I, too, will something make, and joy in the making.
Built by that only Law, that Use be suggester of Beauty.
There has always beenmakingin the Kindergarten, since to Froebel the impulse to create was a characteristic of self-conscious humanity. Stopford Brooke points out that Browning's Caliban, though almost brute, shows himself human, in that, besides thinking out his natural religion, he also dramatises and creates, "falls to make something."
'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport.Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the worldThan trying what to do with wit and strength—
What does a child gain from his ceaseless attempts at making? Froebel's answer was that intellectually, through making he gains ideas, which, received in words, remain mere words. "To learn through life and action is more developing than to learn through words: expression in plastic material, united with thought and speech, is far more developing than mere repetition of words." Morally, it is through impressing himself on his surroundings, that the child reaches the human attributes of self-consciousness and self-control. One of the most important passages Froebel ever wrote is this:
"The deepest craving of the child's life is to see itself mirrored in some external object. Through such reflection, he learns to know his own activity, its essence, direction and aim, and learns to determine his activity in accordance with outer things. Such mirroring of the inner life is essential, for through it the child comes to self-consciousness, and learns to order, determine and master himself."
It is from the point of view of expression alone that Froebel regards Art, and drawing, he takes to be "the first revelation of the creative power within the child." The very earliest drawing to which he refers is what he calls "sketching the object on itself," that is, the tracing round the outlines of things, whereby the child learns form by co-ordinating sight and motor perceptions, a stage on which Dr. Montessori has also laid much stress. Besides noting how children draw "round scissors and boxes, leaves and twigs, their own hands, and even shadows," he sees that from experimentation with any pointed stick or scrap of red stone or chalk, may come what Mr. E. Cooke called a language of line, and now "the horse of lines, the man of lines" will give much pleasure. After this it is true that "whatever a child knows he will put into his drawing," and the teacher's business is to see that he has abundant perceptions and images to express.
Another kind of drawing which children seem to find for themselves is what they call making patterns. Out of this came the old-fashioned chequer drawing, now condemned as injurious to eyesight and of little value.
When children see anything rich in colour the general cry is "Let's paint it," which is their way of taking in the beauty. We should not, says Froebel, give them paints and brushes inconsiderately, to throw about, but give them the help they need, and he describes quite a sensible lesson given to boys "whose own painting did not seem to paint them long."
Teachers who want real help in the art training of children should read the excellent papers by Miss Findlay inSchool and Life, where we are told that we must rescue the term "design" from the limited uses to which it is often condemned in the drawing class, viz. the construction of pleasing arrangements of colour and form for surface decoration. "We shall use it in its full popular significance in constructive work…. The term will cover building houses, making kettles, laying out streets, planning rooms, dressing hair, as well as making patterns for cushion covers and cathedral windows…. In thus widening our art studies, we shall be harking back in a slight degree to the kind of training that in past ages produced the great masters…. Giotto designed his Campanile primarily for the bells that were to summon the Florentines to their cathedral; the Venetians wanted façades for their palaces, and made façades to delight their eyes; the Japanese have wanted small furniture for their small rooms, and have developed wonderful skill and taste in designing it. Neither art nor science can remain long afloat in high abstract regions above the needs and interests of human life. To quote A.H. Clough:
'A Cathedral Pure and Perfect.Built by that only Law, that Use be suggester of Beauty;Nothing concealed that is, done, but all things done to adornment;Meanest utilities seized as occasions to grace and embellish.'"
If this is true of the interests of the professional artist, much more must it be true of the art training of the child. 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 canmakewith 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 little boys at Keilhau were well provided with sand, moss, etc., to use with their building blocks, and it was a former Keilhau boy who suggested to his old master that some kind of sand-box would make a good plaything for the children in his new Kindergarten. Miss Wiggin tells us that indirectly we owe the children's sand-heaps in the public parks to Froebel, since these were the result of a suggestion made by Frau Schrader to the Empress Frederick, and the idea was carried out during her husband's too brief reign.
Another very early "making" is the arranging of furniture for shops, carriages, trains, and the "ships upon the stairs," which made bright pictures in Stevenson's memory.
Building blocks are truly, as Froebel puts it, "the finest and most variable material that can be offered a boy for purposes of representation." The little boxes associated with the Kindergarten were originally planned for the use of nursery children two to three years of age, and in most if not in all Kindergartens these have been replaced by larger bricks. It is many years now since, at Miss Payne's suggestion, we bought some hundreds of road paving blocks, and these are such a source of pleasure that the children often dream about them. Living out the life around presents much opportunity for making, which may be done with blocks, but which even in the Kindergarten can be done with tools. Care must be exercised, but children have quite a strong instinct for self-preservation, and if shown how real workmen handle their tools, they are often more careful than at a much later stage. To make a workable railway signal is more interesting and much more educative than to use one that came from a shop. The teacher may make illuminating discoveries in the process, as when one set of children desired to make a counter for a shop, and arranged their piece of wood vertically so that the counter had no top. It was found that to these very little people the most important part was the high front against which they were accustomed to stand, not the flat top which they seldom saw. Another set of children made a cart on which the farmer was to carry his corn, and exemplified Dewey's "concrete logic of action." At first they only wanted a board on wheels, but the corn fell off, so they nailed on sides, but the cart never had either back or front and resembled some seen in Early English pictures.
Any kind of cooking that can be done is a most important kind of making; even the very little ones can help, and they thoroughly enjoy watching. "Her hands were in the dough from three years old," said a north-country mother, "so I taught her how to bake, and now (at seven) she can bake as well as I can."
Children delight in carrying out the processes involved in the making of flour, and they can easily thrash a little wheat, then winnow, grind between stones and sift it. Their best efforts produce but a tiny quantity of flour, but the experience is real, interest is great, and a new significance attaches to the shop flour from which bread is ultimately produced.
Butter and cheese can easily be made, also jam, and even a Christmas pudding. In very early Kindergartens we read of the growing, digging and cooking of potatoes, and of the extraction of starch to be used as paste.
Special anniversaries require special making. We possess a doll of 1794 to whom her old mother bequeathed her birthday. The doll's birthday is a great event, and on the previous day each class in turn bakes tiny loaves, or cakes or pastry for the party.
Christmas creates a need for decorations, Christmas cards and presents, and Empire Day and Trafalgar Day for flags, while in many places there is an annual sale on behalf of a charity.
It does not do to be too modern and to despise all the old-fashioned "makings," which gave such pleasure some years ago. Kindergarten Paper-folding has fallen into an undeserved oblivion. The making of boats or cocked-hats from old newspaper is a great achievement for a child, and to make pigs and purses, corner cupboards and chairs for paper dolls is still a delight, and calls forth real concentration and effort.
Making in connection with some whole, such as the continuous representation of life around us, and, at a later stage, the re-inventing of primitive industries, or making which arises out of some special interest may have a higher educational value, but apart from this, children want to make for making's sake. "Can't I make something in wood like Boy does?" asked a little girl. There is joy in the making, joy in being a cause, and for this the children need opportunity, space and time. There is a lesson to many of us in some verses by Miss F. Sharpley, lately published (Educational Handwork), which should be entitled, "When can I make my little Ship?"
I'd like to cut, and cut, and cut,And over the bare floorTo strew my papers all about,And then to cut some more.
I'd sweep them up so neatly, too,But mother says, "Oh no!There is no time, it's seven o'clock;To bed you quickly go!"
In school, I'd just begun to makeA pretty little ship,But I was slow, and all the restStood up to dance and skip.
When shall I make my little ship?At home there is no gloy,And father builds it by himselfOr goes to buy a toy.
Let me tell the stories and I care not who makes the textbooks.
"Is it Bible story to-day or anykindof a story?" was the greeting of an eager child one morning. "Usually they were persuading him to tell stories," writes Ebers, from his recollections of Froebel as an old man at Keilhau. "He was never seen crossing the courtyard without a group of the younger pupils hanging to his coat tails and clasping his arms. Usually they were persuading him to tell stories, and when he condescended to do so, the older ones flocked around him, too, and they were never disappointed. What fire, what animation the old man had retained!"
So Froebel could write with feeling of "the joyful faces, the sparkling eyes, the merry shouts that welcome the genuine story-teller"; he had a right to pronounce that "the child's desire and craving for tales, for legends, for all kinds of stories, and later on for historical accounts, is very intense."
Surely there was never a little one who did not crave for stories, though here and there may be found an older child, who got none at the right time, and who, therefore, lost that most healthy of appetites. Most of us will agree that there is something wrong with the child who does not like stories, but it may be that the something wrong belonged to the mother. One such said to the Abbé Klein one day, "My children have never asked for stories." "But, madame," was the reply, "neither would they ask for cake if they had never eaten it, or even seen it."
It is easy for us to find reasons why we should tell stories. We can brush aside minor aims such as increasing the child's vocabulary. Undoubtedly his vocabulary does increase enormously from listening to stories, but it is difficult to imagine that any one could rise to real heights in story-telling with this as an aim or end. That the narrator should clothe his living story in words expressive of its atmosphere, and that the listener should in this way gain such power over language, that he, too, can fitly express himself is quite another matter.
First, then, we tell stories because we love to tell them and because the children love to listen. We choose stories that appeal to our audience. It is something beautiful, humorous, heroic or witty that we have found, and being social animals we want to share it. 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. Feeling is aroused, but it is not usually a personal feeling, so judgement is likely to be unbiassed. It may, however, be biassed by the tone absorbed from the environment even in childhood, as when the mother makes more of table etiquette than of kindness, and the child, instead of condemning Jacob's refusal to feed his hungry brother with the red pottage, as all natural children do condemn, says: "No, Esau shouldn't have got it, 'cause he asked for it."
As a rule, the children's standard is correct enough, and approval or condemnation is justly bestowed, provided that the story has been chosen to suit the child's stage of development. One little girl objected strongly to Macaulay's ideal Roman, who "in Rome's quarrel, spared neither land nor gold, nor son nor wife." "That wasn't right," she said stoutly, "he ought to think of his own wife and children first." She was satisfied, however, when it was explained to her that Horatius might be able to save many fathers to many wives and children. In my earliest teaching days, having found certain history stories successful with children of seven, I tried the same with children of six, but only once. Edmund of East Anglia dying for his faith fell very flat. "What was the good of that?" said one little fellow, "'cause if you're dead you can't do anything! But if you're alive, you can get more soldiers and win a victory." The majority of the class, however, seemed to feel with another who asked, "Why didn't he promise while the Danes were there? He needn't have kept it when they went away."
Another way of stating our aim in telling stories to children is that a story presents morality in the concrete. Virtues and vicesper seneither attract nor repel, they simply mean nothing to a child, until they are presented as the deeds of man or woman, boy or girl, living and acting in a world recognised as real. One telling story is that of the boy who got hold of Miss Edgeworth'sParent's Assistantand who said to his mother, "Mother, I've been reading 'The Little Merchants' and I know now how horrid it is to cheat and tell lies." "I have been telling you that ever since you could speak," said his mother, to which the boy answered, "Yes, I know, but that didn't interest me." Our children had been told the story of how the Countess of Buchan crowned the Bruce, a duty which should have been performed by her brother the Earl of Fife, who, however, was too much afraid of the wrath of English Edward. A few days after, an argument arose and one little girl was heard to say, "I don't want to be brave," and a boy rejoined, "Girls don't need to be brave." I said, "Which would you rather be, the Countess who put the crown on the King's head, or the brother who ran away?" And quickly came the answer, "Oh! the brave Countess," from the very child who didn't want to be brave!
Froebel sums up the teacher's aim in the words: "The telling of stories is a truly strengthening spirit-bath, it gives opportunity for the exercise of all mental powers, opportunity for testing individual judgement and individual feelings."
But why is it that children crave for stories? "Education," says Miss Blow, a veteran Froebelian, "is a series of responses to indicated needs," and undoubtedly the need for stories is as pressing as the need to explore, to experiment and to construct. What is the unconscious need that is expressed in this craving, why is this desire so deeply implanted by Nature? So far, no one seems to have given a better answer than Froebel has done, when he says that the desire for stories comes out of the need to understand life, that it is in fact rooted in the instinct of investigation. "Only the study of the life of others can furnish points of comparison with the life the boy himself has experienced. The story concerns other men, other circumstances, other times and places, yet the hearer seeks his own image, he beholds it and no one knows that he sees it."
Man cannot be master of his surroundings till he investigates and so gathers knowledge. But he has to adapt himself not only to the physical but to the human environment in which he lives. In stories of all kinds, children study human life in all kinds of circumstances, nay, if the story is sufficiently graphic they almost go through the experiences narrated, almost live the new life.
With very young children the most popular of all stories is the "The Three Bears" and it is worth a little analysis. A little girl runs away, and running away is a great temptation to little girls and boys, as great an adventure as running off to sea will be at a later stage. She goes into a wood and meets bears: what else could you expect! The story then deals with really interesting things, porridge, basins, chairs and beds. The strong contrast of the bears' voices fascinates children, and just when retribution might descend upon her, the heroine escapes and gets safe home. Children revel in the familiar details, but these alone would not suffice, there must be adventure, excitement, romance. One feels that Southey had the assistance of a child in making his story so complete, and we can hear the questions: "How did the big bear know that the little girl had tasted his porridge? Oh, because she had left the spoon. How did he know that she had sat in his chair? Because she left the cushion untidy, and as for the little bear's chair, why, she sat that right out."
That quite little children desire fresh experiences or adventures and really exciting ones, is shown by the following stories made by children. The first two are by a little girl of two-and-a-half, the third is taken from Lady Glenconner's recently publishedThe Sayings of the Children.
"Once upon a time there was a giant and a little girl, and he told a little girl not to kiss a bear acos he would bite her, and the little girl climbed right on his back and she jumped right down the stairs and the bear came walking after the little girl and kissing her, and she called it a little bear and it was a big bear! (immense amusement).
"Once upon a time there was a little piggy and he was right in a big green and white fire and he didn't hurt hisself, and (told as a tremendous secret) he touched a fire with his handie. 'What a naughty piggy,' said Auntie, 'and what next?' He jumped right out of a fire. Auntie, can you smile? (For aunties cannot smile when people are naughty.)"
The third story is said to have been filled with pauses due to a certain slowness of speech, but the pauses are "lit by the lightning flash of a flying eyebrow, and the impressive nodding of a silken head."
"Once, you know, there was a fight between a little pony and a lion, and the lion sprang against the pony and the pony put his back against a stack and bited towards the lion, and the lion rolled over and the pony jumped up, and he ran up … and the pony turned round and the lion …"
His mother felt she had lost the thread. "Which won?" she asked. "Which won!" he repeated and after a moment's pause he said, "Oh! the little bear."
This surprising conclusion points to a stage when it is difficult for a child to hold the thread of a narrative, and at this stage, along with simple stories of little ones like themselves, repetition or "accumulation" stories seem to give most pleasure. "Henny Penny" and "Billy Bobtail"—told by Jacobs as "How Jack went to seek his Fortune"—are prime favourites. Repetition of rhythmic phrases has a great attraction, as in "Three Little Pigs," with its delightful repetition of "Little pig, little pig, let me come in," "No, no, by the hair of my chinny chin chin," "Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in."
Very soon, however, the children are ready for the time-honoured fairy-tale or folk-tale.
The orthodox beginning, "Once upon a time, in a certain country there lived …," fits the stage when neither time nor place is of any consequence. Animals speak, well why not, we can! The fairies accomplish wonders, again why not? Wonderful things do happen and they must have a wonderful cause, and, as one child said, if there never had been any fairies, how could people have written stories about them? Goodness is rewarded and wickedness is punished, as is only right in the child's eyes, and goodness usually means kindness, the virtue best understood of children. Obedience is no doubt the nursery virtue in the eyes of authority, but kindness is much more human and attractive.
"Both child and man," says Froebel, "desire to know the significance of what happens around them; this is the foundation of Greek choruses, especially in tragedy, and of many productions in the realm of legends and fairy-tales. It is the result of the deep-rooted consciousness, the slumbering premonition of being surrounded by that which is higher and more conscious than ourselves." The fairy tale is the child's mystery land, his recognition that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy or in our science. Dr. Montessori protests against the idea that fairy-tales have anything to do with the religious sense, saying that "faith and fable are as the poles apart." She does not understand that it is for their truth that we value fairy-tales. The truths they teach are such as that courage and intelligence can conquer brute strength, that love can brave and can overcome all dangers and always finds the lost, that kindness begets kindness and always wins in the end. The good and the faithful marries the princess—or the prince—and lives happy ever after. And assuredly if he does not marry his princess, he will not live happy, and if she does not marry the prince, she will live in no beautiful palace. And there is more. Take for instance, the story of "Toads and Diamonds." The courteous maiden who goes down the well, who gives help where it is needed, and who works faithfully for Mother Holle,[21] comes home again dropping gold and diamonds when she speaks. Her silence may be silver, but her speech is golden, and her words give light in dark places. The selfish and lazy girl, who refuses help and whose work is unfaithful and only done for reward, has her reward. Henceforth, when she speaks, down fall toads and snakes her words are cold as she is, they may glitter but they sting.
[Footnote 21: This version is probably a mixture of the versions of Perrault and Grimm but Mother Holle shaking her feathers is worth bringing in.]
Fairy- and folk-tales give wholesome food to the desire for adventure, whereas in what we may call realistic stories, adventure is chiefly confined to the naughty child, who is therefore more attractive than the good and stodgy. Even among fairy-tales we may select. "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Sleeping Beauty" and "Snow-white and Rose-red" are distinctly preferable to "Jack the Giant Killer" or "Puss in Boots," while "Bluebeard" cannot be told. It seems to me that children can often safely read for themselves stories the adult cannot well tell. The child's notion of justice is crude, bad is bad, and whether embodied in an ogre or in Pharaoh of Egypt, it must be got rid of, put out of the story. No child is sorry for the giant when Jack's axe cleaves the beanstalk, and as for Pharaoh, "Well, it's a good thing he's drowned, for he was a bad man, wasn't he?" Death means nothing to children, as a rule, except disappearance. When children can read for themselves, they will take from their stories what suits their stage of development, their standard of judgement, and we need not interfere, even though they regard with perfect calm what seems gruesome to the adult.
As a valuable addition to the best-known fairy-tales, we may mention one or two others:Grannie's Wonderful Chairis a delightful set of stories, full of charming pictures, though the writer, Frances Brown, was born blind. Mrs. Ewing's stories for children,The Brownies, withAmelia and the DwarfsandTimothy's Shoes, are inimitable, and herOld-Fashioned Fairy Talesare very good, but not for very young children. Her other stories are certainly about children, but are, as a rule, written for adults.
George Macdonald's stories are all too well known and too universally beloved to need recommendation. But in telling them,e.g."The Princess and the Goblins" or "At the Back of the North Wind," the young teacher must remember that they are beautiful allegories. Before she ventures to tell them, the beginner should ponder well what the poet—for these are prose poems—means, and who is represented by the beautiful Great-great-grandmother always old and always young, or "North Wind" who must sink the ship but is able to bear the cry from it, because of the sound of a far-off song, which seems to swallow up all fear and pain and to set the suffering "singing it with the rest."
Water-Babiesis a bridge between the fairy-tale of a child and equally wonderful and beautiful fairy-tales of Nature, and it, too, is full of meaning. If the teacher has gained this, the children will not lag behind. It was a child of backward development, who, when she heard of Mother Carey, "who made things make themselves," said, "Oh! I know who that was, that was God."
Such stories must be spread out over many days of telling, but they gain rather than lose from that, though for quite young children the stories do require to be short and simple, and often repeated. If children get plenty of these, the stage for longer stories is reached wonderfully soon.
Pseudo-scientific stories, in which, for example, a drop of water discusses evaporation and condensation, are not stories at all, but a kind of mental meat lozenge, most unsatisfying and probably not even fulfilling their task of supplying nourishment in form of facts. Fables usually deal with the faults and failings of grown-ups, and may be left for children to read for themselves, to extract what suits them.
Illustrations are not always necessary, but if well chosen they are always a help. Warne has published some delightfully illustrated stories for little children, "The Three Pigs," "Hop o' my Thumb," "Beauty and the Beast," etc. They are illustrated by H.M. Brock and by Leslie Brooke, and they really are illustrated. The artists have enjoyed the stories and children equally enjoy the pictures.
The teacher must consider what ideas she is presenting and whether words alone can convey them properly. We must remember that most children visualise and that they can only do so from what they have seen. So, without illustrations, a castle may be a suburban house with Nottingham lace curtains and an aspidistra, while Perseus or Moses may differ little from the child's own father or brothers. Again, town children cannot visualise hill and valley, forest and moor, brook and river, not to mention jungles and snowfields and the trackless ocean. It is not easy to find pictures to give any idea of such scenes, but it is worth while to look for them, and it is also worth while for the teacher to visualise, and to practise vivid describing of what she sees. Children, of course, only want description when it is really a part of the story, as when Tom crosses the moor, descends Lewthwaite Crag, or travels from brook to river and from river to sea.
As to how a story should be told, opinions differ. It must be well told with a well-modulated voice and with slight but effective gesture. But the model should be the story as told in the home, not the story told from a platform. The children need not be spellbound all the time, but should be free to ask sensible questions and to make childlike comments in moderation. The language should fit the subject; beautiful thoughts need beauty of expression, high and noble deeds must be told in noble language. A teacher who wishes to be a really good teller of stories must herself read good literature, and she will do well not only to prepare her stories with care, but to consider the language she uses in daily life. There is a happy medium between pedantry and the latest variety of slang, and if daily speech is careless and slipshod, it is difficult to change it for special occasions. Our stories should not only prepare for literature, they should be literature, and those who realise what the story may do for children will not grudge time spent in preparation. If the story is to present an ideal, let us see that we present a worthy one; if it is to lead the children to judge of right and wrong, let us see that we give them time and opportunity to judge and that we do not force their judgement.
Lastly, if the story is to make the children feel, let us see that the feeling is on the right side, that they shrink from all that is mean, selfish, cruel and cowardly, and sympathise with whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.
My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky,So was it when my life beganSo be it when I shall grow old,Or let me die.
What is the real aim of what we call Nature-lessons, Nature-teaching, Nature-work? It is surely to foster delight in beauty, so that our hearts shall leap up at sight of the rainbow until we die. For, indeed, if we lose that uplift of the heart, some part of us has died already. Yet even Wordsworth mourns that nothing can bring back the hour of splendour in the grass and glory in the flower!
In its answer to the question "What is the chief end of man?" the old Shorter Catechism has a grand beginning: "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever." Do we lose the vision because we are not bold enough to take that enjoyment as our chief end? To enjoy good is to enjoy God.
Our ends or aims are our desires, and Mr. Clutton Brock, in hisUltimate Belief, urges teachers to recognise that the spirit of man has three desires, three ends, and that it cannot be satisfied till it attains all three. Man desires to do right, so far as he sees it, for the sake of doing right; he desires to gain knowledge or to know for the sake of knowing, for the sake of truth; and he desires beauty.
"We do not value that which we call beautiful because it is true, or because it is good, but because it is beautiful. There is a glory of the universe which we call truth which we discover and apprehend, and a glory of the universe which we call beauty and which we discover or apprehend."
Froebel begins hisEducation of Manby an inquiry into the reason for our existence and his answer is thatallthings exist to make manifest the spirit, theélan vital, which brought them into being. "Sursum corda," says Stevenson,
Lift up your heartsArt and Blue HeavenApril and God's LarksGreen reeds and sky scattering riverA Stately MusicEnter God.
And Browning? "If you get simple beauty and nought else, you get about the best thing God invents."
To let children get that beauty should be our aim, and they must get it in their own way. "Life in and with Nature and with the fair silent things of Nature, should be fostered by parents and others," Froebel tells us, "as a chief fulcrum of child-life, and this is accomplished chiefly in play, which is at first simply natural life."
Let us surmount the ruts of our teaching experience and climb high enough to look back upon our own childhood, to see where beauty called to us, where we attained to beauty.
Among my own earliest recollections come a first view of the starry sky and the discovery of Heaven. No one called attention to the stars, they spoke themselves to a child of four or five and declared "the glory of God." Heaven was not on high among these glorious stars, however. It was a grassy place with flowers and sunshine. It had to be Heaven because you went through the cemetery to reach it, and because it was so bright and flowery and there were no graves in it. I never found it again, because I had forgotten how to get there.
Another very early memory is one of grief, to see from the window how the gardener was mowing down all the daisies, and there were so many, in the grass; and yet another is of a high, grassy, sunny field with a little stream running far down below. It was not really far and there was nothing particularly beautiful in the place to grown-up eyes, but the beholder was very small and loved it dearly. To his Art and Blue Heaven Stevenson might have added Sun and Green Grass. For he knew what grassy places are to the child, and that "happy play in grassy places" might well be Heaven to the little one.
A most interesting little book calledWhat is a Kindergarten?[22] was published some years ago in America. It is written by a landscape gardener, and contains most valuable suggestions as to how best to use for a Kindergarten or Nursery School plots of ground which may be secured for that purpose. Naturally the writer has much to say on the laying out and stocking the available space to the best advantage, choosing the most suitable positions for the house, where the teacher must live, he says, to supply the atmosphere of a home; for animal hutches, for sand-heaps and seesaws; for the necessary shelter, for the children's gardens, and for the lawn, for even on his smallest plan, a "twenty-five-foot lot," we find "room for a spot of green." Later he explains that for this green one must use what will grow, and if grass will not perhaps clover will. 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." And he adds: "How much more alluring than the naked fruit from the grocer's sack are these nuts, especially when dots for eyes and mouth are added, and a whole little face is tucked within this natural bonnet."
[Footnote 22: G. Hansen, pub. Elder, Morgan & Shepherd, San Francisco, 1891.]
In addition to the flowers chosen for beauty of colour, this lover of children and of gardens wants Canterbury Bells to ring, Forget-me-nots because they can stand so much watering, and "flowers with faces," pansies, sweet-peas, lupins, snapdragons, monkey flowers, red and white dead nettles, and red clover to bring the bees. Some of these are chosen because the child can do something with them, can find their own uses for them, can play with them. And, speaking generally, playing with them is the child's way of appreciating both plant and animal. 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. "Must we talk about them before we take the flowers home?" asked a child one day; "they are so pretty." Clearly, the "talk" was going to lessen, not to deepen the beauty. And animals? The child plays with cat and dog, he feeds the chickens, the horse and the donkey, he watches with the utmost interest caterpillar, snail and spider, but he does not want to be asked questions about them—he does want to talk and perhaps to ask the questions himself—nor does he always want even to draw, paint or model them. Mostly he wants to watch, and perhaps just to stir them up a little if they do not perform to his satisfaction. He does not necessarily mean to tease, only why should he watch an animal that does nothing? "The animals haven't any habits when I watch them," a little girl once said to Professor Arthur Thomson.
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. People still "spend all their time in the fields and forests and see and feel nothing of the beauties of Nature, and of their influence on the human heart"; and this, said Froebel—and it is just what Mr. Clutton Brock is saying now—is because the child "fails to find the same feelings among adults." Two effects follow: the child feels the want of sympathy and loses some respect for the elder, and also he loses his original joy in Nature.
"There is in every human being the passionate desire for this self-forgetfulness—to which it attains when it is aware of beauty—and a passionate delight in it when it comes. The child feels that delight among spring flowers; we can all remember how we felt it in the first apprehension of some new beauty of the universe, when we ceased to be little animals and became aware that there was this beauty outside us to be loved. And most of us must remember, too, the strange indifference of our elders. They were not considering the lilies of the field; they did not want us to get our feet wet among them. We might be forgetting ourselves, but they were remembering us; and we became suddenly aware of the bitterness of life and the tyranny of facts. Now parents and nurses (and teachers) have, of course, to remember children when they forget themselves. But they 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. Children, because they are not engaged in the struggle for life, are more capable of this aesthetic self-forgetfulness than they will afterwards be; and they need all of it that they can get, so that they may remember it and prize it in later years. In these heaven-sent moments they know what disinterestedness is. They have a test by which they can value all future experience and know the dullness and staleness of worldly success. Therefore it is a sin to check, more than need be, their aesthetic delight" (The Ultimate Belief).
We cannot all give to our children the experiences we should like to supply, but if we are clear that we are aiming at enjoyment of Nature, and not at supplying information, we shall come nearer to what is desirable. For years, almost since it opened in 1908, Miss Reed of the Michaelis Free Kindergarten has taken her children to the country. It means a great deal of work and responsibility, it means collecting funds and giving up one's scanty leisure, it means devoted service, but it has been done, and it has been kept up even during war time, though with great difficulty as to funds, because of the inestimable benefit to the children. Miss Stokes of the Somers Town Nursery School secured a country holiday for her little ones in various ways, partly through the Children's Country Holiday Fund, but since the war she has been unable to secure help of that kind, and has managed to take the children away to a country cottage. A paragraph in the report says: "The children in the country had a delightful time, and what was seen and done during their holiday is still talked about continually. These joys entered into all the work of the nursery school and helped the children for months to retain a breath of the country in their London surroundings. They realised much from that visit. Cows now have horns, wasps have wings and fly—alas they sting also. Hens sit on eggs, an almost unbelievable thing. Fishes, newts, tadpoles, were all met with and greeted as friends. Children and helpers alike returned home full of health and vigour and longing for the next time. One little maid wept bitterly, and there seemed no joy in life at home until she came across the school rabbit, which was tenderly caressed, and consoled her with memories of the country and hopes for future visits."
In the days when teachers argued about the differences betweenObject-lessons and Nature-lessons, one point insisted upon was that theNature-lesson far surpassed the Object-lesson because it dealt withlife.
We have learned now that we should as much as we can surround our children with life and growth. Even indoors it is easy to give the joy of growing seeds and bulbs and of opening chestnut branches: without any cruelty we can let them enjoy watching snails and worms and we can keep caterpillars or silkworms and so let them drink their fill of the miracle of development. But beauty comes to children in very different ways, and always it is Nature, though it may not be life.
Children revel in colour, colour for its own sake, and should be allowed to create it. In a modern novel there is a description of a mother doing her washing in the open air and "at her feet sat a baby intent upon the assimilation of a gingerbread elephant, but now and then tugging at her skirts and holding up a fat hand. Each time he was rewarded by a dab of soapsuds, which she deposited good-naturedly in his palm. He received it with solemn delight; watching the roseate play of colour as the bubbles shrank and broke, and the lovely iridescent treasure vanished in a smear of dirty wetness while he looked. Then he would beat his fists delightedly against his mother's dress and presently demand another handful."
The following notes from another student's report show how this may spring naturally out of the children's life:[23]
[Footnote 23: Miss Edith Jones.]
"We were spinning the teetotum yesterday and it did not spin well so we made new ones. While the children were painting their tops, Oliver grew very eager when he found he could fill in all the spaces in different colours, but Betty made her colours very insipid. I want them to get the feeling of beautiful colour, so I shall show them a book with the colours graded in it, and we shall each have a paper and paint on it all the rich colours we can think of. The colours will probably run into each other, and so the children will get ideas about the blending of colours, but I will watch to see that they do not get the colour too wet. If they are not tired of painting I want to show them a painted circle to turn on a string and they can make these for themselves, using the colours they have already used.
"I want the children to do some group work, and I thought we might make a village with shops and houses under the trees in the garden and have little men and women to represent ourselves. The suggestion will probably have to come from the teacher, but the children will probably have the desire when it is suggested, and I hope we shall be able to go on enlarging our town on the pattern of the towns the children know. If they want bricks for their houses they can dig clay in the garden.
"Report.—The children wanted to make a tea-set, so we carried our clay outside. They began discussing why their china would not be so fine as the china at home, and I said the clay might be different. Then Bernard asked what sort of china we should get from the clay in the garden, and I told him that kind of clay was generally made into bricks, and suggested making bricks. From that we went on to the use of bricks, and to-morrow we are going to dig, and make bricks to build a town. Bernard is anxious to know how we shall make mortar. Just then it started to rain, and Bernard said that if the sun kept shining and it rained hard enough we should have a rainbow, and he wished it would come so as to see the beautiful colours. I thought this rather a coincidence, and told him I had a book with all the rainbow colours in it. They asked to see it, so I showed it and suggested painting the colours ourselves. Those who had finished their dishes started, and we talked about the richness of the colours. One or two children started with very watery colour, so I showed them the book and began to paint myself. They all enjoyed it very much, especially the different colours made where the colours ran into each other. The results pleased them and they are to be used as wall-papers to sell in our town, but Sybil wants to have a toy shop, and she is going to make a painted circle for it like the one I showed."
This is clearly the time to show a glass prism and to let these children make rainbows for themselves, to tell the story of Iris, and to use any colour material, Milton Bradley spectrum papers, Montessori silks, colour top, and anything else so long as the children keep up their interest. The interest in colour need never die out; it will probably show itself now in finer discrimination, and more careful reproduction of the colours of flowers and leaves, and the sympathy given will heighten interest and increase enjoyment.
Here are some notes showing children's numerous activities in a suburban garden where they were allowed to visit a hen and chickens.
"Monday[24]—To-day the children took up their mustard and cress, dug and raked the ground ready for transplanting the lettuces. After their rest we went to see the chickens at the Hall (the Students' Hostel), and the Hall garden seemed to them a wonderful place. They watched the trains go in and out of the station at the foot of the garden, and explored all the side doors, going up and down all the steps and into the cycle shed. They helped Miss S. to stir the soot water, then they went to the grassy bank and ran down it, slid down it, and rolled down it. They peeped over the wall into the next garden, they peeped through holes in the fences and finished up with a swing in the hammock. Each child had twenty swings, and they enjoyed counting in time with the swaying of the hammock, and swayed their own bodies as they pushed.
[Footnote 24: These notes are part of those already given on pp. 68-71.]
"Another example of love and rhythm was when they went to say good-bye to the hen and chickens, and kept on repeating 'Good-bye, good-bye' all together, nodding their heads at the same time.
"I did not know if I should have let them do so much, but I was not sure that we should be allowed to come back and I wanted them to enjoy the garden.
"Wednesday.—First we watered the lettuces we had transplanted, and transplanted more. Then, as we had permission to come again, we took some of our lettuces to the chickens. We saw the mother hen with one wing spread right out, and the children were much surprised to see how large it was. We looked at the roses, and saw how the bud of yesterday was full blown to-day. The children again ran down and rolled down the bank, and had turns in the hammock, this time to the rhythm of "Margery Daw" sung twice through, and then counting up to twenty. Very often they went to watch the trains. Cecil is particularly interested in them, and wanted to know how long was the time between. He said three minutes, I guessed nine, but we found they were irregular. In the intervals while waiting for a train to pass, we played a 'listening' game, listening to what sounds we could hear. A thrush came and sang right over our heads, so the listening was concentrated on his song, and we tried to say what we thought he meant to say. One child said, 'He says, "Come here, come here,"' but they found this too difficult. We also watched a boy cleaning the station windows, and Dorothy said, 'Miss Beer, isn't it wonderful that you can see through glass?' I agreed, but made no other remark because I did not know what to say.
"We rested outside to-day under an almond tree. I pointed out how pretty the sky looked when you only saw it peeping through the leaves. After rest the children noticed feathery grasses, and spent the rest of the morning gathering them. I suggested that they should see how many kinds they could find. They found three, but were not enthusiastic about it, being content just to pluck, but they were delighted when they found specially long and beautiful grasses hidden deep under a leafy bush. They also found clover leaves, and I told them its name and sang to them the verse from 'The Bee,' with 'The sweet-smelling clover, he, humming, hangs over.'
"Thursday.—Brushed and dusted the room, gave fresh water to the flowers, and then went to gardening. The children were delighted to find ladybirds on the lettuces they were transplanting, and we also noticed how the cherries were ripening.
"They joined the Transition Class for games. Later, while playing with the sand, Cecil made a discovery. He said, 'Miss Beer, do you know, I know what sand is, it's little tiny tiny stones.'"
It may be worth while to notice some things in these notes. First the pleasure in exploring the new surroundings and then the variety of delights. Our landscape gardener mentions that "any slope to our grounds should be welcomed…. For as we leave the level land and flee to the mountains to spend our vacation, so will a child avoid the street and seek the gutter and the bank on the unimproved lot to enjoy its pastime." Our own children have been fortunate enough to have a bank for their play, and though, unfortunately, extension of buildings has taken away much of this, we have had abundant opportunity to see the value of sloping ground. Then there are the discoveries, the feathery grasses, especially those which were hidden, the ladybirds, that sand is really "tiny tiny stones"—has every adult noticed that, or is sand "just sand"?—and the "wonder" that we can see through glass, a wonder realised by a little girl of four years old. Also we can notice what the children did not desire. They liked listening to the thrush, but to make out what the thrush was "saying" was beyond them. They liked gathering feathery grasses, but to sort these into different kinds gave no pleasure, though older children would have enjoyed trying to find many varieties.
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 doyoucall it wonderful?" If the child answers, it is well, if not the teacher can go on thinking aloud, thinking with the child. "Let's think what other things we can see through." We can never understand it, we can only reach the fact of "transparency" as a wonderful property of certain substances and consider which possess this magic quality. There is water of course, and there is jelly or gelatine, but these are not hard, they are not stones as glass seems to be. The child will be pleased too to see a crystal or a bit of mica, but the main thing is that we should not imagine we have disposed of the wonder by a mere name with a glib, "Oh, that's just because it's transparent," but that we realise, and reinforce and deepen the child's sense of wonderfulness. So teacher and child enter into the thoughts of Him
Who endlessly was teachingAbove my spirits utmost reaching,What love can do in the leaf or stone,So that to master this alone,This done in the stone or leaf for me,I must go on learning endlessly.
Wonders chiefly at himselfWho can tell him what he isOr how meet in human elfComing and past eternities.
It is of set purpose that this short chapter, referring to what we specially call religion, is placed immediately after that on the child's attitude to Nature. The actual word religion, which, to him, expressed being bound, did not appeal to Froebel so much as one which expressed One-ness with God.
As a son can share the aspirations of his father, so man "a thought ofGod"
can aspireFrom earth's level where blindly creepThings perfected more or lessTo the heaven's height far and steep.
But we begin at earth's level, and a child's religion must be largely a natural religion.
How to introduce a child to religion is a problem which must have many solutions. In Froebel's original training course, his Kindergarten teachers were to be "trained to the observation and care of the earliest germs of the religious instinct in man." These earliest beginnings he found in different sources. First come the relations between the child and the family, beginning with the mother; fatherhood and motherhood must be realised before the child can reach up to the Father of all. 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. The sun, moon and stars give light and beauty, and "love is what they mean to show." This mother teaches her little one some sort of prayer, and the gesture of reverence, the folded hands, affects the child even if the words mean little or nothing. Akin to the "feeling of community" between the child and his family is the joining in religious worship in church, "the entrance in a common life," and the emotional effect of the deep tones of the organ. 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 also the desire for approbation. The child "must be roused to good by inclination, love, and respect, through the opinion of others about him," and this should be guided until he learns to care chiefly for the approval of the God within. Right ideals must be provided: religion is "a continually advancing endeavour," and its reward must not be a material reward. We ought to lift and strengthen human nature, but we degrade and weaken it when we seek to lead it to good conduct by a bait, even if this bait beckons to a future world. The consciousness of having lived worthily should be our highest reward. Froebel goes so far as to say that instead of teaching "the good will be happy," and leaving children to imagine that this means an outer or material happiness, we ought rather to teach that in seeking the highest we may lose the lower. "Renunciation, the abandonment of the outer for the sake of securing the inner, is the condition for attaining highest development. Dogmatic religious instruction should rather show that whoever truly and earnestly seeks the good, must needs expose himself to a life of outer oppression, pain and want, anxiety and care." Even a child, though not a baby, can be led to see that to do good for outer reward is but enlightened selfishness.
These suggestions are taken for the most part from theMother Songs, some fromThe Education of Man. Each parent or teacher must use what seems to her or to him most valuable. Some may from the beginning desire to teach the child a baby prayer, or at least to let him hear "God bless you." Others may prefer to wait for a more intelligent stage, perhaps when the child begins to ask the invariable questions—who made the flowers, the animals; who made me? If so, we must remember that children see, and hear, and think, that often in thoughtless ejaculations, or in those of heartfelt thankfulness, children may hear the name of God; that a simple story may have something that stirs thought; that churches are much in evidence; and that the conversation of little playfellows may take an unexpected turn.
To me it seems a great mistake to put before young children ideas which are really beyond the conception of an adult. There are many stories told of how children receive teaching about the Omniscience or Omnipotence of God. The stories sound irreverent, and are often repeated as highly amusing, but they are really more pathetic. Miss Shinn tells of one poor mite who resented being constantly watched and said, "I will not be so tagged," and another said, "Then I think He's a very rude man," when, in reply to her puzzled questions, she was told that God could see her even in her bath. And the boy who said, "If I had done a thing, could God make it that I hadn't?" must have made his instructor feel somewhat foolish.
It never does harm for us honestly to confess our own limitations and our ignorance, and that is better than weak materialistic explanations, which after all explain nothing. 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.
"From every point, from every object of nature and life there is a way to God…. The things of nature form a more beautiful ladder between heaven and earth than that seen by Jacob…. It is decked with flowers, and angels with children's eyes beckon us toward it." This is true, but it does not mean that we are always to be trying to make things sacred, but that we are to realise that all beauty and all knowledge and all sympathy are already sacred, and that to love such things is to love something whereby the Creator makes Himself known to us, that to enjoy them is to enjoy God.
Religion is not always explained as implying the idea of being bound, but sometimes as being set free from the bonds of the lower or animal nature. In this sense Mr. Clutton Brock may well call it "a sacred experience" for the child, when he forgets himself in the beauty of the world. If we could all rise to a wider conception of the meaning of the word religion, we should know that it comes into all the work of the day, that it does not depend alone upon that special Scripture lesson which may become mere routine.
The greatest Teacher of all taught by stories, and when any story deepens our feelings for human nature and our recognition of the heights to which it can rise, when it makes us long for faith, courage, and love to go and do likewise, who shall say that this is not religious teaching, teaching which helps to deliver us from the bonds that hamper spiritual ascent.
Many of us will feel with Froebel that the fairy-tale, with its slumbering premonition of being surrounded by that which is higher and more "conscious than ourselves,"[25] has its place, and an important place, in religious development.
[Footnote 25: P. 85.]
The "fairy sense," says Dr. Greville Macdonald, "is innate as the religious sense itself … the fairy stories best beloved are those steeped in meaning—the unfathomable meaning of life … such stories teach—even though no lesson was intended—the wisdom of the Book of Job: wisdom that by this time surely should have made religious teaching saner, and therefore more acceptable."[26]
[Footnote 26: "The Fairy-Tale in Education," by Greville Macdonald, M.D.,Child Life, Dec. 1918.]
Fairies, like angels, may be God's messengers. A child who had heard of St. Cuthbert as a shepherd boy being carried home from the hillside when hurt, by a man on a white horse, repeated the story in her own words, "and he thought it was a fairy of God's sent to help him."
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.
What experience has taught me in this way has already been passed on to younger teachers inEducation by Life, and there seems little more to add.
Wonders chiefly at himselfWho can tell him what he is.
It is for us to tell the child what he is, that he, too, like all the things he loves, is a manifestation of God. "I am a being alive and conscious upon this earth; a descendant of ancestors who rose by gradual processes from lower forms of animal life, and with struggle and suffering became man."[27]
[Footnote 27:The Substance of Faith Allied with Science, Sir OliverLodge (Methuen).]
"The colossal remains of shattered mountain chains speak of the greatness of God; and man is encouraged and lifts himself up by them, feeling within himself the same spirit and power."[28]
[Footnote 28:The Education of Man.]