E. R. Murray

“ It is true that any one watching your teaching would observe a new spirit infused into it, expressing and fulfilling the child's own wants and desires. You would strike him as personally capable, but you would fail to strike him as priestess of the idea which God has now called to life within man's bosom, and of the struggle towards the realisation of that idea—education by development—the destined means of raising the whole human race.... No man can acquire fresh knowledge, even at a school, beyond the measure which his own stage of development fits him to receive.... ”

“ Then there is the atmosphere of the home, the real reverence for higher things, if it exists, affects even a little child more than is usually supposed, but children are quick to distinguish reality from mere conventionality though the distinction is only half conscious. Reality impresses, while conventionality is apt to bore. Even to quite young children Froebel's ideal mother would begin to show God in nature. Some one put into the flowers the scent and colour that delight the child—some one whom he cannot see. ”

“ It is all a kind of joyous rehearsal of life which we call Play. We can force a child to passivity, to formal repetitions of second-hand knowledge, to the acquisition of that for which he has no apparent need, but we can never educate him by these things. "Children do not play because they are young, they have their youth that they may play," as surely as they have their legs that they may walk. ”

“ We grant space and time to young plants and animals because we know that, in accordance with the laws that live in them, they will develop properly and grow well; arbitrary interference with their growth is avoided because it would hinder their development; but the young human being is looked upon as a piece of wax, a lump of clay, which man can mould into what he pleases. O man, who roamest through garden and field, through meadow and grove, why dost thou close thy mind to the silent teaching of nature? ”

“ To tell a child that the Great Father is always grieved when we are unkind or cowardly, always ready to help us and to put kindness and bravery into our hearts, that we know He has power to do that if we will let Him, but that His power is beyond our understanding: to say that He is able to keep us in all danger, and that even if we are killed we are safe in His keeping, surely that is enough. He who blessed the children uttered strong words against him who caused the little ones to stumble. ”

“ How, then, can we provide for their experience of this side of life? We have tried to do so in the past by object and nature lessons, but we must admit that they are not the means by which young children seek to know life, or by which they appreciate its beauty. We have been trying to kill too many birds with one stone in our economic way; "to train the powers of observation," "to teach a child to express himself," "to help a child to gain useful knowledge about living things," have been the most usual aims. ”

“ Perhaps teachers with a fair amount of experience might have felt like the beginner who frankly says, "I didn't say anything more because I didn't know what to say," when Dorothy discovered the wonderfulness of glass. Perhaps we are silent because the child has gone ahead of us. It is wonderful, but we have never thought about it. In such cases we must, as Froebel says, "become a learner with the child" and humbly, with real sympathy and earnestness, ask, "Is it wonderful, I suppose it is, but I never thought about it, why do you call it wonderful?" ”

“ In both prose and poetry, probably the ultimate aim is appreciation of beauty in human conduct. Clutton Brock says, "The value of art is the value of the aesthetic activity of the spirit, and we must all value that before we can value works of art rightly: and ultimately we must value this glory of the universe, to which we give the name of beauty when we apprehend it." Again he says, "Parents, nurses and teachers ought to be aware that the child when he forgets himself in the beauty of the world is passing through a sacred experience which will enrich and glorify the whole of his life." ”

“ The way in which the trees and plants are chosen is most suggestive. Beauty and suitability are always considered, but he remembers his own youth, and also considers the special joys of childhood. For it is not Nature lessons that come into his calculations but "the mere association of plants and children." So the birch tree is chosen, partly for its grace and beauty, but also because of its bark, for one can scribble on its papery surface; the hazel, because children delight in the catkins with their showers of golden dust, and the nut "hidden in its cap of frills and tucks." ”

“ The Infant School of Wilderspin, already briefly described, was almost a dead thing, with its galleries and its mechanical prodigies, its object-lessons and its theology; now it was breathed upon by the spirit of the man who said: "Play is the highest phase of child development, of human development at this period: for it is the spontaneous representation of the inner, from inner necessity and impulse." "Play is the purest, most spiritual activity of man." "The plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all later life." ”

“ It is the individual part of each child that is his most precious possession, his immortal side: Froebel calls it his "divine essence," and makes the cultivation of it the aim of education; he is right, and any more general aim will lead only to half-developed human beings. If we accept the principle that only goodness is fundamental and evil a distortion of nature, we need have no fear about cultivating individuals. Every doctor assures us that all normal babies are naturally healthy; they are also naturally good, but evil is easily aroused by arbitrary interference or by mismanagement. ”

“ Froebel says: "Not only children and boys, but indeed many adults, fare with nature and her character as ordinary men fare with the air. They live in it and yet scarcely know it as something distinct ... therefore these children and boys who spend all their time in the fields and forests see and feel nothing of the beauties of nature and their influence on the human heart. They are like people who have grown up in a very beautiful country and who have no idea of its beauty and its spirit ... ”

“ The force of the rain has washed out of the sand smooth bright pebbles, and the ever-observing child gathers them as building stones as it were, as material for future building. And is he wrong? Is he not in truth collecting material for his future life building? ”

“ Picking feathery grasses, red-tipped daisies, sweet-smelling clover and golden dandelions; feeding snapdragons with fallen petals, finding what's o'clock by blowing dandelion fruits, paying for dock tea out of a fairy purse, shading poppy dolls with woodruff parasols, that is how a child enjoys the beauty of colour, scent and form. He gets not more but less beauty when he must sit in a class and answer formal questions. ”

“ There is, however, nothing the children love more than the Bible story, the story which shows, so simply, humanity struggling as the children struggle, failing as the children fail, and believing and trusting as the children believe, and as we at least strive to do, in the ultimate victory of Right over Wrong, of Good over Evil. But just because the stories are often so beautiful and so inspiring, the teacher should have freedom to deal with them as the spirit moves her. ”

“ As the child's sense of power and his self-consciousness deepen he requires possessions of his "very own." Says Froebel: "The feeling of his own power implies and demands also the possession of his own space and his own material belonging exclusively to him. Be his realm, his province, a corner of the house or courtyard, be it the space of a box or of a closet, be it a grotto, a hut or a garden, the boy at this age needs an external point, chosen and prepared by himself, to which he refers all his activity." ”

“ All children should live in the country at least for part of the year. They should know fields and gardens, and have intercourse with hens and chickens, cows and calves, sheep and lambs; should make hay and see the corn cut. They would still want the wisely sympathetic teacher, not to arouse interest—that is not necessary, but to keep it alive by keeping pace with the child's natural development. It is not merely living in the country that develops the little child's interest in shape and colour and scent into something deeper. ”

“ As educators with an aim before us, we deliberately tell stories in order to place before our children ideals of unselfishness, courage and truth. We know from our own experience, not only in childhood, but all through life how the story reaches our feelings as no sermon or moralising ever does, and we have learned that "out of the heart are the issues of life." Unguided feelings may be a danger, but the story does more than rouse feelings—it gives opportunity for the exercise of moral judgement, for the exercise of judgement upon questions of right and wrong. ”

“ It is into this chaotic method of gaining experience that the teacher comes with her interpretive power—she sees in it the beginnings of all the big things of life—and like a bigger child she joins, and like a bigger child she improves. ”

“ There is no recognised or stereotyped method of telling a story to children: it is something much deeper than merely an acquired art, it is the teacher giving something of her personality to the children, something that is most precious. One of the finest of our English Kindergarten teachers once said, "I feel almost as if I ought to prepare my soul before telling a story to young children," and this is the sense in which the story should be chosen and told. ”

“ There is nearly always some part of a meal on the table, and some washing hanging up. Outside there are the dingy street, the crowded shops, the pavement to play on, and both outside and in, the bleaker and more sordid aspects of life, sometimes miserable, sometimes exciting. On Saturday night the lights are brilliant and life is at least intense. Bed is a very crowded affair, in which many half-undressed children sleep covered with the remainder of the day's wardrobe. ”

“ We must not then despise the rough and ready productions of a child, nor force upon him a standard for which he is not ready.
Before any other construction is possible to him, a child can make with sand, and this is a constant joy, from the endless puddings that are turned out of patty pans, up to such models as that of the whole "Isle of Wight" with its tunnelled cliffs and system of railways, made by an ex-Kindergarten boy as yet innocent of geography lessons.
The child then who is making, especially making for use, is to a certain extent developing himself as an artist. ”

“ The business of the younger child is with real things and activity, not with symbols and passivity, therefore he is not really in need of reading, writing, or arithmetic. We hear arguments from ambitious teachers that children are fond of reading lessons because they enjoy the fantasies in which these lessons are wrapped, or the efforts made by the teacher to create interest; we hear that children ask to be taught to read; they also ask to be taught to drive a tram or to cook a dinner; but it is all part of the pretence game of playing at being grown up. ”

“ Thus, O parents, could your children, on whom you force in tender years forms and aims against their nature, and who, therefore, walk with you in morbid and unnatural deformity—thus could your children, too, unfold in beauty and develop in harmony."
At first play is activity for the sake of activity, not for the sake of results, "of which the child has as yet no idea." Very soon, however, having man's special capacity of learning through experience, the child does gather ideas. ”

“ Then there is the interdependence of the universe: the baby is to thank Jenny for his bread and milk, Peter for mowing the grass for the cow, "until you come to the last ring of all, God's father love for all." Next to this comes the child's service; others work for him and he also must serve. "Every age has its duties, and duties are not burdens," and it is necessary that feeling should have expression, "for even a child's love unfostered (by action in form of service) droops and dies away." ”

“ There is no other way to learn life, and build up an ideal from the raw material he has gained in other ways. In the rehearsal of life at school he can do this without serious harm; but every time a mode of conduct is imposed upon him when he might have chosen, every time he is externally controlled when he might have controlled himself, every time he is balked in making a mistake that would have been experience to him, he will be proportionally less fit to choose, to exercise self-control, to learn by experience, and these are the chief lessons at this impressionable period. ”

“ But when we think of the joy of such imaginative play as that of Red Indians, shipwrecks and desert islands, we feel that these show a craving for experience, for life, such a craving as causes the adult to lose himself in a book of travels or in a dramatic performance, and which explains the phenomenal success of the cinema, poor stuff as it is. ”

“ In the nursery class therefore our curriculum is life, our apparatus all that a child's world includes, and our method the one of joyful investigation, by means of which ideas and skill are being acquired. The teacher is player in chief, ready to suggest, co-operate, supply information, lead or follow as circumstances demand: responsibility must still belong to the children, for while most of them know quite naturally how to play, there are many who will never get beyond a rather narrow limit, through lack of experience or of initiative. ”