E. R. Murray
Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology
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Table of contents
PREFACE
EXPLANATION OF REFERENCES To the Works of Froebel quoted in the text
CHAPTER I Froebel’s Anticipation of Modern Psychology
CHAPTER II Froebel’s Analysis of Mind
CHAPTER III Will and its Early Manifestations
CHAPTER IV Characteristics of the Earliest Consciousness
CHAPTER V How Consciousness is Differentiated.—The Place of Action in the Development of Perception and of Feeling
CHAPTER VI Instinct and Instincts
CHAPTER VII Play and Its Relation to Work
CHAPTER VIII Froebel’s Play-Material and its Original Purpose
CHAPTER IX Weak Points Considered
CHAPTER X Some Criticisms Answered
APPENDIX I On the Meaning of the Word “Activity”
APPENDIX II Comparison of Plays noted by Froebel with the Enumeration given by Groos
FOOTNOTES
PREFACE
Some
day Froebel will come to his own, and the carefulness of his
observation, the depth of his thought, the truth of his theories,
and
the success of his actual experiments in education will all be
acknowledged.There
are few schools nowadays so modern as the short-lived Keilhau, with
its spirit of freedom and independence and its “Areopagus” in
which the boys themselves judged grave misdemeanours while the
masters settled smaller matters alone. There are few schools now
which have such an all-round curriculum, including, as it did, the
mother tongue as well as classics and modern languages; ancient and
modern history; Nature study and Nature rambles; school journeys,
lasting for two or three weeks and extending as far as Switzerland
for the older lads, while the younger boys visited German towns and
were made acquainted with peasant life; definite instruction in
field-work, in building and carpentry, etc.; religious teaching in
which Middendorf endeavoured “to show the merits of the religions
of all nations”; physical training with the out-of-doors wrestling
ground and shooting stand and gymnasium “for every spare moment of
the winter,” and organized games; and dramatic teaching where
“classic dramas” and other plays were performed, and for which
the boys built the stage and painted the scenes. There was even
co-education, “flirtation being unknown,” because all had their
heads so full of more important matters, but where free intercourse
of boy and girl “softened the manners of the young German
savages.”The
purpose of this book is to show that all these things, besides the
Kindergarten and the excellent plan for the Helba Institute, did
not
come into being by chance, but were the outcome of the deep
reflection of a man who combined the scientific with the
philosophic
temperament; and who, because his ideal as a teacher was “Education
by Development,” had made a special study of the instinctive
tendencies, and the requirements of different stages of child
development, as I have tried to prove in Chapters VI and
VII.I
should like to explain one or two points, first, that though for
all
quotations I have referred to the most commonly used translations
of
Froebel’s writings, yet I have frequently given my own rendering
when the other seemed inadequate; secondly, that I have endeavoured
to give the context as often as possible, and have also given the
actual German words, that I might not be accused of reading in
modern
ideas which are not really in the text; and, lastly, that I have
purposely repeated quotations rather than give my readers the
trouble
of turning back to another page.In
conclusion may I take this opportunity of paying grateful thanks
first to Miss Alice Words and to Miss K. M. Clarke, without whose
kind encouragement I should never have completed my task, and also
to
Professor Alexander for several helpful suggestions, and to Miss
Ida
Sachs for friendly help.E.
R. Murray.
EXPLANATION OF REFERENCES
To the Works of Froebel quoted in the text
EEDUCATION OF MAN.
TRANSLATED BY W. N. HAILMANN.MMUTTER U. KOSE LIEDER.
TRANSLATED BY F. AND E. LORD.PPEDAGOGICS OF THE
KINDERGARTEN. TRANSLATED BY JOSEPHINE
JARVIS.LLETTERS.AAUTOBIOGRAPHY.
CHAPTER I Froebel’s Anticipation of Modern Psychology
“
A
great man condemns the world to the task of explaining him.”The
purpose of this little book is to show that Froebel’s educational
theories were based on psychological views of a type much more
modern
than is at all generally understood. It is frequently stated that
Froebel’s psychology is conspicuous by its absence, but in a
somewhat close study of Froebel’s writings I have been again and
again surprised to find how much Froebel seems to have anticipated
modern psychology.A
probable reason for the overlooking of so much sound psychological
truth is to be found in the fact that much of it is obscured by
details which seem to us trivial, but which Froebel meant as
applications of the theories he was endeavouring to make clear to
minds not only innocent of, but incapable of, psychology.Most
educationists have read “The Education of Man,” but few outside
the Kindergarten world are likely to have bestowed much thought on
Froebel’s later writings. It is in these, however, that we see
Froebel watching with earnest attention that earliest mental
development which is now regarded as a distinct chapter in mental
science, but which was then largely if not entirely ignored.With
the same spirit of inquiry and the same field for investigation—for
children acted and thought then as they act and think now—it is
only natural that Froebel should have made at least some of the
same
discoveries as the genetic psychologist of today.It
would be unfair at any date to expect a complete psychology from a
writer whose subject is not mental science, but education.
Mistakes,
too, one must expect, and these are not to be ignored.[1]
Still there remains a solid amount of psychological discovery for
which Froebel has had as yet but little credit.Indeed,
just as his disciples have been inclined, like all disciples, to
think that their master has said the last word on his own subject,
so
have opponents of Froebelian doctrines, irritated perhaps by these
pretensions, made direct attacks on somewhat insufficient grounds.
In
a later chapter, an attempt has been made to deal with what seems
unfounded in such attacks.[2]The
major part of the book, however, is intended to show the
correctness
of Froebel’s views on points now regarded as of fundamental
importance, and generally recognized as modern theories. For this
purpose passages from Froebel’s writings are here compared with
similar passages from such undoubted authorities as Dr. James Ward,
Professor Stout, Professor Lloyd Morgan, Mr. W. Macdougall, Mr. J.
Irving King, and others.In
the first place, it should be noted that Froebel was fully aware of
the necessity for a psychological basis for his educational
theories.Writing
in 1841, he says:
“
I
am firmly convinced that all the phenomena of the child world,
those
which delight us, as well as those which grieve us, depend upon
fixed
laws as definite as those of the cosmos, the planetary system and
the
operations of Nature; it is therefore possible to discover them and
examine them. When once we know and have assimilated these laws, we
shall be able powerfully to counteract any retrograde and faulty
tendencies in children, and to encourage, at the same time, all
that
is good and virtuous.”—L.,
p. 91.Nor
was Froebel in any doubt as to how these laws are to be discovered,
and his order of investigation is very similar to that prescribed
by
Professor Stout. The latter, though regarding genetic psychology as
“the most important and most interesting,” considers that it
should be preceded by:—1, A general analysis of consciousness,
analytic and largely introspective; 2, An investigation of the laws
of mental process, “analytic also, inasmuch as we endeavour to
ascertain the general laws of mental process by analysis of the
fully
developed mind.”Froebel,
too, regards the analytic as a necessary preparation for the
genetic,
and says that parents and teachers, who wish to supply the needs of
the child at different stages of development:
“
are
to consider life
firstly through
looking into themselves, into the course of their own development,
its phenomena and its claims—through the retrospection (Rückblick)
of the earliest possible years of their own lives, and also the
introspection (Einblick) of their present lives, that their own
experience may furnish a key to the problem of the child’s
condition (den Zustand des Kindes in sich zu lösen).
Secondly, by the
deepest possible search into the life of the child, and into what
he
must necessarily require according to his present stage of
development.”—P.,
p. 168.Professor
Stout adds later that anthropology and philology may ultimately
yield
results as important as those yielded by physiology. Froebel could
have no idea of the physiological parallel to mental process, but
he
did not omit the anthropological inquiry, for in another passage he
enlarges his first point, declaring that:
“
It
is essential for parents and teachers, for the sake of their
children, and that their educational efforts may meet with a rich
reward, not only to recall as far as possible the first phenomena,
the course and conditions of the development of their own lives,
but
that they should compare this with the phenomena, the course and
conditions of the development of the world, and of life in general
in
Nature and History, and so by degrees raise themselves to a
knowledge
of the general as well as of the particular laws of life
development,
that the guidance of the child may find in these laws a higher and
stronger—their true foundation, as well as their surest
determination.”—P.,
p. 66.Even
his detractors generally allow that Froebel had a wonderful insight
into child-nature, but this is too often spoken of as if it were
due
to some specialized faculty of intuition, not known to
psychology.Froebel’s
knowledge of child-nature came to him precisely as it comes to the
psychologist of the present day, through patient observation of the
doings of little children, and thoughtful interpretation of their
possible meaning. It is true that he drew his conclusions from too
narrow a field, but of this he was well aware. In a letter to a
cousin thanking her for the “comparative account of the various
manifestations of children,” which she had sent him, he
complains,
and this, be it remembered, in 1840,
that “it is a subject to which one can rarely get even cultivated
parents to pay attention,” and he adds:
“
I
would beg of you to collect as many observations for me as you can,
both things which you yourself have observed, and also remarks made
by your Robert and the other children when at play. If you have the
time for this, pray do it for the furtherance of the cause; other
friends are at work for me in the same way.”—L.,
p. 67.In
another letter to this cousin he says:
“
It
would delight me greatly if you could confide to me what you
remember
of your feelings, perceptions, and ideas as a mother greeting the
new-born life of her infant, and your observations of the first
movements of its limbs and the beginning of the development of its
senses.”—L., p.
110.To
another friend he writes:
“
In
the interests of the children I have still another request to
make—that you would record in writing the most important facts
about each separate child. It seems to me most necessary for the
comprehension, and for the true treatment of child-nature, that
such
observations should be made public from time to time, in order that
children may become better and better understood in their
manifestations, and may therefore be more rightly treated, and that
true care and observation of unsophisticated childhood may ever
increase.”—L.,
p. 89.Froebel
made these requests, as he made his own observations, as the result
of the conviction with which he declares himself “thoroughly
penetrated,”
“
that
the movements of the young and delicate mind of the child, although
as yet so small as to be almost unnoticeable, are of the most
essential consequence to his future life.”—P.,
p. 53.
“
Why
do we observe the child less than the germ of a plant? Is it to be
supposed that in the child, the capacity to become a complete human
being is contained less than in the acorn is contained the capacity
to become a strong, vigorous and complete oak?”—P.,
p. 62.
“
We
cannot pass over unmentioned the fact, essential for the whole life
of the child, for the whole course of his development, that
phenomena
and impressions which seem to us insignificant, and which we
generally leave unnoticed, have for the child, and especially for
his
inner world, most important results, since the child develops more
through what seems to us small and imperceptible, than through what
appears to us large and striking … hence—wholly contrary to
prevailing opinion—nowhere is consideration of that which is small
and insignificant of more importance than in the nursery.”—P.,
p. 125.Professor
Dewey, one of the few important educational writers who do justice
to
Froebel as a pioneer, gives as a general summary of his educational
principles:
“
1.
That the primary business of school is to train children in
co-operative and mutually helpful living; to foster in them the
consciousness of mutual interdependence, and to help them
practically
in making the adjustments that will carry this spirit into overt
deeds.
“
2.
That the primary root of all educative activity is in the
instinctive, impulsive attitudes and activities of the child, and
not
in the presentation and application of external material, whether
through the ideas of others or through the senses; and that,
accordingly, numberless spontaneous activities of children, plays,
games, mimic efforts, even the apparently meaningless motions of
infants—exhibitions previously ignored as trivial, futile, or even
condemned as positively evil—are capable of educational use, nay,
are the foundation-stones of educational effort.
“
3.
That these individual tendencies and activities are organized and
directed through the uses made of them in keeping up the
co-operative
living already spoken of; taking advantage of them to reproduce on
the child’s plane the typical doings and occupations of the larger
maturer society into which he is finally to go forth; and that it
is
through production and creative use that valuable knowledge is
secured and clinched.”[3]So
little, however, are these principles understood as Froebel’s, that
in the Pedagogical Seminary for July, 1900, a paper was published
on
“The Reconstruction of the Kindergarten,” wherein it was
maintained that the basis of reconstruction must be the child’s
natural instincts. The writer, Mr. Eby, had apparently no idea that
the Kindergarten was originally based on this very foundation. He
evidently did not know that Froebel has given, in his “Education of
Man,” a very fair account of these instincts, omitting nothing of
great importance, and pointing, at least, to a better principle of
classification than that adopted by Mr. Eby.[4]
It is, however, only fair to Froebel to mention that he himself
regarded his own account as far from being commensurate with the
importance of the subject, for the year following that of the
publication of “The Education of Man” he writes:
“
Since
these spontaneous activities of children have not yet been
thoroughly
thought out from a high point of view, and have not yet been
regarded
from what I might almost call their cosmical and anthropological
side, we may from day to day expect some philosopher to write a
comprehensive book about them.”—A.,
p. 76.The
problems Froebel endeavoured to solve are precisely those which are
absorbing the genetic psychologist of the present day, as stated,
for
example, in Mr. Irving King’s “Psychology of Child Development,”
viz.: “to examine the various forms of the child’s activity, to
get some insight into the nature of the child himself”—“to get
at the meaning of child-life in terms of itself.”Every
reader of “The Education of Man” will remember how Froebel uses
his own boyish reminiscences to help others to understand childish
actions often utterly misunderstood. In his paper on “Movement
Plays” he writes:
“
In
that nurture of childhood which is intended to assist development,
it
is by no means sufficient to supply play-material in proportion
merely to the stage of development already outwardly manifest. It
is
at the same time of the utmost importance to trace out the inner
process of development and to satisfy its demands.… In the nurture,
development, and education of the child, and especially in the
attempt to employ him, his own nature, his own life and energy must
be the main consideration. The knowledge of isolated and external
phenomena may occasionally be a guide-post pointing our direction,
but it can never be a path leading to the specific aim of child
culture and education; for
the condition of education is none other than comprehension of the
whole nature and essence of humanity as manifested in the
child.”—P.,
p. 239.Just
as Mr. Irving King, writing in 1904, says that we must take as our
starting-point the child’s bodily activities, so did Froebel too
declare, that:
“
The
present time makes upon the educator the wholly indispensable
requirement—to comprehend the earliest activity, the first action
of the child.”—P.,
p. 16.To
this first action, Froebel devotes a whole paper, “Das erste
Kindesthun,” the opening sentence of which contains the
words:
“
As
the new-born child, like a ripe grain of corn, bears life within
itself which will be developed progressively and spontaneously,
though in close connection with life in general, so activity and
action are the first manifestations of awakening
child-life.”—P.,
p. 23.Writing
in 1847, Froebel says that “decision, zeal, and perseverance”
must be brought to bear upon his plan, in order that:
“
(a)
More careful observation of the child, his relationships and his
line
of development, may become general amongst us; and thereby
“
(b)
A better grounded insight be obtained into the child’s being,
mental and physical, and the general collective conditions of his
life.… Deeper insight will be gained into the meaning and
importance of the child’s actions and outward
manifestations.”—L.,
p. 248.This
quotation is important as showing that Froebel was deliberately
looking for “a
line of development,”
that he might better understand “the child’s being, mental and
physical.” Considering that Froebel wrote between 1826 and 1850,
the important points on which he may be said to have successfully
anticipated modern psychology are, his recognition that the mind is
what he calls “a tri-unity” of action, feeling, and thought; his
treatment of early mental activity and his definition of will; his
conception of the earliest consciousness as an undifferentiated
whole; his recognition of the importance of action not only in the
realm of perception, but also in that of feeling; and his
surprisingly complete account of instinct. Such anticipations are
due
to the fact that the idea of development then new to the scientific
world possessed his very soul.
“
Humanity,
which lives only in its continuous development
and cultivation, seems to us dead and stationary, something to be
modelled over again and again in accordance with its present type.
We
are ignorant of our own nature and the nature of
humanity.…”—E.,
p. 146.
“
God
neither ingrafts nor inoculates. He
develops the most
trivial and imperfect things in continuously ascending series and
in
accordance with eternal self-grounded and self-developing laws. And
God-likeness is and ought to be man’s highest aim in thought and
deed.”—E., p.
328.Justice
has already been done to Froebel’s philosophy by Dr. John Angus
MacVannel, who says in his closing paragraph:
“
Froebel’s
system has that unmistakable mark of greatness about it that makes
it
worth our faithful effort to understand it, and turn its
conclusions
to our advantage.… His philosophy of education taken as a whole
seems, perhaps, the most satisfactory we have yet had. One cannot
but
believe, however, that the candid reader will at times find
conclusions in his writings sustained by reasonings, that are
inadequately developed and important questions by no means
satisfactorily answered.… On the other hand we must not forget that
it is insight, rather than exactitude, that is the life of a
philosophy; herein lies the secret of Froebel’s lasting influence
and power.”[5]
CHAPTER II Froebel’s Analysis of
Mind
It is probably due to the emphasis
which Froebel laid upon the careful observation and equally careful
interpretation of the very earliest manifestations of mental
activity, that his views as to mental analysis approach so closely
to more modern ideas. His psychology cannot possibly be dismissed
as “faculty psychology” in which the mind of a child is regarded as
a smaller and weaker replica of the mind of an adult. The older
psychologies, Professor Stout points out, are based chiefly, if not
entirely, on introspection alone, while Froebel, as we have already
seen, demanded close observation of children in general, and of
“each separate child,” as well as consideration of mental
development in the race, in addition to introspection.This “too exclusive reliance upon introspection” to which
Professor Stout refers as “the fundamental error” of the faculty
psychology, caused the older writers to infer that just as a child
is possessed of legs, arms and hands, smaller and weaker, but
otherwise apparently the same as those of an adult, even so did he
possess mental “faculties,” such as memory and imagination, which,
like the little legs and arms, only required exercise in order to
grow strong. “It never occurred to them,” writes Professor Stout,
“that the powers of understanding, willing, imagining, etc.,
instead of existing at the outset, might have arisen as the result
of a long series of changes, each of which paved the way for the
next.” It did more than “occur” to Froebel, it was a cardinal point with him. Professor
Stout points out that the idea of development is essential to
mental science, and Froebel was a biologist actually studying
development, before he became a psychologist. He came to the study
of mind prepared to find just such a series of changes.[6]In speaking of evolution in general, he says:
“ Each successive stage of development does not exclude the
preceding, but takes it up into itself, ennobled, uplifted,
perfected.”—P., p. 198.He speaks of:
“ the master thought, the fundamental idea of our time, that
is, the education and development of mankind.”—L., p. 149.And in his “Education of Man,” in a long and eloquent passage
on the need for continuity of training from the tiniest of
beginnings, he says:
“ It is highly pernicious and even destructive to consider
the stages of human development as distinct, and not as life shows
them, continuous in themselves, in unbroken transitions.”—E., p. 27.The analysis of mind which Froebel recognizes, is the still
commonly accepted “tri-partite,” but he never fails to refer to
this as a unity or a tri-unity. Indeed, his constant harping upon
this string becomes almost wearisome, in spite of the ingenuity
with which he continually varies his terms.
“ The early phenomenon of child-life, of human existence in
childhood, is an activity, one with feeling and perception
(Wahrnehmen).”—P., p. 23.
“ That the nature of man shows itself early in the life of
the child, as feeling, acting and representing, thinking and
perceiving, and that in this tri-unity is included the whole of his
life utterance and activity, we have said repeatedly, and it lies
open for any one to notice.”—P., p.
122.Disguised as Love, Life, and Light, this trinity is made the
connection of man, on the one side with Nature, on the other side
with God. God—who is Life, Love, and Light, the All—shows Himself
in Nature, in the universe as life (energy), in humanity as love,
and in wisdom or in the spirit as light. Energy or life man shares
with Nature; by love he is united with humanity; and by light or
wisdom he is at one with God.For his “gift plays” Froebel claims that they “take hold of
the child in the tri-unity of his nature”:
“ As now each of the single plays separately considered takes
hold of the child early, in the tri-unity of his nature, as doing,
feeling, and thinking, so yet more do the employments as a
whole.”—P., p. 56.And a forcible passage runs:
“ Only if the child is treated through fostering his instinct
for activity in the tri-unity of his nature, as living, loving, and
perceiving, in the unity of his life, only thus can he develop as
that which he is, the manifold and organized, but in himself
single, whole.”—P., p. 12.This development of the threefold yet single nature
constitutes the “harmonious development,” reiteratedad nauseamand without explanation, in
Kindergarten text-books. It is also the key to much that seems to
us useless detail as to the toys and games of early childhood. The
mother is told that:
“ It is of the highest importance for the nurse to consider
the earliest and slightest traces of the organization (Gliederung)
within itself of the child’s mind as bodily, emotional and
intellectual, that in his development from mere existence to
perception and thought, none of these directions of his nature
should be fostered at the expense of the other … the real
foundation, the starting-point of human development is the heart
and the emotions, but cultivation of action and thought (die
Ausbildung zur That und zum Denken) must go side by side with it,
constantly and inseparably: and thought must form itself into
action, and action resolve and clear itself into thought; but both
have their roots in the emotional nature.”[7]—P., p. 42.The first part of the following quotation from a letter
written in 1851 towards the close of Froebel’s life might almost be
taken from a text-book of the present day:
“ We find also three attitudes, spheres of work, and regions
of mind in man:
“ (1) the region of the soul, the heart, Feeling;
“ (2) the region of the mind, the head, Intellect;
“ (3) the region of the active life, the putting forth to
actual deed, Will.
“ As mental attitudes these three divisions seem the wider
apart the more we contemplate them; as spheres of work and regions
of mind they seem quite separate and perfect opposites. But the
highest and most absolute opposition is that which most needs, and
necessitates reconciliation; complete opposites condition their
uniting link. The need for the uniting link appears in almost every
circumstance of life.… To satisfy that need is the most imperative
need now set before the human race, … you will realize that the
strengthening of character which we all agree to be a necessity of
the age, is to be gained not only by stimulating and elevating the
soul and the emotions, but by raising the whole mind, by training
the intellect and the will.… Then the heart would acknowledge and
esteem the intellectual power, just as the intellect already
recognizes feeling as that which gives true warmth to our lives;
and life as a whole would make manifest the soul which quickens
existence, and gives it a meaning, as well as the intellect which
gives it precision and culture.Intellect,feelingandwillwould then unite,a many-sided power, to build up and
constitute our life. In the room of the unstable character which
must result from the mere cultivation of the one department of
emotion; in the room of the doubt, or, I might say empty negation,
which too often proceeds from the mere cultivation of the
intellect; in the room of the materialism, animalism, and
sensuality which must come from the mere attention to the body, and
physical side of our nature; we should then have the harmonious
development of every side of our nature alike, we should then be
able to build up a life which would be everywhere in touch with
God, with physical nature, with humanity at large.”—L., p. 300.In his article in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Dr. Ward says,
that in taking up the question of what we exactly mean bythinking, “we are really passing one
of the hardest and fastest lines of the old psychology—that between
sense and understanding. So long as it was the fashion to assume a
multiplicity of faculties the need was less felt for a clear
exposition of their connection. A man had senses and intellect much
as he had eyes and ears; the heterogeneity in the one case was no
more puzzling than in the other.”In this connection it can again be shown that Froebel was in
advance of the old psychologists. In the first of the two games in
the Mother-Play book dealing with sense-training—two out of
forty-nine, the remainder dealing chiefly with action—he makes it
very clear that he draws no hard and fast line between sense and
understanding. He tells the mother that Nature speaks to the child
through the senses, which act as gateways to the world within, but
that light comes from the mind:
“ Durch die Sinne, schliesst sich auf des Innern
ThorDoch der Geist ist’s der dies zieht ans Licht
hervor.”And when he says that the baby in the cradle should not be
left unoccupied if it wakes, he uses a pronoun in the singular in
referring to “the activity of sense and mind.” He suggests hanging
a cage containing a lively bird in the child’s line of vision and
adds:
“ This attracts the activity of the child’s senses and mind
and givesitnourishment in many
ways.”[8]—E., p. 49.The faculty psychology and the formal discipline theory that
came from it, says Professor Horne, did not admit the possibility
of training one faculty, e.g. perception, by training another, e.g.
reason, “it was not the mind that was trained, but its
faculties.”It is, however, of the merest infant that Froebel uses such
expressions as “the awakening power of thought,” “the tenderest
growth of mind,” and tells the mother that he “shows trace of
thought, and can draw conclusions.” The ball is given to the baby
to help him “to find himself in the midst of his perceptive,
operative, and his comparing (thinking) activity.”[9]—P., p. 55.Long years before this he
had written of the teaching of drawing, “this instruction addresses
itself to the senses, and through them to the power of
thought.”—E., p. 294.
“ He who does not perceive traces of the future development
of the child, who does not foster these with self-consciousness and
wisdom, when they lie hidden in the depths and in the night, will
not see them clearly, will not nourish them suitably, at least, not
sufficiently, when they lie open before him.”—P.,
p. 58.Instead of ready-made faculties Froebel recognizes
possibilities, conditions, which will remain possibilities if the
necessary stimulus is not forthcoming, for in noting how the mother
talks to her infant, though she is obliged to confess that there
can be no understanding of her words, he says the mother’s
instinctive action is right:
“ for that which will one day develop, and which must
originate, begins and must begin when as yet nothing exists but the
conditions, the possibility.”—P., p.
40.Elsewhere he asks:
“ Is it to be supposed that in the child the capacity for
becoming a complete human being is contained less than in the acorn
is contained the capacity to become a strong, vigorous and complete
oak?”—P., p. 62.And he speaks of how the mother appeals to the infant
as
“ understanding, perceptive and capable, for where there is
not the germ of something, that something can never be called forth
and appear.”—P., p. 31.It is true that in the same passage in which he speaks of
“the tenderest growth of mind,” he does speak of mental powers
(Geisteskräfte), as indeed every one does, but a few lines above he
has spoken of “the cultivation of the mental power of the child in
different directions.”[10]Besides,
the mental powers to which he here alludes, and which are to be
awakened and fostered in the infant, are the powers “to compare, to
infer, to judge, to think.”—P., p.
57.Here, too, Froebel gives a description of
what he means by memory, and it is clearly not a separate faculty
considered apart from another faculty, viz. imagination:
“ The plays carried on with the ball awaken and exercise the
power of the child’s mind to place again before himself mentally a
vanished object, to see it mentally even when the outer perception
is gone; these games awaken and practise the power of
re-presenting, of remembering, of holding fast in remembrance an
object formerly present, of again thinking of it; that is, they
foster the memory.”—P., p. 57.So even the infant is to think, and the progress is well
described in the Mother Plays as
“ from experience of a thing, joined with thought about it,
up to pure thought.”—M., p. 121.In a lecture[11]given
many years ago, Dr. Ward sought to drive home to teachers the
futility of this hard and fast line between sense training and
training to think. And there are some interesting parallels between
Dr. Ward’s metaphors here and Froebel’s writing in “The Education
of Man.” Dr. Ward said:
“ Training of the senses, as it is not very happily called,
is, if it is anything, so much intellectual exercise.… And nothing
can be more absurd than to suppose it is not necessary.… By a
judicious training in observation you begin to make a child think
when it is five years old.… If a child is to think to any purpose,
he must think as he goes on; as soon as the material he has
gathered begins to oppress him he must think it into shape, or it
will tend [...]