Infant school

“ But, when the infant leaves the lap of its mother, and other duties divide her care, it is then necessary that a teacher, equally affectionate and equally efficient, be provided; for children seek, and will find, teachers of good or of evil in every scene, and in every playmate. It is now that the Infant School must mature the education which the mother has, or ought to have, begun. ”

“ As an Infant School may be regarded in the light of a combination of the school and nursery, the art of pleasing, forms a prominent part in the system; and as little children are very apt to be fretful, it becomes expedient to divert as well as teach there. If children of two years old and under are not diverted, they will naturally cry for their mothers: and to have ten or twelve children crying in the school, it is very obvious would put every thing into confusion. ”

“ Stow at their head, deserve the thanks of the whole community for having applied the principles on which the Infant School System is based, to juveniles, and carried out and proved the practicability of it for the public good. I told them this in lectures at Glasgow long ago, and exhibited before them children to prove the truths I promulgated, both there and in other parts of Scotland, to convince a doubting and cautious public that my views were practicable. ”

“ Then the Bible-class, with their teacher, return, and the infant-school is divided into classes, in which the young ladies teach the same lesson which they have just received from their teacher. In this way practice in teaching, and variety are gained, and the lady teacher in the infant-school is relieved of a part of her burden.
I have never found two infant-class teachers who conducted their schools exactly alike. Each one has some peculiarity in his or her mode. There is no standard mode of infant-class instruction. Adaptation according to circumstances is the rule. ”

“ It seems agreed, that some features of the infant school system may advantageously be transferred to ordinary schools: for instance, the use of tangible and visible symbols and illustrations. And infant schools themselves are certainly well enough, for those children who would otherwise have to be left alone, or untended, while their parents are abroad or at work. But for young children, where the sternest necessity does not forbid, there is nothing comparable to domestic education ”

“ The first two years of a child's schooling may be passed profitably in an infant school; at any rate, if the child enters as early as six years of age. Indeed, we think the variety embodied in the infant-school system is one of its most pleasing and useful features. ”

“ Another mode of conducting an infant-school is to place the children in little classes, of six scholars, with a teacher for each, and proceed with singing, repeating commandments, singing, recitation for ten minutes, study of emblems, a ten-minute address, and prayers, having a verse or two of singing between every exercise, and no exercise longer than ten minutes. Thus an excellent system of infant-class [128] instruction proceeds, while the lady who has charge gives the address and superintends the teachers, etc., for the hour devoted to the school. ”

“ Further, we may hope to see in the future the infant departments of our schools more thoroughly organised than they are at present on the Kindergarten principle, and the curriculum of the Infant School so devised that it shall fit into and pave the way for the curriculum of the Elementary School. For at the earlier stage much may be done by the methods of the Kindergarten to lay the basis for the teaching of the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic which it is the main business of the Primary School to lead the child to acquire. ”

“ The master of an infant school, whenever opportunity occurs, should feel it incumbent upon him to urge the parents to make a due use of judicious parental authority. This is the very foundation of all social order, rule, and government, and to relax it is to loosen the very keystone of society. He ought also perpetually to inculcate obedience to their parents upon the children, as being one of their first and most important duties. ”

“ In the United Kingdom minding babies of three years old and upwards has become a national function. But the infant 'school' as it is called, should be conducted as a nursery, not as a place of learning. The chief employment of the children should be play. No strain should be put on either muscle or brain. They should be treated with patient kindness, not beaten with canes. It is in the school for older children, to which admission should not be until seven years of age, that the work of serious instruction should begin, and that at first for not more than two or three hours a day. ”

“ Having had considerable practice in teaching children in the various parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, it may be necessary to give a few hints on the subject of organizing an infant school. ”

“ Miss Heerwart took charge of a training college for Kindergarten teachers in connection with the British and Foreign School Society; the Froehel Society was founded, and Madame Michaelis took the Kindergarten into the newly established High Schools for Girls. For the children of the well-to-do Kindergartens spread rapidly, but for the children of the poor there was no such happiness; the Infant School was too firmly established as a place where children learned to read, write and count, and above all to sit still. Infants' teachers received no special training for their work ”

“ On visiting a school, take notice of the pictures hanging about, if they are dusty, and have not the appearance of being well-used, be sure that the committee have never seen a good infant school, or that the teacher has never been properly trained, and, therefore, does not know how to use them. ”

“ Here I found how necessary it was to exercise the utmost patience, in order to enable me to judge rightly, and to convince my little pupils, that I had the greatest desire to do them justice. I compare an infant school to a little commonwealth, the head or governor of which is naturally the master. An infant school master or mistress is not to consider anything relating to the rights of his little community, as trifling or unimportant. ”

“ A school is a family upon a large scale; nay, 'tis a commonwealth, and no day will pass without facts shewing themselves, to enable the teacher to give sound moral instruction. It is true we want a better race of teachers, but we must have a better sort of schools first; for it is only from these that a better race of teachers can be supplied. The well trained infants of this generation, will make the efficient teachers of the next.
We will suppose the children to be seated in the gallery, the doors of the school closed, and every thing snug and quiet ”

“ In England the extreme importance of the education of the infant mind has been, in recent years, clearly acknowledged. The new regulations of the Board of Education no longer allow children under five years of age to be included as "an integral part of a three-R grant-earning Elementary School." A special curriculum has been set forth for their education. They are to have opportunities provided "for the free development of their bodies and minds and for the formation of habits of obedience and attention." ”

“ To accomplish this, we think the infant school the most efficient. Lord Brougham gives it as his opinion that a child learns more the first eighteen months of its life than at any other period; and that it settles, in fact, at this early age, its mental capacity and future well-being. ”

“ The curriculum which has been given is varied in character, and sometimes includes a "free period." Except in the Babies' Class the three R's occupy a prominent place, and children under six spend relatively a great deal of time in formal subjects, while children between six and seven, if they are still in the Infant School, are taught to put down sums on paper, which they could nearly always calculate without such help. ”

“ These Infant Schools were set on foot with the most benevolent of intentions; and they are really a vast benefit to a large class in society: but it does not follow that they afford the best training for infants. In their very nature they cannot do so. ”

“ Why there has been as yet no regular seminary for the training of young persons of good principles, for the responsible duties of the nursery, is not a little remarkable. Not one of the many valuable institutions for particular classes is so much wanted, and which, if properly conducted, would be a greater blessing to families and to society generally. One of the most beautiful features in our infant schools is the circumstance, that they have tended greatly to lessen this evil, and in some measure to supply the desideratum. ”

“ Whatever may be the defects of the elementary infant schools, an excessive regard for outward and visible results is not one of them. Exemption from the pressure of a formal external examination has meant much more to them than to the schools for older children; and the atmosphere of the good infant schools is, in consequence, freer, happier, more recreative, and more truly educative than that of the upper schools of equivalent merit. ”

“ I once visited an Infant Charity School, composed entirely of children who were not likely to have any kind of instruction at home, so that whatever was taught in the school would be likely to make quite an impression. ”

“ As no public provision is made for the instruction of children too young to attend the Primary schools, the two infant schools are watched with deep interest. They are both in a very satisfactory state. ”

“ Infant schools are nothing but a contradiction of child nature. Little children ought not to be schooled and taught, they merely need to be developed. It is the pressing need of our age, and only the idea of a garden can serve to show us symbolically the proper treatment of children. This idea lies in the very name of a Kindergarten. ”

“ While I speak thus strongly, I am ready to admit that infant schools in which physical health and moral training are duly attended to are excellent institutions, and are particularly advantageous where parents, from want of leisure or from other causes, are unable to bestow upon their children that attention which their tender years require. ”

“ Many friends to infant education, and casual visitors, having found these erections in infant schools, have concluded that the children should always be sitting on them, which is a fatal error, and deprives the children of that part of the system which legislates for the exercise of their locomotive powers, such as the spelling and reading lessons, and the method of teaching object lessons, as described in another part of this work: the consequence has been, that the schools have become mere parrot-schools, and the children are restless and inattentive. ”

“ It is only my purpose here to state, that the most likely human means to produce such an increase, is the establishment of infant schools;—schools designed, particularly, for the cultivation of the affections,—for preparing the heart to receive that wisdom which teaches us to love God supremely, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. ”

“ You will see for yourselves that this simple, natural, motherly instruction of babyhood cannot be transplanted bodily into the primary school, where the teacher has fifty or sixty children who are beyond the two most fruitful years which the kindergarten demands. Besides, the teachers of the lower grades cannot introduce more than an infinitesimal number of kindergarten exercises, and at the same time keep up their full routine of primary studies and exercises. ”

“ So soon as a child-house is built and education seen to begin in earliest babyhood, so soon as we begin to plan a beautiful and delicately adjusted environment for our children, in which line and colour and sound and touch are all made avenues of easy unconscious learning, we shall find that there is no sharp break between "home" and "school." In the baby-garden the baby will learn many things, and never know it. In the kindergarten the little child will learn many things, and never know it. ”

“ The kindergarten is mainly distinguished from the later instruction of the school by making the knowledge of facts and the cultivation of the memory subordinate to the development of observation and to the appropriate activity of the child, physical, mental, and moral. Its aim is to utilize the now almost wasted time from four to six years, a time when all negligent and ignorant mothers leave the child to chance development, and when the most careful mother cannot train her child into the practice of social virtues so well as the truly wise kindergartner who works with her. ”

“ The entire pedagogical world watches with interest the educational awakening of which the kindergarten has been the dawn. If people really want to make the experiment, if parents and tax-payers are anxious to have for their younger children what seems so beneficent a training, then let them accept no compromises, but, after taking the children at a proper age, see to it that they get pure kindergarten, true kindergarten, and nothing but kindergarten till they enter the primary school. ”

“ Education is now carried out by observation on the part of the pupil, and demonstration by the teacher, and the process is an unconscious one, which entails no mental strain, no laborious attempt to grasp even the elementary difficulties of learning. Education begins virtually in the nursery and there is no better teacher than a nurse who has all the affection of the child, whom she leads naturally and pleasantly step by step to the school-room where the first serious work of instruction begins. ”