons, and through
biographies, fables, songs, and stories, illustrative of
right and wrong. But, besides this, she watches
and guides their conduct. Owing to the freedom of
action encouraged, and the social life that the
presence of numbers gives, there is plenty of scope
for the growth of character; and the teacher, whose
approbation, if she is loved by her pupils, is earnestly
desired, has it in her power continually to promote
unselfishness, and to check cross and angry disposi
tions. The occupations induce perseverance and
correct idleness; in the games the children learn to
give up to others; patience, self-control, and a love
�of order are imbibed; it becomes a habit to respect
the rights of others; the affections are drawn out;
and cheerful obedience is accepted as the rule of
life. If in a word or two one had to describe the
moral effect of a Kinder Garten, one might say that
the child learns there the great lesson that it forms
a part of a social whole. Each has its little niche
in the building—its small, but definite, share of
duty, which, if it omits to perform, all the others
suffer. Thus, for the sake of its companions, it
represses its hasty words and its violent tempers,
and tries to help towards the general advantage.
It is caught up, as it were, into some degree of
understanding of its religious and moral relations,
and the aim set before it is not only not to be
naughty, but to be positively good.
In these ways Frobel adapted his practice to
the several characteristics of children which I have
already enumerated—to their activity, observingness,
constructiveness, love of art, sociability, playfulness,
and their moral nature. Other occupations and
other methods of teaching may, as experience
-increases, be added to his, but while there is no
reason to follow his plans slavishly, I think it will
not be found easy to improve upon them. Of course,
it depends mainly on the teacher whether a Kinder
Garten accomplishes its true intention, and some of
the objections that one occasionally hears raised
against the system apply, I believe, to the many
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imperfect realizations that unfortunately exist.
The important thing is that a teacher should be
thoroughly imbued with Frobel’s principle. No
doubt she requires special training in the use of the
gifts, and in the games and occupations, &c. But
she will have studied them to little avail if she
treats them as unrelated mechanical arts, instead
of as helps to the carrying out of a whole ideal.
For Frobel’s system is, after all, not a system. It
is life acting on life. It is the calling forth of the
emotions, the intellect, the physical powers, and the
conscience by one in whom all good faculties are
already developed. The teacher must keep her
principles constantly in view, and must test every
portion of her practice by its conformity to that
principle. Through a wise and loving influence she
must prepare her impressible little pupils for further
progress, and if she has trained them as Frobel
meant them to be trained, they will begin their
school life with a happy and regulated consciousness
of possessing force—physical, intellectual, and
moral.
In order to show that these results may be and
are actually obtained, I will quote the recent testi
mony of an elementary schoolmistress, in America,
who receives children at the end of their Kinder
Garten course. She wrote:—“ A child, of no extra
ordinary gifts, who had been in Miss Kriege’s
Kinder Garten two years, came to me at seven, and
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easily passed through all the three grades of the
primary school in one year, because all his habits of
mind were so well formed, and he had been taught
both how to behave and how to learn.”
In conclusion, I would express a hope not only
that Kinder Gartens will become more and more
numerous, but also that Frobel’s principle will be
recognised to a greater extent than it is at present,
in the later stages of education.
E. A. Manning.
<
V*
Since this paper was prepared, I am glad to find
that the British and Foreign School Society have
engaged the help of an experienced German lady,
Miss Heerwart, a pupil of Frobel’s intimate friend
and colleague, Middendorff, > in order to organize a
course of Kinder Garten instruction for the students
of Stockwell College. Until the present want of
trained English teachers is supplied, it is impos
sible that the system can make much progress; but
as soon as it is introduced, in a thorough manner,
into training institutions, we may hope that children
of all classes will share those advantages of develop
ment which must ever be associated with the name
of Friedrich Frobel.
���
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Kinder garten training: a paper read at the Social Science Congress at Glasgow, 1874
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Manning, E.A.
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Discusses the work of educator Friedrich Frobel who created the concept of 'kindergarten'.
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Edward Stanford
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1874
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G5362
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English
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Education
Child rearing
Conway Tracts
Education
Friedrich Frobel
Kindergartens