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' ' ' •.: ' - ''^^w ' { ' - : 1 *'''''., • .' ; "■•■'ii . ■ ;.:,;:• id '■:;■■■ ■ ;■(■ ■ • ■ ! ; ! • ■ " . , ' ■ -ri;>;5 ■ ; !« ' : il ril ■'•si *l^ V fit- ^ V Aj4- V ^ ' ' f ^^-^ Adult and Child HOW TO HELP HOW NOT TO HINDER A STUDY IN DEVELOPMENT BY COMRADESHIP JAMES L. HUGHES, LL.D. Forty Ytati Insi .'or of Sekoolt, Toronto AUiBOR or M.9TAKM IN TEACHING. HoW TO SECURE AND R.TAIN ATTENTION. FROEBEL'a EdccaTIONAL LaW«. Dickens as an Educator, Rain- bows ON War Clouds, etc. SYHACUflE, N. T. C. W. UARDEEN, PUBLISHER 76:i.-? Copyright. 1920. by C. W. Babdeen Publisher's note My experience as a teacher, as a father, as a grandfather, leads me to believe the doctrine of discipline here advocated sound and fundamental. Who has not seen a child of two busy and happy with his own plans, and the same child at ten listless, sullen, rebellious, mischievous? A too common type of family and of school discipline has been epitomized in the moth- er's direction to the maid, "Bridget, go into the next room and see what Johnny is doing and tell him he mustn't." The child's activity is not to be repressed and deadened, but to be encouraged, stimu- lated, shared. "Come, let us live with our children," said Froebel. Let the per- son who picks up this book read Chapter XVIII, and if it does not lead to reading the rest of the book entrust the training of children to some one else. i i ADULT AND CHILD I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV Contents Training the child for power... 9 Developing individuality 17 The ideal of unity 29 Kindling the child 39 The chiM's achieving power 50 Physical , intellectual , moral 64 Storing with knowledge 71 Character, ideals, vision 83 The emotional nature 94 Respect for law 105 Conscious responsibility 118 Consciousness of power, not of weakness 123 Control and spontaneity 128 Courtesy and reverence 132 Freedom and obedience 135 Coercion weakens I3,s Co-operation stimulates 141 Life should be joyous 144 Achieving vision 147 Habits 15? Power and character 157 Good and bad childrcMi 163 The right of choice I6S Spiritual vision 173 A vital educational creed ISO ADULT AND CHILD Chapter I What should adulthood do in developing the child's power and character? In the old methods of training the child, the adult was the direct and active agent; the child himself should be the chief agent in his own true development. His vital character must be based on the develop- ment of his own selfhood or individuality, and his selfhood can be developed only by his own self-activity. Adult inter- ference, adult coercion, and adult lack of sympathetic reverence for the child as a thought of God, and a plan of God, have in the past dwarfed the child's true in- dividuality. Adulthood has done too much of the training of the child, and it has trained abng irreverent and coercive lines, so 9 10 Adult and child that the development of the image of God in th« child has been prevented instead of promoted. Should adulthood cease to train the chad? No. It should value the vital character training of the child, and study Its fundamental principles more than it has ever done. It should first learn clearly the profound truth, that positive training produces power, and that negative or coercive training essentially weakens power. Power in every element of human develop- ment, physical, inteUectual, and moral, increases by use and is weakened by inter- ference with its us •, )r by neglect to call It mto activity. Adulthood should learn, too, that vital character growth must be from within and not from without. A child cannot be "sand-papered into a saint". Froebel's supreme and all-comp|rehending ideal of character training is "A conscious growth towards the Divine". What should adulthood do to aid the child in the achieve- ment of this most productive growth? Training for power 11 1 As the child is created in the image of the Divine, the supreme ideal of all teaching and training should be the de- velopment of this image; the selfhood, or individuality of each child, as the most essential preparation for his own happiness and true character growth, and to qualify him to do his own special work in promot- ing htmian progress. 2 It should, by providing appropriate life experiences, gradually develop in the hild a consciousness of the fundamental law of unity in Nature, in humanity, and in the universe; and between himself and these elements of his environment. He should especially grow into a consciousness of the greatest unity— partnership between him and a universal power unseen which he will ultimately know as God. This is not merely an ideal, beautiful but not effective. It is a fundamental and uni- versal principle, on which human progress largely depends. 3 It should kindle him by revealing to him by operative and other processes, 12 Adult and child a vision of his special power to achieve for humanity in some department of pro- gress. Kindling and vision traininjj are of great importance in securing his own fullest development, and in the promotion of a progressive civilization. 4 It should develop his achieving ten- dency. He reveals this tendency as soon as he can consciously perform any opera- tive process. He does not merely try to store his ideals, he tries to achieve them. The loss of this tendency, or its weakening as a dominant element in character, robs life of its most productive growth in power; and virtue of its highest effectiveness in character. 5 It should giiide in the true develop- ment of his physical, his intellectual, and his spiritual powers in harmony. 6 It should train him to search earnest- ly, intelligently, and persistently for knowl- edge, and to use it wisely for culture, and in qualifying him for more efficient service. 7 It should cultivate in him a produc- tive love of music, art, and literature, Training for power 13 that i»e may be inspired by the sublime ideals revealed in them, in order to pre- serve in him the character balance neces- SP'y to his happiness, and to qualify him for higher visions yet unrevealed, so that he may add his most vital revelations to enrich the ideals of the race. 8 It should definitely train his emo- tional powers, so that they may become permanent, propelling, moral battery powers in his life. Knowing right, even willing right, does not always lead men to make prompt and vigorous efforts to achieve right. Froebel was the first great educator to understand the importance of emotional training, and to introduce in a systematic way plans to promote it. Well trained emotional power preserves through life the tendency that is so strong in early childhood; the tendency to endeavor promptly to achieve the best we know and see. This is man's only sure way to develop higher power and clearer vision. 9 It should develop his natural respect for law in the games he plays into conscious 14 Adult and child respect for the laws of the home, of the school, of the state, of society, of his own life, and of God. Law should be revealed to him as a directive force that multiplies his power and his efficiency, and not merely as a restraining force wuich inter- feres with the achievement of his plans. Law has, in the training of the past, been made to the child the bondman of coercion; it should be the free guide of his creative and achieving powers. The perfect har- mony between law and liberty, between control and spontaneity, between guidance and freedom, should be revealed to him. What the Bible calls "The perfect law of liberty", should become to him the true basis of enlightened and considerate law- respecting liberty. This attitude t law and to liberty is one of the most essential elements in vitally moral citizenship. 10 It should not rest satisfied with revealing to the child his responsibility for the evil he does; he should become conscious of his supreme responsibility for the achievement of the good he has power to do. Tra' ing for power 15 These revelations and developments embrace the essential elements of vital character and power. They were all considered by Froebel, and definite and comprehensive plans were made by him for their natural, organic growth in the kindergarten, and for their continuous growth throughout life. His philosophy and the v. perative processes in good kinder- gartens, are worthy of careful study by every man and every woman who has the responsibility for the character develop- ment of even one child. His ideals in regard to what adulthood should do in developing a child may be summed up p,s follows: 1 It should develop his selfhood by operative processes. 2 It should relate his selfhood to the universe, to humanity, and to God. 3 It should kindle his selfhood with high ethical ideals to qualify him for wider and higher vision. 4 It should make his selfhood intelli- gent and progressive, by training all the 16 Aduli and child elements of his intellectual power through the three stages of receptivity, reflection and creative achievement. 5 It should enrich his selfhood with art, music, and literature. 6 It should energize his selfhood by developing his emotional nature into a self-acting battery to impel him to the achievement of his ideals. 7 It should preserve his natural re- spect for law, and reveal to him by life experiences "The perfect law of liberty", the harmony between control and freedom! 8 It should reveal to him cleariy and attractively his responsibility for achieving the good he has power to achieve. 9 It should develop his powers in har- mony; pi ysical, intellectual and spiritual powers. 10 It should make him conscious of his power, not of his weakness. 11 It should preserve his natural in- terest in knowledge, and train him to search for more knowledge, and use it in- dependently. i Chapter II Developing the individuality of the child Froebel's ideals in regard to individuality or selfhood are expressed in the following quotations: "The spirit of God and of humanity is revealed most purely and perfectly by man, if he unfolds and represents his own being as much as possible in accordance with his individuality." "It is the special destiny and life work of man, as an intelligent and rational being, to become fully, vividly and clearly conscious of his essence, of the Divine effluence in him." "I will protect childhood that it may not, as in earlier generations, be pinioned as in a straight-jacket, in garments of custom arid ancient prescription that have become too narrow for the new time. I shall show the way, and^ I hope, the means that every human soul may grow of itself out of its own individuality." 17 18 Adult and child "All progress, all culture is the result of the original creativeness of the minds of every age which have been able to in- crease the sum of existing intellectual and material wealth by producing something new." All modem educational development is based on a reverent recognition of the value of the individual soul. Froebel in his kindergarten system first planned a related and progressive series of illuminat- ing experiences, and of operative processes in performing which each child is a free, independent, self-active being; in order that he may develop his special department of original power, and thus be aWe to do his most effective work in aiding humanity in its upward progress. Reverence for the individual soul, and the vital importance of the conscious unity of each soul with the soul of humanity, are two of Christ's most vital revelations. Froebel was the first to work out, after many years of study and thought, a system of training all children so that each one may become conscious of his own power, and Developing individuality 19 ■i eventually of his responsibility for using this special individual power, in doing his special work in aiding the race to make progress toward the Divine. The processes of character training in their evolution have passed through three stages: coercion, co-operation, and creativ- ity. In the coercive stage, adulthood recognized two duties— to stop the child from doing wrong, and to compel him to do ri ,ht— right planned for him by adult- hood. Mrs. Pipchin achieved a wide reputation as a child trainer b:' forcibly carrying out her fundamental principle— "To make children do everything that they did not like to do, and permit them to do nothing that they did like to do." Every form of coercion is essentially dwarfing in its influence on the develop- ment of individual freedom. Compulsion, either in doing or in not doing, robs the child of both freedom amd choice, and complete growth of individual power is not possible without both freedom and choice. ' W..».l«' ^T»p 20 Adult and child Co-operation, the second step in the progressive ideals regarding character training, is much higher than coercion. It recognizes the right of childhood to a kind of partnership with adulthood, but It IS a one-sided and only partially pro- ductive partnership. It gives the child the nght to co-operate with adulthood in carrying out the plans of adulthood. This may develop the child's skill, but it does not develop his power to plan, or to achieve his plans. It does not even consider the development of his original or creative power. The child's individual power increases, when he performs operative processes to achieve his own plans. Individual power and achieving power develop truly only when the child makes the plans and tries to achieve them. Sometimes the child plans beyond his power of achievement. When his vision is greater than his skill, adulthood has a vital opportunity for productive partnership with the child, by coming to his aid in successfully achieving his plans. Developing individuality 21 Creativity is infinitely more productive than mere co-operation in defining and developing the child's individuality. It is, of course, important that the child be trained so that he may have power to co- operate in achieving the plans of other people; but in achieving plans he makes himself, he has more joy in planning, more growth in achieving power, and more com- plete development of skill. He there- fore develops a higher type of manhood in originality, in happiness, and in achiev- ing tendency and power. Froebel said "Man is a creative being— We must launch the chiH. from its birth into free and all-sided use of its powers." Miss Susan E. Blow, one of Froebel's greatest interpreters, said, "Knowledge is food, but creation is life." "Creation" in its educational sense means original planning. The motive or planning power of charac- ter is even more important than achieving power, and it should be trained even more definitely. As motive power is higher than operative and achievmg power, it is 22 Adult and child susceptible to higher training. The ele- ment of greatest character value always de- velops most rapidly, when the child is creative %n hxs work. The child's power of initiating onginal motives to activity, is one of the most vital elements of his selfhood or individuality. Frocbel's fundamental process in child development and training is self-activity. Self-activity means the activity of the child in achieving the plans of the child. Other educators have seen the value of activity in the training of operative power. A few have recognized its indirect influence on the will or the controlling power. Froe- bel was the first to see that training is de- fective at its most vital point, if the origi- nating element of character is left unde- veloped. Formerly men tried to develop the power of self-expression through ex- pression. Wise men know now that this cannot be done. It is equally impossible to develop self-activity by activity alone. Under the old training only those whose selfhood was strong enough to recover Developing individuality 23 from the dwarfing influence of cr ircion, became self-active in life. In the work of the true kindergarten the child is not made a conscious imitator. Unconscious imitation is natural to the child. This fact is the basis of the law that demands that the child shotdd have good models in the adults with whom he asso- ciates at home and at school; good models in deportment, in language and in life. If, however, he is trained to be a conscious imitator, he fails to develop the highest element of his character, the basis of his powers of vision, of planning and of achieve- ment. In every department of the work, in a good kindergarten, the child is trained to be independent, self-reliant, self-reveal- ing, self-active and self-achieving. In the paper pasting, for instance, when under the guidance of his trainer he has folded his square of colored paper in definite ways, and used his scissors to cut it as directed, he is then free under the directive law of opposites, .hich has been revealed to him, to create out of the resultant square and I mm ^^n^n^^^^^? 24 Adult and child triangles a design of his own. He cannot fail, if he follows the law of hamony of opposites, to produce a harmonious, bal- anced "form of beauty". The child may do this on his first day in the kindergarten, and, when he does it, he has taken one of the most important steps in his development. He has taken the first step in learning by actual exper- ience, not by information imparted by some adult, that he has power to be original and independent. He had, when he made his first cut, five pieces of paper, and in- dependently guided by a definite law, he has produced a harmonious design. He knows that it is his own design. He learns soon that with other squares cut as he cut his first, he can make other patterns no two of which will have the same design. This day is surely one of the epoch days of his life. Freedom and choice are wrought into his character, when he is allowed to choose the game to be played, the song to be sung, the story to be told, as he is allowed to do in his turn. In the games requiring part- Developing individuality 25 ners he is trained to choose his own part- ner or partners. He, of course, gets his turn in being chosen, when tomorrow the chosen of today are the choosers. It may be objected that the child is not sufficiently developed to choose wisely. The answer is that the only way to develop his power of choice, or any other power, is to use the power in regard to problems or conditions suitable for his stage ©f de- velopment. The duty of the adult is to reveal fundamental principles gradually, to guide the child in making future choices more wisely. Principles for his guidance should always be revealed as enlightenment, never as a substitution for his own choice. Principles should qualify for wiser choice, but they should never destroy or weaken the power of choice on the part of the child. The development of the power of indi- vidual choice and independent decision rests on the regular exercise of individual choice and independent decision. It matters comparatively little whether the child chooses harmonious colors for the mat he is making, or for the picture '«^' between himself and Nature, between himself and God; but he did plan to start to grow in the life of each child the centres to which all these ideals of unity would naturally The ideal of unity 31 relate themselves in later years, and with- out which vital, productive, character developing relatMnships. could never be perfectly effect .d. Indeed, if one had to express the ph'os.phy of Tie kindergarten system in a si; ,;i- ^-rtence, the briefest and most comprehensive sentence would be: the kindergarten aims to develop in the life of every child apperceptive centres of the most essential elements of power, skill, and character, so that they may grow individually and in unity throughout his life. A tree was Froebel's ideal type of unity, in which the centre is related to every branch, and twig, and leaf, and root; in which the life of the trunk develops the life of each part; and in which the fuller and richer growth of root, and le^f, and twig, and branch, contributes to the growth of the trunk and of every other part. In the garden each flower is shown to contribute i.s part in color and form to produce the beauty of the whole garden. Each one has its own individual beauty, and the lack of the individual beauty of 32 Adult and child one would mar the ge'neral eflfect of the whole. So in the woods, the hemlocks and the beeches, the pines, and the maples, the elms, and the birches have special majesty or beauty for each individual trre, and the unity of all produces the harmonious beauty of the forest. In the landscape the lack of hill, or mountain, or lake, or nver, or green valley, or forest background, would impair the general beauty of the scen,e. Gradually the little ones are led to recognize these elemental facts, and ultimately they become vital hfe principles, revealing the unity of life and the duty of each life to beautify and strengthen each other life. When children are older, community work, m which children are grouped for united effort to make forms of beauty, or to construct forms with blocks or tab- lets in the "gift" work, may be planned to make children conscious of the need of each individual's share in ta- making of the perfect whole, and also to reveal the larger and more vital thought that human work is complete in the home, in society The ideal of uvity 33 in the nation, or in the race, only when each individual does his part truly in har- mony with all the rest. For instance, in the first cut of the paper cutting occupation explained in Chaptei II, the teacher may place the square on the centre of a small table at which four child- ren sit, one on each side of the table. Each child takes one of the four triangles pro- duced by the cut. In turn one of them places his triangle near the square at the side or at a corner, and the one sitting opposite places his triangle on his own side directly across the centre of the square, and in the same relationship as the first triangle to the side or the comer of the square. A third then repeats with his triangle at ■ side or corner next to him. A pause is lade and the children are asked to dec .e whether the form of beauty is complete or not. Having already learn- ed by operative experience the law of op- posites, and each one having already made many "forms of beauty" for the purpose of revealing his own independent individ- uality to his -idergartner, and of becom- m 34 Adult and child M i ing conscious of it himself, they all recognize that the form is incomplete, until the last child lays down his triangle in a position of harmony with the others. To make the lesson more definite each child in turn may take his triangle from a perfect pattern or "form of beauty" in order to show that the omision of one tri- angle, or the failure of one child to do his part truly to the best of his ability, destroys the harmonious perfection of the whole- Blocks and tablets may be used in the same way, and thus by operative processes in which each individual must do his part in harmony with his fellows, there are wrought into the fibre of the child's life two of the fundamental elements of human progress, and of high, achieving character— first,' that to make the fulfilment of his life work completely successful, he must become as perfect as possible as an individual; and second, his developed individuality must work in harmony with the individuality of his fellow men in order to promote a higher civilization. Thus the child will come to recognize The ideal of unity 35 in time, and to understand, the essential unity that should exist between the in- dividual and the race. True individual- ism and true community spirit cannot he in opposition to each other. By the more complete development of individuals is produced a higher community; and this higher community in turn produces a higher and broader race of individual^., who naturally produce a still higher com- munity. Thus civilization advances from generation to generation. _ By the "Trade songs and games" in the kindergarten, the child is related to the farmer, the carpenter, the shoe-maVer, the weaver, the blacksmith, and the other workers to whom he is indebted for the conditions and supplies nece..ary for his life and comfort. By the songs and stories he is led to recognize the inter-relationships neces- sarily existing between himself and the other members of his family, between him- self and his neighbors in the community between himself and those whom he has power to help; and ultimately between his 36 Aduli and child life work and national life, and beyond that to universal life. Thus day by day during the formative, symbolic peroid of the child's life, the great law of unity, inner-connection, inter- relationship, and inter-dependence, is wrought into the fibre of his nature so that when older he may be able to recognize and to fully understand this fundamental law, as It relates him to humanity, to the universe, and to God. Thus onjy can he learn that duty may be ever productive of joy. No forma' teaching by parent, or teacher, or preacher, can give this law, or any other great principle vital, revealing, and productive power. The law of developing life, and the process by which development may be ■ achieved, must be wrought into life and wrought out of life in order to make them productive elements in character. Froebel based his educational philosophy on the law of inner connection, and planned the whole of the child's play and work in the kindergarten, in order that the prin- ciple might naturally unfold itself to each The ideal of unity 37 child through life experiences in all the unities described, and also in the unity between man's physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures; between the receptive, reflective, and executive elements of his physical power; between childhood, youth, and manhood; between knowing, feeling,' and willing; between control and freedom; and between the various subjects of study in relation to each other and to human development. Froebel's deepest philosophical view of unity was his conception that the evolution of humanity depends on a definite inter- relationship of development between the individual and the race. He taught that each individual should in himself represent the unified ideals of the race; that the in- dividual man cannot be perfect as an in- dividual, until be becomes conscious of the perfect type of the totality of the race in complete unity; and that race perfection will not be possible until the individuals composing it shall each be race inclusive. This doubly inter-related conception of community, based on the inter-stimulating $B Adult and child Znf-t ^''t ■"'^ividuals composing it, and of the mclusive unity of each indivrdual « representmg in himseU th. evolution unity between a man and mankind that ^ eva- been conceived. A unity com- S '"'' ""^"« ■"«"• '^ " ™Wime When parents and teachers understand the law of unity i„ its comprehensive "^ lat.onsh,ps they will be able to aid in its unfoldmg m the lives of their chUdren (:) Chapter IV Kindling the child To do his best work, his real work in the world for God and for civilization, a man must be kindled in the centre of his special power. With a perfect system of training there should be no "misfits" among men and women. The training begun in a good kmdergarten and continued along progressive lines would reduce "misfits" to a minimum, if the training were uni- versally understood by adults, and prac tisea m the schools and homes of the world Men and women would find their true spheres, and work would become joy. not labor. The kindling of a child should not be left to chance. Kindling is so important that ^ regular systematic, progressively defimte methods, and progressively un- folding plans for awakening the child to a stimulating consciousness of his possi- 39 'ir^wjvsvgisat 40 Adult and child biHties of avhievement in lifting his fellow sho«M H ^ V''"""^ "'^ ^"^ ^^^'h^r ideals Should be begun in the kindergarten and conunued by operative processes adapted hi tLlT '' '^^^'^'"^^"^ ^'^°"^^°^^ A child performs operative processes, when m any way he makes his "Inner become outer" by revealing ideals in his mmd by oral language, by written lan- guage, by art. or by transforming material thmgs mto new conditions of beauty, or of utihty. He may be operative in reveal- ing his own ideals, or in revealing the Ideals of others. Operative processes di- rectec by his own mind in the expression ot Y ^s .A n Ideals, are the only truly develon- ing processes for self revelation, and for self-kmdlmg. The earlier the kindling processes are used in the child's training, the more effec! tive they will ultimately become. Like the other departments of human power kindling power should be a natural growth' not merely a stimulant. The processes already described in Chap- Kindling the child 41 ters two and three for developing the special power or selfhood of each child, and for relating this selfhood to humanity, to the universe, and to God, must be the basis of the comprehensive kindling of the child. Individuality must not be regarded as a single, unrelated element of power in the child's character. Individual power in its complete development is the dominant force which arouses, unifies and directs all the elements of power of each individual character. Individuality IS the determining tendency of oersonality It IS also the power, or collection of powers,' in personality. The process of kindling the child must, therefore, call into action all the elements of power in his nature in order to be reason- ably complete. For this inclusive awaken- ing Froebel has provided very fully in the kindergarten. Every phase of power has specially ap- pealing operative processes to arouse the child's mterest, and to direct it to imme- diate, productively constructive activity. Each child has dominant tendencies, and 42 Adult and child different kinds of operative work have special attractiveness for different children in kindling their creative power. Froe- bel studied the range of human interests and of human worl:, and then adopted as many varieties of materials as he found adapted to the child stage of interest and of power for the occupation of the child in the kindergarten. He chose materials that are inexpensive, that are easily ob- tainable, and that may be used by the children without injury to themselves, or unnecessary inconvenience to others. He planned work with each kind of material that requires conscious originality and not mere imitation, or the carrying out of the plans of others." He planned also wisely that each child may continue to make new and original plans for weeks or even for months, with a single kind of material. In this way the child reveals to his trainer, and gradually to himself, his deepest interests and his highest power,' and becomes kindled in his creative ten- dencies, and in his special indi\ idual power. The kindergarten system of training is Kindling the child 43 the only system that is founded on crea- tivity, and the only system that provides carefully chosen materials to develop the natural tendency of all children to be creative. It is therefore the only system that logically, progressively, and persis- tently kindles the child by interests that never fail to keep him aroused so that he earnestly longs to achieve his plans. The fact that he is free to make his own plans ensures his interest. Children naturally tire of working out the plans of others. They tire quickly of trying to carry out plans made by adults. This is perfectly natural. Few adults have either the sym- pathy, the genius, or the training to qualify them for making plans for the work of children. This explains the fundamental weakness of ordinary school education in vital character training. There is most hope in the future of child- ren who tire most quickly of working out the plans of adults, and who resent most definitely the interference of presumptuous adulthood with the plans made by the children themselves. Working out their 44 Aduli and child own plans, must be more interesting and more kindling to children, than working out the plans of others, because it calls more and higher powers into activity. It is more kindling, too, because it is more comprehensively developing. To carry out a plan made by another, develops con- structive skill. To carry out a plan made by himself,^ develops greater constructive skill, and in addition develops creative power. All children who are trained achievingly, respond most joyously, and therefore most productively, when their highest powers are kindled. The only creative method of promoting both the general and the speciJ kindling of a young child, is to let him plan his own work, and try to execute his own plans. Adulthood should provide the child with materials appropriate to his stage of de- velopment; it should unfailingly manifest a sympathetic interest in the work he tries to do; it should show joyous appreciation of his achievement, judging of success from the child's standpoint; and it should always be ready with smiling face and hopeful Kindling the child 45 K tone to render any assistance necessary in the early stages of development, when his plans are beyond his power of achieve- ment; when his insight is greater than his power of attainment. The important condition is that the child's powers of insight and originality be kept active. They are capable of unlimited development. The fact that they do not develop progressively to the end of life, is evidence in itself of the failure of training and education in the past. The continuous and related development of these powers, is the only source of pro- gressive kindling in the child, the youth, and the man; the kindling that grows more illuminating, as each new year comes with new and greater problems and oppor- tunities. Problem reco|?iition is more developing than problem solution. The power to see new problems is more joy giving, and more productive, than the power to solve prob- lems. Most educational systems have tried to develop children by training them to solve problems, not to discover them. i. I 46 Adult and child Again the lower, the least developing, and the least useful powers are developed to the neglect of the higher, the most revealing, and the most kindling powers. All powers of vision and of achievement grow stronger, and become more creative, when called into productive activity in seeing new plans and m trying to achieve them. Children acquire a limited mechanical aptitude by trying to solve problems supplied by others, but such development is not vital. At best it produces single candje power from batteries that have a natural capacity for ever in- creasing illumination intended to reveal to each child the special splendors of the universe which he has special power to see in new and individ-.al forms; intended to reveal, too, the possibilities of the re-ad- justment and transformation of these forms into higher forms of greater productivity. In every department of the kindergarten work, the kindling of the child's power IS stimulated. In addition to the general processes for developing the natural kind- ling of the powers common to all children, the kindergarten also provides compre- Kindling the child 47 hensively by processes of the deepest interest to children for the kindling and developing of special powers or talents. Artistic talent is kindled and developed by paper cutting and pasting, by mat weaving, by embroidery, by sewing forms of life and forms of beauty in colored wool, by drawing, and by color work with paints. Mathematical conceptions are kindled by using the "gifts", and they unfold them- selves in the mind of the child who has special mathematical power, as naturally as the bud unfolds into the flower. Con- structive children are kindled and develop- ed into productively creative beings by many occupations, and in this way special powers are started in a grander growth that will lead to greater achievements in technical work, and may guide the race to higher revelations of practical value. The child's love of nature is used in the kindergarten to kindle and develop by the revelation of life processes a deeper recog- nition of the relationships of life in each form to all other life, to the power behind 48 Adult and child lite, and to a reverent recognition of the value of life; and this surely kindles the scientific spirit in all children, which be- comes a burning flame in the lives of all those specially gifted with the essential qualifications and tendencies required bv a scientist. The stories, many of the songs and of the plays, kindle the imaginations of all children, especially those who have natural literary talent, and qualify them for receiv- ing illumination from the great revealers of literature, who have seen most clearly the movement of the Divine Spirit and who have expressed their vision in ex- quisite language. So by daily life and work in the kinder- garten the vital elements in the lives of the children are kindled. Each child re- ceives the advantages of the general kind- Img of the intellectual and spiritual powers common to all, and each has the oppor- tunity for the special kindling of his highest individual power. All are awakened in their widest range of interest and of power i Kindling the child 49 and each is distinctively kindled in his department of special power. Thus all are fitted for greater happiness, for more comprehensive growth, for more splendid achievement, and for more perfect vision of new light, that may enable humanity to make more rapid progress toward the Divme. Chapter V The development of the child's achieving power The saddest experience in connection with the development of humanity under wrong methods of training, is the loss of the child's natural achieving tendency. Every normal child reveals a self-active, self-propelling, achieving tendency as soon as he can creep. He has a vision of some- thing to do, and he promptly attempts to do it. The love of doing is the strongest love of his nature; the joy of doing is his deepest joy. In his childhood he reveals three domi- nant tendencies, to do, to do what he plans himself, and to do in co-operation with other children. These three ten- dencies are the most essential elements of true character. They are the elements that enable humanity to make progress toward a higher civilization. 50 The achieving power 51 The weakening of these tendencies in human hves. is the result of negative train- ing. All good elements in character are positive, and true training should be di- rected to the development of the positive elements. Yet in the past this simple and manifest proposition has not been prac- tised by most of those responsible for the trainmg of children. The good elements, the positive elements, should be more dominant in adulthood than in childhood. It IS an unfailing law that can not be too often stated, that the better elements in human nature under proper training, develop mc . t rapidly. It is also profound- ly true that the higher elements in our moral natures turn to evil instead of good and degrade us instead of upHfting us' when their development is interfered with by coercive or negative training. Power does not die as the result of bad training. It becomes evil, when it is meant by the Creator to be good. No boy is bad, till he IS made bad by bad training, and the dwarfing of his best powers leads to his swiftest and deepest degradation. t^ I 52 Adult and child The training of the past has been almost universally devoted to the negative ele- ments of power and character. This is a fundamental error. The stopping of wrong doing has been supposed to develop right elements of character. This error is main- ly responsible for weakening the achieving tendency of the race, and thus robbing men and women of real power and truly effective character. Solomon said "Train up a child in the way he should GO." Adulthood has at- tempted to train him in the way he should "Dony go." The words still used in child training are mainly negative, not positive. Children are told to "don't" instead of to "do", to "stop" instead of to "go on", to "quit" instead of to "persevere", to Le "quiet" instead of to be "achieving" "Don't", "stop", "quit", "be quiet", are all power destroying commands. It would be infinitely more productive of character power in the child to do wrong continually than to become a "don'ter", a "stopper", or a "quitter". His wrong The achieving power 53 doing at any rate develops his habit of doing, his power to do, and his creatively constructive and achieving tendencies. It preserves in his life the elemental pro- ductive and transforming tendencies of his nature, so that, when in mature life he gets a good ideal, or is stirred by a high emotion, he has the tendency, the habit and the power to try to achieve his ideal! Without these there can be no vital, posi- tive character. The millions of men and women who fail even to try to do what they know they ought to do, Tre sufficient to prove the character perverting influence of the coercive, negative training of the past. The child should never lose his achieving tendency. The way to force him to lose It, is to stop his achieving. The way to develop it and make it the dominant ten- dency in his life, is to keep him doing what he plans himself, and thus develop his achieving tendency into the habit of achieving. The only way to make effort to achieve a habit, is to guide the child in the achievement of his own plans. Ori- ginality of motives, and energetic efforts 54 Adult and child to achieve them, are the real causes of habits. The child may be original and energetic m wrong doing, as well as in doing right. It is not at all necessary however, that the child should develop his achieving tendency by doing wrong. The world around him is full of interesting opportunities to do good, so that he should like to do. if wisely trained, positively not negatively. If he is doing wrong instead of right, he is not to blame. His trainers are to blame. If he is doing wrong it is because at the moment wrong is the most interesting thing to him. Whether he is trying to do a right thing or a wrong thing the thing he is trying to do. is the most interesting thing to him. If anything else were more interesting to him at the tmie, it is clear that he would be trmg do it. All that his trainers need t* ,o is to secure the transfer of his interes' from' the wrong he is doing to some right thing in his environment which is adapted to his stage of development. If the right brought to his attention as a The achieving power 55 substitute for the wrong he has been doing IS appropriate to his present interests, and to his present powers of achievement, he will plan the good and work to achieve It with as much energy as he showed in planning and achieving the wrong. To doubt this means that the influence of Dmne power is evil instead of good in the child's life. The child loves to be constructive better than to be destructive, and to be produc- tive better than to be wasteful. He is destructive and wasteful so often, because he has not been provided with suitable materials, and stimulated by sympathetic appreciation of his efforts to be construc- tive and productive. Every child undwarfed by negative methods of training, undiscouraged by lack of appreciation, and undeterred by adult criticism, longs to render loving ser- vice in the home. The desire to give lov- ing service, is usually driven out of the child's life by negative training, by lack of appreciation, and by adult criticism, or m s$ Adult and child i defij ately i complement impGticiU reproof. It shotdd develop more - r idly than any other element in chti tcier because it was intended to be t^e i^i>^■l2^•\ element in character; and the lL|:,h n tht power the more rapid and the more riM lited rse the possibilities of its devr. 'ir,r t. ■i and achieving power are uT-related. The one is the of the other. Without achieving pf)^ser loving service is but a beautiful ideal, which gradually becomes less stimulating, less productive of action, and ultimately loses its kindling power. Without the ideal of loving service, achiev- ing power becomes an agency of selfish- ness, and loses its dynamic energy in im- pelling humanity to a higher degree of civilization. Developed together, as they should be, each contributes to the growth of the other so that the ideal of loving ser- vice becomes more dominant, and achiev- ing power becomes more efficient. Thus both become effective agencies in promot- ing human happiness and character, and in contributing to human progress. The achieving power 57 Self-control has meant, and to a large extent still means, power to keep away from evil. The true ideal of self-control is, power to direct our energies,— physical! intellectual, and moral, in the achievement of good. Responsibility, too, has been treated negatively. We have taught children their responsibility for the evil they do, and have failed to reveal to them their vital responsibilry for achieving the good they have power to do. We have dea't with self-consciousness negatively as a weakness instead of positively, as a central element in vital power. There is a -consciousness of self-weakness resulting from a failure to develop a consciousness of self-power; power to see new ideals and power to achieve them. Both the power of vision and the power of achie\ cment develop progressively by achieving as far as possible our visions of today. A true consciousness of individual power. ...akes it possible to have true consciousness of responsibility, and these are ih vi A forces that impel men to duty. 58 Aduli and child r-l-l. Goodness has been regarded as the absence of badness. This is an incorrect and misleading view. The fact that there are no weeds in a field does not produce a harvest of good grain. The truth is that badness is lactc of goodness. Goodness is positive, badness is negative. The true purpose in training should not be the weak ideal of restraining badness, but the vital ideal of making goodness achievingly, and transformingly productive. There are some who yet believe that children do not like to work. There arc unfortunately some such children, but they are man made, not God made. They are the products of negative training; of coercion, not of creativity. "Children will play all day without getting uired, but set them to work and they will be tired in an hour," say unbe- lievers in childhood. If we treated their play as we treat their work, they would soon tire of play too. Make the boy play baseball for an hour before breakfsat, send him out again to play basebrU until noon, and drive him to the baseball field The achieving power 59 to play all afternoon, and he will soon hate to play as much as badly trained boys hate to work. Both play and work be- come distasteful through the improper intermeddling of adults. Both play and work are effective agencies in the character development of the child, when adulthood is the reverent partner of the child in the achievement of the child's own plans. Boys who are supplied with essenticil tools and with materials adapted to their stage of development, do not tire of work- ing, if they are allowed to make their own plans. "Oh, ye^" say the unbelievers, "they may work if you let them do as they hke." That is what they should do, what they must do to develop power to plan and power to achieve. There is little development of the highest and most effective kind for the child in achieving the plans of adulthood. He naturally gets tired of working out the plans of others, because such work calls into activity the less important elements of his power and character. Interest to be productive of satisfactory results in 60 Adult and child 11' developing higher power of interest, high- er powers of achievement, or higher powers of character, must appeal to the whole child. In responding to the request or command of an adult, a very small part of the child's real nature, is called into activity, and that part is not his selfhood. When unbelievers in childhood and in the new revelations regarding the training of children through their own self-activity, have been convmced that children really do love to work, when they make their own plans, they still raise a final objection. "Yes," they admit, "they will work on without losing interest, but they will not stick to one kind of work." The answer to this objection is clear to those who study the true growth of child- hood. The young child should not con- tinue long at one kind of work. He is in a world new to him. One of the most important things for him to do, is to learn his relationships to his environment, and his power to transform conditions in it in harmony with his own ideals. If he works at ten different kinds of work in a day. m- The achieving power 61 he has grown probably ten times more, than if he worked all day at the same kind of work. He has become conscious of his power to transform conditions in ten ways, instead of in one way. Working ceases 'to be productive, when the child has lost interest in it. Variety in original planning, and in new aims and efforts to achieve,' is the surest interest sustainer. Hence the child enjoys doing many things in a day. If persisting in doing one kind of work would develop a child more than doing ten kmds of work, the Creator would have made a child with an unchanging interest. He did not do so, and so the normal child does not "stick to one kind of work". In doing many kinds of work each day he is becoming acquainted with his material •environment, with the fact that it is trans- formable, with the still more revealing fact that he has original power to see new ways in which to transform it, and with the great practical revelation, that he has power to transform it in harmony with his own plans. In other words, he starts to 62 Adult and child i grow in his life the vital apperceiving cen- tres of vision, and of the realization of vision by his achieving power. The child who has become conscious of his power to transform the material conditions of his environment by opera- tive processes that are really his own from conception to achievement, will in mature life have visions of the need of reforming the intellectual and moral conditions of his environment, and more important still, he will have the habit of reforming conditions that need improvement. In every department of the work in the kindergarten; in the varied occupations, pasting, mat-weaving, sewing, etc., in stick laying, tablet work, peas work, etc., and in using the "gifts", the child day after day makes original plans which he successfully achieves. Many other advantages result from his work, such as development of interest power; revelation of definite mathe- matical conceptions; and of their relation- ships to each other and to the universe; art ideals, constructive ideals, aiid ideals of joy in work; but the greatest advantages The achieving power 63 are those connected with the development of the natural achieving tendency of every normal child. The true development of this tendency will make it the dominant element in the life of each individual. It will give life real value. It will make the ideal of lov- ing service vital. It will reveal creative work as the most productive source of happiness. It will be worth while to reveal higher visions of truth to men, when their training has given them the habit of trying earnest- ly and persistently to achieve their visions. i Chapter VI The harmonious development of the child's powers, -physically, intellectually, and morally Froebel's law of universal unity revealed to him the comprehensive and illuminat- ing truth that no department of any organic unity can reach its full development unless every other department of the unity has also been fully developed. It made it clear also, that complete development of an organic unity cannot be attained by inde- pendent development of the separate units of which the unity is composed. The high- est development of all the elements of an organic unity, results from the development of all the subordinate elements of power through the highest element in the unity. Physical training that is intended to develop the body only, does not produce a perfect body. Even if a man could de- velop a perfect physique without a corre- sponding mental and spiritual develop- ment, he would be a very imperfect type of 64 Physical, intellectual, moral 65 man. The same statement applies to the development of the intellectual nature alone, or of the spiritual nature alone. Unified, balanced, harmonious manhood IS the true aim, and Froebel lays the foun- dation for such development in the kin- dergarten. The games, the plays, and the occupa- tions of the kindergarten develop and correlate the three departments of the child's power. Play is the most completely developing process of the child's physical, intellectual and moral powers. It is the natural work of the child, and Froebel saw in the naturalness and the universilarity of free play in childhood a clear indication of its necessity, as a means of beginning informally the child's unified development. In writing of Pestalozzi's school in Yver- dun in which he was a teacher, Froebel says, "I studied the boys' play, the whole series of games in the open air, and learned to recognize their mighty power to awake and to strengthen the intelligence and the soul, as well as the body. In these games and what waL connected with them I de- 66 Aduli and child tected the mainspring of the moral strength which animated the pupils and young people of the institution. The games, I am now fervently assured, formed a mental bath of extraordinary strengthen- ing power." "Play," he says, "is the highest phase of child development — of human development at this period; for it is self-active represen- tation of the inner, from inner necessity and impulse." "The plays of childhood are the ger- minal leaves of all later life." "It is the sense of sure and reliable power, the sense of its increase both as an indi- vidual and as a member of the group, that fills the boy with all pervading, jubilant joy during the games. It is by no means the physical power alone that is fed and strengthened in these games; intellectual and moral power, too, is definitely and steadily gained and brought under control." Over stimulation of the intellect at the expense of the body, is now universally recognized as an evil, which always weak- ens physical power, and thus ter'^s to Physical, intellectual, moral 67 destroy the harmony that should exist be- tween the physical and the intellectual pow- er of each individual. It sometimes results in the untimely death of the student. The evil effects of the failure to observe the law of unity in the development of physical, intellectual, and spiritual power in childhood, would reveal themselves more clearly, if the children had not many op- portunities for natural unified development ill their free play out of doors. These evil effects are much more clearly seen in the cities, where, until recently, children have not had satisfactory opportunities for free play. The kindergarten is much more essen- tial in cities and towns than in rural dis- tricts to provide opportunities for opera- tive work, for creative work, for relating the child to Nature through its growth processes and for unified development of the child's power, physically, intellectually, and spiritually. Children who are brought up in the coun- try usually have several advantages over those who are brought up in the cities, 68 Adult and child fcv or in the towns. They have much better opportunities for free play out of doors; they are allowed much greater freedom in making gardens of their own, and of thus becoming vitally acquainted with Nature through her growth processes; they have unlimited opportunities to plan new things, and to try to achieve them; and they have more opportunities for rendering loving service in the performance of daily duties by sharing the responsibilities of the family in various departments of the work of the home, the garden, and the farm— especial- ly in the care of poultry' and live stock. Froebel provided the same types of three- fold culture in the kindergarten by his system of plays and games; by real gar- dening, where possible, and by planting seeds in boxes, where no ground can be se- cured for gardens; by operative processes requiring creative planning, and transform- ing manual work; and by kindling the desire to perform loving service by wisely chosen stories, and by training the children to make gifts for mother, father, baby, grandma, grandpa, and other relatives or Physical, intellectual, moral 69 friends. Every article made by a child in the kindergarten is designed as a gift for some lovea one, or some needy one. The joy of the child in the kindergarten at Christmas time, results from giving presents, not receiving them. The kin- dergarten Christmas tree is covered with gifts made by the children themselves for their parents, or their brothers, and sisters. They are thus trained to become producers of happiness, to render loving service to others, and to recognize their responsibility for the good they have power to achieve. Those who have seen the little ones presenting their gifts to their parents or to other members of their family— gifts made by themselves— know that to child- hood at least it is more blessed to give than to receive. The blessed Christmas time is too often made a time when the milk of youthful generosity is soured so that it becomes adult selfishness. The quotations in this chapter from the writings of Froebel prove that he planned consciously to develop body, mind, and spirit in unity by the same processes and Aia 70 Adult and child at the same time in the plays, games, and occupations of the kindergarten. Expe- rience has shown that, even to adults,, strength of body, strength of mind, and true spiritual growth, come with most productive power, when they are developed at the same time, and by the same opera- tive processes. The essential element in securing development, is the vital interest taken in the operative processes. The growth in each of the three depart- ments of power that result from any effort,, depends more on the interest that stimu- lates effort than on the amount of physical energy put forth. Creativity in this, as in all other departments of productive activity, is more developing than co-opera- tion in achieving the plans of others, be- cause it arouses vital interest. One of the many reasons why play is so comprehensively developing to the child's whole being, is that when playing he is an original, independent individual seeing new conditions, making new plans to meet the new conditions, and immediate- ly trying to execute his plans. Chapter VII Storing the child's mind with knowledge For many years the communication of knowledge was the supreme aim of edu- cation. Until recently educational sys- tems were based on the half truth "Knowledge is power". No educational system based on this IdtDl can train a rapidly developing and pro^^ressive race. Knowledge does not become power till it becomes a vital part of the selfliood. Storing knowledge in the memory does not make it vital. Knowledge becomes vital power only when it is organized as a part of the child's enriched individuality. The child is infinitely greater than knowledge, and all educational systems must ulti- mately be based on a reverent recognition of the value of the child and of the possi- bilities of his growth. When this is done, the child's power, skill, and character will be developed much more rapidly than 71 72 Adult and child in the past, and knowledge will have more vital power than it could have otherwise. Five men— Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Herbart and Froebel brought child devel- opment into prominence. They may be divided into two classes. Locke and Her- bart believed they could mould the char- acter of a child as they wished, in accor- dance with the nature of the knowledge they communicated to him. Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel taught that character development is a growth, not a process of moulding, and that knowledge really becomes a vitally productive or transforming power only when it is used in the achievement of definite creative purposes. Knowledge indeed never be- comes clear until it has been wrought in, assimilated, and wrought out in the achievement of original plans. The achievement of original plans defines knowledge and permanently fixes it as an element of power in the life of the child. Knowledge should become an element— a vital element — in the creative life of each child, but this result .annot be Storing with knowledge 73 are'*S^/° -T ^' '^"'^^'0'"^ systems are based mainly on the considerations of systems and methods of communicating knowledge This desirable result will d achieved when the supreme study of edu! cafon^ leaders is directed to the deveC- that should be communicated to him. Takmg Herbart and Froebel as repre- sentmg two clearly defined modem idelL of tra.mng, we may see more perfectly the difference between the two ideals foil"'"' "^""^ "■■'^^'^^^ '"e trit' cnild the transforming agency eh«H? "^^"^ *""* ^'°«''^' ='»died the ^d.n order to plan an educational sys- tern that would develop a higher type of character, and enable each individual to work out his highest destiny. Both made the development of moral character the supreme aim of education. But ther fur^amental ideals were radically Z thS'couW TT "]' *'" '° fi"'' "•= best that could be done for him by adulthood; 74 Adult and child # Froebel studied the child to discover his own natural powers and growth pro- cesses, so that he might be able to help him in working out his own development. Herbart magnified and dignified the work of the teacher and the parent. Froebel, while recognizing fully the importance of the teacher and the parent, reverenced the child's selfhood, and reveal- ed the vital importance of the child him- self, as the chief agent in his development. Herbart limited the original capacity of the soul of the child to one power — that of "entering into relations with the ex- ternal world". He believed that the teacher could make the child's soul accord- ing to his plan, and that the character of the soul may be decided by the kinds of knowledge used in its making. Froebel believed that the soul of the child transformed knowledge, not that knowledge formed and transformed the soul. He regarded the soul as an element of divinity that must develop in power, and that reaches its best development by its own creative self-activity. Storing with tnowkdge 75 act""'"* ""'^ "■' ^^ «>« -^ult o£ Froebel made action the result of will Herbart aimed to develop i„ his pupils ix^rr '°"°''"'"'™ ^"^ """« "«': Froebel's ideal was co-operative pro- ductive, creative self^twily "^ ^Herbart :.ade instruction the bas.s of Froebel made moral development depend tions, and the culture of the achievins true Imng; not mformation, or instruction Herbart stored the mind with knowledge. Froebel trained the child to use knowl- edge as he gained it in achieving orijn", iJans He awakened new ideals in the ch Id s mmd, and developed his emotional battery power to propel him to achieve ment of his new ideals. The child is greater than knowledge Every progressive step in modem edufa^ tion .s based on the increasing reverend f ;rll 76 Adult and child ^hr ' ' P*" of humanity for the individuality or self- hood of the child. Notwithstanding this fact, knowledge is of great importance in the child's educa- tion, and in his future life and progress. So long as knowledge is treated as the secondary aim in education and the devel- opment of power, skill, and character as the primary aim, there is little danger. So long as knowledge is made the primary aim, educational systems cannot achieve the best results either in communicating knowledge, or in developing power, skill, and character. Thoughtful minds have long noted that a child has acquired a wide range of knowl- edge limited only by the extent of his experiences, when he is two years old. He has learned to speak a new language, and to speak it well or incorrectly according to the way it is spoken at home. He learns correct pronunciation as easily as incorrect. He learns to speak grammati- cally quite as easily as ungrammatically. He knows the name and the use of every article in the home that he has ever heard Storing with knowledge 77 named as it was used. He has intimate and reliable knowledge about many things m his environment. He never learns after he goes to school, as rapidly as he did before he went to school. Froebel knew that this should not be so He beheved that children would continue to acquire knowledge and relate it to other know edge as rapidly and as definitely in school, as before they went to school, if school conditions and methods were adapt- ed to the child's nature and to the laws of his growth. Froebel knew that no rational mother ever taught her little child the names and uses of spoons, knives, forks, cups, chairs or other articles. Outside of school no one was ever unwise enough to do such teach- ing. The knowledge gained by the child before he went to school was the incidental result of his activities and his expenences, not the result of direct teaching. Froebel's kindergarten system and work beyond the kindergarten was planned to continue during the life of the young child the growth and knowledge-galning pro- 78 Adult and child cesses that were so vitally developing before he went to school. He preserved and developed the child's vital interest in life by his experiences in the kindergarten; he provided for growth in power and in- crease in knowledge by the child's self- activity; and he made the child conscious of the value of knowledge, of fact, and of law by training him to use both old and new knowledge in planning, and to use both old and new laws in achieving his new plans. In this way he continued in the kinder- garten in accordance with clearly defined and logically related, progressive plans, to reveal new knowledge and new laws, and to make the knowledge and the laws real elements in the child's life, and not merely facts and principles stored in his memory. He retained the same vital laws of child growth that revealed and fixed knowledge and law in the child's life in the early stages of his development in knowledge and power; through essential, evolutionary self-activity in learning the most important knowledge and laws by Storing with knowledge 79 applying them, as he had done in his free hfe before he went to the kindergarten. He did not leave the child's progressive development to chance. Neither did he rob the child of freedom or of self-activity. He guided him m the free use of choice and real self-activity under law to develop in his consciousness the most essential inT. .i u ^''\ ''^^'^ '^^ *° hi^ powers and to the knowledge necessary in applying them, and thus make them vital, organic elements in his character. Even if the sole aim of the teacher were to communicate knowledge, the surest way to reveal it, and the most certain way to help the child to retain it. is to train him to dig for it himself, and to use it when he gets it. Every new lesson should consist of two parts, the revelation of new truths and new principles, and their ap- Phcation when understood. Revelation IS important; application is still more im- portant. The introduction of the kindergarten has revolutionized the methods of teaching from the primary classes to the universities 80 Adult and child The science teacher or lecturer, until fifty years ago, was satisfied with stating facts and explaining principles. Occasionally he illustrated them with diagrams on the blackboard. Often there were no black- boards on which to make the illustrations. The students were expected to write the facts or laws in their note books, or to memorize them from text books in order to be able to pass the examinations. In after years both facts and laws were gen- erally forgotten. It was quite natural that most students should forget them, because there was no vital reason for remembering them, except in the case of teachers who were to blight other minds by the same unnatural meth- ods. A much higher stage was reached when the teacher or professor performed experi- ments and the pupils recorded the results in note books. This however, showed but a partial comprehension of the laws of growth that Froebel used in the kindergarten. Finally in all schools and universities that make any claim to use modem methods, laboratories are fitted up in order that Storing with knowledge 81 every pupil or student may perform for himself the experiments by which known facts and laws may be tested, and by which stil unknown facts and laws may be re- vealed. Dr. William T. Harris, the greatest edu- cational philosopher of his time, said that Mathematics-especially geometry- un- folded naturally in the minds of children ofT V? ^ ^""f kindergarten by the use of the gifts . In similar ways the methods of teaching all subjects have been improved so that the child in school continues to be self-active, and is trained to be self-direc- tive He 13 trained to dig for the gold in books instead of to memorize their contents. He IS trained to use knowledge creatively instead of reproductively. As a result of knowledge-cramming for examinations which destroyed the natural taste for reading, a very smaU percentage of men and women read on through life the books that are the store- houses of the illuminating experiences and revelations of the past; that contain f^ 82 Adult and child the wisdom and the vision of the world's leaders. The methods of the kindergarten, when they are understood and practised in the schools and homes of the world, will give the men an*^! women of the future more vital reverence foi knowledge, clearer remembrance of the knowledge they have acquired, more ready response of memory with knowledge required unexpectedly for immediate use in emergencies, and more power to use the knowledge they have in gaining more knowledge. They will also create a hunger interest for more knowledge to guide them in their pro- gressively higher work for themselv.s and for their fellowmen. Chapter Vri Hou' to develop balanced character, to kindle higher ideals, and to guide to higher vision In true growth it is necessary not only to preserve the essential balance between the physical, intellectual, and spiritual powers, but to preserve also proper balance in the elements of these departments of human power. Physical exercise may be given to develop the organs of the body, to give erectness of pose, to strengthen the muscles, to promote grace and dignity in action, to keep the nervous system in proper tone, or to tram the whole body to respond quickly and definitely .the mind. Perfect training physically will neither neglect nor overdo the training of any department of physical power, or skill, or grace, or dignity, or ef- ficiency. Physical health means harmonious phys- ical developmen. in every department of the physical being. It is equally true that 83 MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 ;fi£ 1^ u ^^ ll_ 1 ^ lllll£ I.I 1.8 1.25 1.4 1 1.6 A APPLIED IN/MGE Inc ^^ 1653 Eust Main Street S^S Roctiester. New York 14609 USA •■^a (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^S (716) 288 - 5989 - Fax 84 Adult and child intellectually and morally each intellectual and moral element must reach its best de- velopment in order to attain the highest, the most complete, and the most self-active intellectual and moral efficiency. Man's powers in their development illustrate per- fectly Froebels' fundamental law of or- ganic unity; the more perfect the develop- ment of each individual power, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, the more perfect the development of the whole being; and the more complete the development of the being as an organic unity, the greater be- come the possibilities of the development of each individual power. A crank is a person whose powers are not properly related and balanced. Lack of balance may result from over development of some department of power, or from neg- lect to develop other departments v.f pow- er. Education should promote harmony between the elements of a child's power. Until recently education tended to produce greater lack of harmony by devoting atten- tion almost exclusively to the intellect and neglecting the other departments of power. Character, ideals, vision 85 Even the intellectual development of schcols and universities has been directed mainly to the lower intellectual powers, the powers of receptivity, of memory, and of reflection. Modern education based on Froebel's ideals does not undervalue any intellectual power, but it teaches that the subordinate intellectual powers can reach their highest development, only when they are developed in relation to, and in harmony with the higher intellectual powers of achievement, of imagination, and of vision. It plans to develop the highest elements of intellectual and moral efficiency, to make more thoroughly bal- anced men and women, to add to their joy giving power, to give culture to their es- thetic power, to increase their achieving power, and to qualify them for higher and clearer vision. Utilitarian ideals have restricted educa- tional effort. Modem education however recognizes the vital importance of a more comprehensive training in the art of making a living by the development of the creative, the constructive, and the productive pow- sv^ 11 86 Adtdt and child ers. The development of these powers promotes the development of all the powers of eajh child, especially of his special indi- vidual power. It is right that the child should be trained to value wealth truly. He should know that it may be an agency for good. He should learn also that wealth may bring evil instead of good; sorrow in- stead of joy. Unless the child's higher mtellectual powers and moral powers are developed, material conditions are almost certam to engross his attention through- out his life, to prevent the recognition of real glories available for him, ar^ to rob him of the joy of helpful, hopefui, sympa- thetic co-operation with his fellovvTnen. The wealthiest men are those who see di- amonds in the dew drops, and gold in the after-glow. The men and women who most clearly understand the value of ma- terial things are those whose higher intellec- tual and spiritual powers have been devel- oped most perfectly. The higher the intellectual power, the more useful are its life values, and the greater the possibilities of its growth. The t Character, ideals, vision 87 greater also are its advantages in develop- ing and harmonizing all subordinate powers. The development of the imagination, for instance, is much more essential to the com- prehension of mathematics, than the study of mathematics is to the development of the imagination. Art should be taught in all schools and to all children to qualify them for a better understanding of the great ideals revealed in the past in painting, sculpture, and ar- chitecture; to give power to conceive new and higher ideals of beauty; to improve and e'evatf^ the taste in home making and decorat"on; aiid to qualify for greater suc- cess in most of the departments of indus- trial life. Music should be taught ' ^ kindle ele- ments of power, and joy, and spiritual growth ; to qualify for receiving inspiration and uplift from a more perfect appreciation of the revelations of the great composers; and to enrich individual and fcmilv life by interpretation of good music. A know- ledgf * music may have many practical advantages, too. f?-|! im 88 Adult and child I p|.: Most of the teaching of literature in the past was largely devoted to the study of the meaning of the words used, and to analysis of the sentences in the study of the selections chosen. The result of such teaching v;as that a very small percentage of adults continued to read good literature with a view of getting from it a wider out- look on life, higher ideals of the growth of humanity towards the Divine, clearer vis- ions of duty, and more sublime revelations regarding the universe and man's relation- ships to it. The wisdom of the sages and the glorious visions of the poetic spirits who had come most perfectly into harmony with the Divine Spirit through the progres- sive centuries, were made mainly "A study of words and grammar". The vision was lost in the study of th., orm in which it was expressed. Froebel revealed the better way of using art, music, and literature, as a means of developing and kindling the supreme ele- ments of human power and character. The most vital revelations of the evolu- tion of humanity are not contained in his- Character, ideals, vision 89 tory. They are the revelations in great art, in great music, and in ^reat literature. In these we find the records of the prophet souls who found the crests of the hills of progress, who have climbed to the summits of higher hills, and who have been the her- alds in humanity's epoch movements to- ward a higher civilization. As educational leaders have learned the philosophy on which Froebel based his work in the kindergarten, the teaching of art, music, and literature has become more vital. Art is now recognized as a means of revealing originality and of making greater men and women with power to produce higher conditions of life, not merely of making great pictures. Music is taught, not as an accomplishment, but as a life-transforming agency. Literature is regarded as the great storehouse in which have been recorded the progressively more splendid visions of humanity consciously growing towards the Divine. Good teach- ers no longer make the literature les- son a formal statement of the best avail- able interpretations of the meaning of iY.-- 90 Adult and child author, but a training of the student so that each one may interpret for himself. To tell a child or a man what some one else has learned from a great poem is not a vitally educative process. Each child should be trained to be his own interpreter. Each should decide independently which is the greatest thought in the poem, or the most exquisitely constructed stanza; and he should be trained to state to his teacher and to his fellow students his reason for choosing the thought or the stanza. Each student should get from a picture, song, or poem the elements of uplift and powe. adapted to his own individual nature, and to his own stage of development. When teachers aim to secure this result by methods which do not regard the pupils merely as vessels into which may be poured the most advanced interpretations of the most learned scholars, but as independent interpreters, they are doing really vital work. Progress by this method may ap- pear to be slow at first, but each step gives greater pow^r to see independently, and therefore gives greater faith. Character, ideals, vision 91 To see is greater than to know. Vision IS of more value than learning, as a prepara- tion for persistent joy in searching for ' nith —the enlarging truth of advancing civiliza- tion—and as a qualification for finding the special truth and thought needed at each stage of the indivdual soul's development to stimulate it to a higher degree or a wider range of vision. No adult interpreter can truly and ef- fectively interpret great literature for a child or for a youth. The more advanced the interpreter, the higher his power, and the more profound his learning, the less vital and stimulating his interpretation is likely to be to an immature student. When through childhood and youth an indi,. ' -s trained to use the vision he ha? ,. filing for the beauty and glory in t - ,gs of the leaders who have had the }iit,xiost and truest world vision in re- gard to God, and humanity, and gro\vth, and duty: when in each succeeding year he has read over again his favorite poems or his most kindling prose, and has found each year new visions of thought and of beauty 92 Adulf and child in them that he never saw before, adapted to his higher stage of development; then he is ready to study the interpretations of others without dwarfing his own vision power. Froebel used the child's love of nature as a means of fixing in his life the apperceptivo centres of a wider vision power that should in later life relate him to the universe and to its Creator. A great deal of "Nature study" introduced into the schools of the world, as a result of the work of Pestalozzi and of Froebel is unproductive, because their revelations have been misunderstood. The word "study" is misleading. The common thought has been: we should train the children to study Nature when they are young, in order that they may enjoy the study of Nature when they are older. Nature has been studied as a basis for in- vestigation and classification. Froebel revealed Nature to the child as a growth process, as life related to other life, as life that may be aided to higher life, and as one of the clearest and most unfailingly inter- esting revelations of v/isdom and unity. Character, ideals, vision 93 Recognizing the value of knowledge after it is vitalized by assimilation into the in- finitely more important element— the child — recognizing the essential value of the achieving tendency, as a means of trans- forming conditions in harmony with new ideals; and recognizing the importance of training the observant, the conceptive, and the reasoning powers, Froebel's whole sys- tem aims to kindle and develop the imagi- nation and the vision power, so that the whole being may be harmoniously bal- anced. It is not enough that we should under- stand the material conditions of our en- vironment, and know how to transform them. We should be qualified to under- stand the higher visions, yet unrevealed in knowledge, of yr' iseen spiritual beauty, and of human relationships to each other and to the Divine, that are becoming clearer as we climb out of the mists. Chapter IX The developing of the emotional nature "The diflference between one man and another consists not so much in talent as in energy,"— Dr. Arnold The greatest engine is useless without motive power. Character cannot be great without well developed motive power. A man may possess knowledge; wisdom; power to gain more knowledge from books, from nature, from experience; well de- veloped power to reason; kindled imagin- ation and revealing vision power, without being an efficient agent in promoting a higher civilization. The qualifications specified fit him for effective service, but in addition he needs motive power to propel him to achievement. His will is not a sufficient battery to keep him working at his best. Men do not do their best when they ba- e to be kept at work even by their o' vill power acting 94 The emotional nature 95 in response to a conviction of duty. Man's emotional nature is his strongest impelling force— his natural battery power. His emotions may propel him towards good, or towards evil, towards the highest in his nature or towards the lowest. Be- cause men recognized that response to emotion had great possibilities of deg- radat^ion, the trainers '.; childhood and youth before the time of Froebel con- sciously tried to weaken and restrict the influence of the emotional nature, even as many tried to strangle the imaginations of children. Steam and electricity un- controlled are very dangerous; controlled and wisely directed they are powers that move the machinery of the world. The emotions are the battery powers of char- acter. One of the highest duties of the trainer of the child is to develop the power and the controlling <;endency of the child's emotions, and to give him self-a(''«e di- rective power to guide them. Froebel knew that if any great element or tendency in the life of a child is "stran- gled in its cradle", it is not destroyed but 96 Adult and child grows on in the child in a perverted con- dition, not as an element of strength, but as an element of evil. Plato, Goethe, Froebel, and Ruskin understood this law: ' 'All evil springs from unused good' ' . This is a vital law in child training. Froebel made the law clearer by teaching that "Evil springs from misused good": that every element of goodness in our nature will weaken or degrade us, if we misuse it. It would be revolutionary in the train- ing of children, if educators clearly realized the vital meaning of the profoundly true law: that the higher the power is, and the greater its possibilities of good in the child's character, the more rapid and the more complete is the degradation of character resulting from its misuse. The fact that the undeveloped and un- trained emotional nature is liable to impel towards evil, is not a good reason for trying to prevent the development of its power. Leading educators until recently spoke approvingly of breaking the wills of strong willed children. Intelligent men now know that the will cannot be too strong. »*• The emotional nature 97 They know also that the thoughtless soul surgeons who try to break a child's will, are guilty of a crime, compared with which the deliberate breaking of his leg would be harmless. Power should always be devel- oped, never destroyed. To weaken or destroy any power must inevitably weaken character; worse than this, it warps char- acter. Neither will power, nor emotional power, nor any other great power, should be de- stroyed, or weakened, or coerced. Power should be developed and strengthened, and made more effective in achievement. The child loves to achieve. By achieving, his own impelling powers and achieving powers, are strengthened. So are his con- trolling and directive powers. Every good, controlling, impelling, and directing power attains its best development, when the child is creatively achieving his own plans. Weakening his emotional power robs the child of self-impelling power; weaken- ing his will robs him of self-directing power; coercing the child weakens his interest in 98 Adult and child life. It weakens also his powers of self discovery, of self-impelling, and of self direction. Power is good and only good. It may be used for wrong purposes. Children through lack of wisdom and of experience often do use power for wrong purposes. They do so because adulthood has not provided appropriate conditions for the creative use of the child's powers in trying to achieve right. Whatever the reason may be, it is unwise and destructive to weaken the misused power, when it is only necessary to provide more attractive con- ditions for doing right. The child is naturally creatively oper- ative along every line that will develop his powers. In his cradle he kicks to develop his physical powers. His mother does not need to train him to kick. The reasonable mother does not tie down his legs because he kicks. She gradually leads him to play a game that opp6ses her power to his by pressing with her hands against his little feet, not to stop his kicking, but to develop his power to use the muscles -■■» - The emotional nature 99 of his legs. What a revolution in child training would be brought about, if throughout his childhood parental power and child power worked harmoniously for the development of his powers. One of the most destructive mistakes of child training in the past has been con- founding power with the wrong use of pow- er. Power is good. Every element of pow- er in the physical, intellectual, and spiritual power of a child should be developed. To fail to develop a child's power is culpable negligence; to weaken any of his powers or turn them to destructive elements of character, contributes to disastrous failure in his life. Froebel's whole system aims to develop power, never to weaken or destroy it. His fundamental law, unity or inner connection, made it clear to him that in the develop- ment of a child by his own self-activity the related balancing powers of life and character would be inter-stimulating, inter-developing, and inter-directing. He planned to develop the emotional 100 Adult and child powers of the child, but at the same time, and by the same creative processes he developed naturally, in harmony with the increase of the propelling force of the emotions, corresponding wisdom to direct, and achieving power to execute. This pro- duces a balanced character, by developing the child's powers; instead of an unbal- anced and unproductive character which is the natural result of failure to develop his powers, or of adult interference ^\'ith their normal growth. The positive emotions are good. The so-called evil emotions are negative. They have no really positive existence. They exist because their corresponding good emo- tions have not had sufficient opportunities for development. If love directed our lives vitally, there would be no room for hate. Courage developed vitally, makes fear impossible. The duty of adulthood is to develop the right emotions of a child, and to make them strong, dominant, impelling, battery powers in his life. Failure to achieve our plans or to perform revealed duty, The emotional nature 101 does not result from lack of knowledge. If men did as well :;3 Lucy know, the world would make progress much more rapidly towards a higher civilization, and Christ's ideals would be more quickly and effectively realized. If men universally did the brotherly thing they know to be needful, and that they have power to do, they would grow more triumphantly in char- acter power, and be infinitely happier, because of new revelations through duty done. The child or man who is conscious of a revelation of duty which he has power to perform, and who fails + j try to perform that duty, weakens by his failure one of the most important elements of his char- acter. When a man fails to try to per- form a duty of which he is clearly con- scious, he has not merely failed to do some- thing for his fellowmen, he has clouded his vision of duty, weakened the vitality of his conscience, and lost part of the power that impels him to achieve. It will be harder in future for duty to reveal itself to him, and his battery power will have 102 Adult and child to be stronger than before in order to move him to right action. It is a dangerous practice to stir the true emotional nature of a child without imme- diately revealing to him an opportunity for the aroused emotion to impel him to the achievement of some necessary de- sirable good. There is danger in the emotional training of some Sunday schools, because the impelling force of the aroused emotions is not used in right effort. The stirring of the emotion is good, if it is used in impelling the child towards correspond- ing activity. The ultimate aim of character training is effort to achieve our visions of right. The stronger the effort the more vital the character. The direction of the effort depends largely on our enlightened con- science and will; the energy of the effort depends largely on the vital development or tne emotional nature. Whe any good purpose k aroused, if its stimulating motive power is kindled without the arous- ing and kindling leading to prompt and energetic efforts to achieve, there has been The emotional nature 103 a disastrous failure. Failure is always disastrous, when character has not enough battery power to achieve our plans. Froebel saw the inherent weakness of the old character training ideals. He believed that the Creator made man with a wondrous capacity for growth. He believed that the development of every power in man, is essential in making him truly operative for right. He believed that the development of his intellectual and spiritual powers, was possible far beyond what had been understood and believed before his time. He believed that the power of each man is of supreme value to him and to his race. He believed that failure to develop any one of man's powers weakened all his other powers. He believed that coercive interference with the development of a child's power is a crime against the child and against humanit". He was the first to make training of the emotional powers a definite purpose in education, and therefore his system of training and its underlying philosophy f> m 104 Adult and child should be studied carefully by all who are responsible for improving present methods of character training. In his mother play, Froebel revealed to mothers how to kindle the elements of power in children, including emotional power. In the songs, the stories, and the imagin- ative and trade plays, he starts the great emotions to grow so that in due time the child may become a man not only wise, and self -directing, but persistT. ly achiev- ing; because he is stimulated by propelling emotions; emotions that act not independ- ently of wisdom and of will, but in harmony with them. Chapter X The development of respect for law The old training is based on the belief that the children dislike law. This mis- conception led to most of the mistakes of the past in child training. , It is especially to blan-'? for the blind faith in coercion. No advocate of coercion ever claimed that it is a source of development. Some still say it stops wrong doing. Even if coercion could stop wrong doing by children, it would be a weak, negative, and ineffective system of training. The child develops by doing, not by not doing. As has already been pointed out, coercion is the lowest, the least effective, and most power per- verting stage in the progressive sequence of training ideals; coercion, co-operation, and creativity. All children naturally love law. All children as naturally dislike tyranny. It is clearly a good element of character to 105 s '}i i ». 106 Adult and child dislike tyranny. Parental tyranny, or teacher tyranny, is quite as presumptuous, and quite as destructive of power, as nation- al t)rranny. Despotism is as dangerous in the home or school as in the state. True growth in the nation or in the individual, must be based on freedom. Children love law and respect it till tyranny, somewhere in the home or school, robs them of their productive love and respect. Respect for law is one of the fundamental elements of good character, and of good citizenship. It is an element in the child's character naturally. The failure to develop it consciously by definite, systematic methods is culpable negligence, on the part of parents and teachers. The common practice of coercion by which the child is forced to lose respect for law, and to become antagonistic to it, is appallingly character weakening. "But" say objectors, "the parent is responsible for the child, and parenthood is compelled to be coercive in order to stop the child from doing wrong." There is a short period during infancy, when it may Respect for law 107 be necessary, occasionally, to save the infant frj^n accident, or to save property irciii injury by prompt action of a restrain- ing nature. Even then parents should avoid the evil effects of interference, which are generally more disastrous to character than the infant's action would have been to its body or to property. If interference IS accompanied by joyous laughter and lovmg embrace instead of by coercive order in a high key, solemn threatening, sudden snatching, or menacing gesture, the child may be saved from humiliation and from consciousness of coercive inter- ference. The parent is responsible for the child, and his highest responsibility is for the development of all the elements of power in the child's life. Stopping wrong doing does not produce right doing. Worse than this, stopping wrong doing interferes with the development of the child's most productive tendency— the tendency to do— which not only is the most productive tendency of the child, but is the tendency that gives final value to every other good i 108 Adult and child clement in the child's chftracter. Stopping doing is essentially bad training. If as much training were devoted ♦o doing, as has been devoted to don'ting there would be little reason for parents or tea^ncrs to even think of the absurd and destructive coercion of the past. Even during infancy it is possible to surround ♦he child by conditions that will make serious danger to him practically impos- sible, and to supply him with materials for occupation of great variety and strong interest to him, of such a nature that he cannot injure himself or damage furniture or other property in the home. It is easy if we study the child's progressive interests and his developing tendencies and powers to j)rovide him, at practically no expense, with materials for his constructive use which will keep him interested and happy, and at the same time will develop his skill, and his transforming and achieveing ten- dencies. A child never objects to the laws of his games. He may dispute vigorously in regard to the occurrences of the game. lie Respect for law 109 will arRue in rcRard to the "balls" and "strikes", or question whether the l)atlfT reached first base before the ball, but ho never questions the law. One of the chief aims of adulthood should be to pre- serve and develop the child's natural respect for the law, and make it one of the dominant elements in Ruidinp him in de- ciding his conduct in all his life relations. The child's respect for the laws of the game, should naturally be developed into respect for the laws of his school, into respect for the laws of his municipality into respect for the laws of his country' and away above these into respect for the la^ys of his own life and growth, and in- finitely above these into respect for the laws of God. This development in conscious respect for law IS as natural as any other growth of the child, if it is not interfered with. VVhen adulthood gets a reverent 'lith in the child, the child's respect for law will never be lost. It is impossible to develop a truly pro- 110 Adult and child gressive respect for law, so long as adult- hood believes that children dislike law. It was natural, and it is still natural for adults who believe that the child dislikes law, to try to make him fear the law. Weak types may be held in bond by fear, but fear never develops respect. Some thoughtless people still confound fear of law, and respect for law. They are abso- lutely diverse; the one m.akes the other impossible. Fear of law prevents respect for law. Respect for law robs law of its terror. Fear is always devitalizing; res- pect is always vitalizing. Froebel in evc-y occupation, in every operative process, and in every game in the kindergarten, makes law essential as the sure guide to greater achievement. The first day the child is at school in his kindergarten, he learns, by revealing opera- tive processes, the law of opposites, or of balance, or of harmony, or of related unity by making his "form of beauty" after he has made his "first cut". He may make hundreds of "forms of beauty" afterwards, and in doing so he follows the same great Respect for law 111 law, although he never repeats the pattern of his first "form of beauty." Each "form of beauty" is a new creation, and he knows he could not make one of them without the law of opposites. In the course of his experience this law becomes a part of his conscious life. Without this law he might have cut and pasted paper for years without making one harmonious form of beauty. In this way he comes to know that law is his guide, and recognizes law as his friend. He recognizes law as a directive and not a restrictive force in his life; a force that leads to doing and not to don'ting. Law is a positive element in the kinder- garten, and not a negative element. It helps the child to achieve instead of inter- fering with his efforts to achieve. He is taught this great lesson not in words, but by operative processes that follow laws of which he has become conscious. Operative processes are the only processes by which great laws may be wrought into character. The law of opposites, or balance, or i 112 Adult and child xarmony, or related unity, will evolve in the child's life as he grows older, and will reveal to him the need of balanced powers in his character. It will gradually qualify him to understand the rhythmic harmony of the universe. In the same paper cutting and pasting occupation already considered, the child has revealed to him the law of sequence. As he is taught to make fold after fold and cut after cut, he learns that they follow one another in a logical and definitely related sequence, and when he is older this law makes reasoning in logical sequence a natural process. It should be remembered, too, that the revelation of law as a guide to successful achievement, is but one of several dis- tinctively educational results of the single occupation of cutting and pasting. This is tfuv. of all the occupations of the kinder- garten. Throughout the whole range of his occupations, his games, and his plays, the child's success is achieved by his obe- dience to law. Respect for law 113 Most child trainers still demand obedi- ence to themselves instead of obedience to law, and respect for themselves instead of respect for law. By doing so they lose the sympathetic respect of the child, and prevent the development of respect for law, as a conscious element in his being, as one of the most essential qualifications for gor i citizenship, and for reliability of character. "The perfect law of liberty" is one of the most profound expressions in the Bible. It reveals the vital truth that law and lib- erty should be in perfect harmony; that control and freedom are in no sense in con- flict. Froebel aimed to make the kinder- garten "A free republic of childhood". This is the highest conception of the train- ing of childhood yet revealed to man; that the child should be ever under law-- but alwav 6 free; guided by the same funda- mental laws as his fellows, but under these laws free to achieve his own original plans independently. In this way he learns to respect law and to respect himself, as a being capable of understanding the "perfect 114 Adult and child !l law of liberty", and capable also of cre- ative achievement by following directive law. Character training will be revolutionized, when men understand the inner meaning of the Bible expression "the perfect law of liberty", and when homes and schools become "Free republics of childhood". Many very intelligent people yet shudder at the mere suggestion of freedom for children. Some of them do not hesitate to blame the kindergarten for the disrespect for authority on the part of many children, although they know absolutely nothing about kindergarten philosophy, or true kindergarten practice. Gladstone, at seventy, said the one criticism he had to make of the teachers in the school he had attended was that "They were afraid of liberty". History, and experience in our own time prove that there is most anarchy, where there is least freedom. Anarchy is the son of coercion — not of freedom. Men's minds will always be confused in regard to child freedom, until they defi- nitely comprehend the difference between Respect for law 115 "Liberty under law", and liberty without law. There are thousands of schools now, since Froebel's ideal of "Free republics of childhood" was rexealed, in which there are never any cases of "discipline" such as used to occupy so much time, and cause so much sorrow, and dwarf the originality and the power of so many children. Yet the pupils in these schools are attentive, interested, progressive, co-operative, and creatively self-active in vital processes to a much greater extent and to a much higher degree than in the schools of former days, which were in no sense "Free re- publics of childhood", not even constitu- tional monarchies, but were absolute, despotic monarchies in which arbitrary law and authority were dogmatically es- tablished, and despotically administered. Democratic principles are sure to tri- umph ultimately. Good democratic citi- zenship is not promoted by despotism even in the control of childhood. There should be perfect harmony between control and freedom. The success of democracy is 116 Adult and child essentially dependent on consciousness of the true meaning of the "Perfect law of liberty". The kindergarten is a perfect democracy in which the natural respect of the child for law is fostered and developed, and in which law is recognized as essential to suc- cess in every department of the child's work. It is absolutely impossible that any man who studies the work of a good kindergarten, and the philosophy on which the work is based, can believe that a kindergarten could weaken a child's vital respect for law and order. Froebel said "If national order is to be recognized in later years as a benefit, child- hood must first be accustomed to law and order, and therein find the means of free- dom." Froebel's greatest contemporary inter- preter—the Baroness Von Marenholz- Bulow wrote- "Nothing is left then, but to set free obedience in the place of blind obedience, and to render the masses through civilization capable of seeing that only the self-restraint of individuals and their Respect for law 117 voluntary subjection to law, make greater freedom in society possible. That mode of education which can solve this prob- lem may jr-My be called education for freedom." Froebel's system aims to lead to the future free and conscious obedience to law, and thereby lead at the same time to the highest possible degree of freedom. There may be deadness under law, or life under law. We may develop respect for law as a dominant element in character by making law the supervising partner in the child's creative work, or we may de- velop a dislike for law by making it merely the subordinate agent of coercion. We may rev^eal law as beneficence, or as enslavement. Chapter XI The development oj conscious responsibility Responsibility, self-consciousness, and self-control were treated negatively in the old training. Children were made con- scious of weakness, not of power. Respon- sibility meant responsibility for the wrong we did, not for the right we have power and opportunity to do. Self-consciousness meant consciousness of weakness, not consciousness of strength. Self-control meant power to resist temptation and keep away from evil, instead of power to use the achieving elements in our natures to promote the development of humanity, and transform conditions in the way of advancing civilization. Of course we are responsible for the wrong we do, but there is no vitality in that thought. There is vitahty in the thought that I have power to do something for God and humanity better than any 118 Conscious responsibility II9 other man. There is some vision I alone have power to see truly. I am responsible for seemg my vision and for achieving my work. The consciousness of this is the only basis on which a vital propelling recog- nition of my responsibility can rest. The new training makes a child conscious of his special power, his individuality, his self- hood, and reveals his relationships to his fellowmen, so that he becomes clearly re- sponsible for the use of his selfhood in the achievement of his part in promoting the highest interests of humanity. The con- sciousness of special power logically leads to the consciousness of special duty. The new traijiing reveals the highest duty of each child to attain to his highest individu- aUty in order that organized and related humanity may be aided by him in taking its next upward step. Life is a success in proportion to our achievement of good; it is a failure in pro- portion to the amount of good we might have done, but failed to do. Even the recent books on moral training that are not based on the philosophy of 120 Adult and child Froebel, treat self-control as a power to resist temptation and to keep away from evil. A very modern book written by a very able man, gives as an illustration of self-control, the power of a reformed drunk- ard to resist the temptation to drink, and to keep away from the saloon in which he formerly wasted his life and his money. It is better to resist wrong than to yield to it. It is clear, however, that a man may keep away from the saloon and from every other form of evil, and yet achieve nothing for God or for humanity. There is no vitality in negative goodness. There is small reason to boast of making a being created in the image of God, a ir.are dodger of defects. Training must do more than guide him away from evil; it must fill his Hfe with propelling deter- mination to do good — to do his special kind of good — and develop his achieving powers so that he may be able to carry out his plans successfully. This is true the mean- ing of self-control. Responsibility has been revealed in the past as a solemn duty. It should be re- Conscious responsibility 121 T W V° ' M 'u "^''" "^ ^ ^^'^^ privilege. There should be no solemnity associated with responsibility. Duty will be joyous when children are properly trained; when creativity ,s universally substituted for coercion; when spontaneity and control are seen to be elements of the same unity htrny^^^^ ^"^ '^- - ^-- to be fn Loving service can never become com- pulsory service. Service should become increasingly joyous throughout life. Men destroy the elements of joyous service by wrong .deals of training, and then marvel chat It so generally dies as an effective spontaneous element in character There can be no other joy so completely satisfymg. or as richly developing to a man^ as the successful achievement of origina and unselfish plans. original Responsibility should reveal our most attractive fields of happiness, and pro" de our most stimulating interests in our con- scious upward progress. It will do so when al the children have their individual powers kindled; their achieving tendencies 122 Adult and child KiJ developed; their organic unity with the race revealed; their responsibility for making their impress on civilization, by achieving the good they have power to do, made clear to them; and their faith in them- t Ives as the representatives of the Divine, made the supreme motive of their lives. "Idealism" some say, who lack the true vision. The world makes all progress by struggling towards higher ideals. No thoughtful man or woman is satisfied with the results of child training in the past. Humanity needs to be guided by a new idealism in character training. Froebel has given a new interpretation of Christ's ideals, and his interpretation is the most reasonable, and the most hopeful yet given to humanity.. Chapter XII Adulthood should make the chUd conscious of power: never of weakness Self-consciousness has been regarded as a weakness. There are two kinds of self-consciousness of power. By making a child conscious of weakness I make him weaker; by making him conscious of his power I am kindling the elements that will keep him growing towards the Divine by making him conscious of power to achieve I am making him conscious of power to achieve for the Divine. Each child represents a thought of God, and a plan of God. I should reveal this glory of his birth-right to him in every way possible so that he may climb triumphantly through life W7th achieving faith in God, and in him>elf. Whoever contributes in any way to mak- ing a child conscious of weakness or badness IS developing weakness or evil in the child By calling a child '-'bad," I am defining 123 124 Adult and child the ideal of badness in his mind and life. I am not defining the ideal of abstract badness, but cf badness in him. There is a :range and altogether degrading anomaly in calling a being created in the image of God "bad". Twisted he may be; a great organism out of order he may be. My duty is to find out what is the matter with his organism and set it right, so that his organism may grow more freely and truly. He is a musical instrument making discord. My duty is to get him in tune with the universe, so that he may produce divine harmony. I should never call him "bad." I should watch for any act of his that is generous or brave, or kind, or manly, and when he and I are alone, I shor id let him know with hearty appreciation that I saw him do it, and that I am proud of him for doihg it. It may be that a special hand clasp of appreciation may be better than words. I should be ever on the alert to plan opportunities for service by him for some one whom he can help. The old theology was to a large extent responsible for making humanity self- Consciousness of power, not of weakness 1 25 conscious of wellness. It imght that self-faith was sinf.'l. it prca-ned spurious humility. It perii' t-:HK- toU us we were "worms"— "poor, unworthy worms of the dust". Wormy Christians are useless. They are right in calling themselves "un- worthy". They might use stronger ad- jectives and still be within the mark. Compared with the Divine Creator, we are but worms. But we represent His plans; we are thoughts of God. He sent us here to be His representative partners. We should use our powers to achieve the visions He gives us, instead of calling ourselves "worms". When Marmion had done the work as- signed by the English King at the court of the Scotch King, the Scotch King rec- ognized that Marmion was his guest till he got out of Scotland on his way back to London, so he asked the Border Chieftain Douglas to entertain Marmion. Douglas despised Marmion, but he obey- ed his King. He entertained Marmion courteously till the morning, when Mar- 126 Adult and child i. mion and his troop stood ready in the court- yard to depart. Then Marmion cordially extended his hand to shake the hand of his host. Douglas scornfully refused to take the offered hand and said: "My castles are my king's alone From turret to foundation stone. The hand of Douglas is his own, And never shall in friendly grasp The hand of such as Marmion clasp." That would have daunted most men but Marmion stood up and bravely replied: "He who does England's message here, Although the meanest in her state. May well, proud Angus, be thy mate." That should be our spirit. We are not here as individuals merely. We are here as representatives of our King. We are truly unworthy representatives, if we whine and call ourselves "worms". We should make our children self-con- scious of strength, not of weakness. We should teach and act as if we believed that Consciousness of power, not of weakness 127 Christ came not merely that we should have power, "but power more abundantly". We should teach that "more abundant power" is ever the reward for honest effort to achieve the vision of today. '.H Chapter XIII Control and spontaneity "The Child is the Sum of the World" — Emerson. "Let Childhood ripen in Childhood" — Froebel. If a man is to be free at maturity he must be free in the subordinate stages of childhood arid youth. There may be perfect harmony between control and spontaneity. The true ideal between parent and child IS what the Bible calls the "perfect law of liberty". The child develops by what he does him- self, and plans himself. If any meddle- some or inconsiderate parent or other adult interferes with his work and prevents his spontaneous activity either through kind- ness or ignorance, he arrests the develop- ment of the child's best powers. The child's interest cannot be fully arous- 128 Control and spontaneity 129 ed by plans made by others-especially plans made by adults. The little girl who said, "What is the ^^e of havmg a planner of my own. if I have to keep doing what you plan", was wiser than her mother. Self-activity is the basis of vital character training. Training should mean development. Development should mean free growth Free growth results from self-activity which means the free action of the child in trying to achieve his own plans. The child develops more completely and more rapidly by action directed by others than by study, but action under the direction of others develops his least essen- tial powers, and these only to a limited ex- tent, and very imperfectly. Powers de- veloped by action under the direction of others, do not promote the self-develop- ment of the greatest powers in the child. The only complete development of a child must be attained by free activity in trying to achieve his own plans. If we keep the child in an environment of matenals suitable for the kindling of 130 Adult and child productive interests during the successive stages of his related periods of intellectual and spiritual growth, and allow him free- dom in using these materials, his selfhood or highest power will develop, and its de- velopment will give a new and higher value to all his other powers. The development of a child's selfhood really means th'^ awakening and growth of his re-creative, and creating powers. Activity in response to tie direction of adults during the child's early years not only fails to make the child creative, it prevents the development of his creative power. The only possible way in which a child's creative power and tendency can be devel- oped is by self-activity— that is activity in carrying out his own plans. The greatest '.evelation that can ever be made to a child is the revelation of his selfhood, or individuality, or the special image of God in him. This is the element in him which must be developed in order that he may do his special part in promoting the true progress of humanity. Control and spontaneity 131 Without the development of his selfhood a child cannot become a true representative of his Creator. No form of coercion ever kindled a soul. Every form of coercion dwarfs the self- hood and the creative power of a child. Every child loves to work in co-operation with father or mother until by some act of disrespect or of tyranny the golden bond of unity between the child and his parents IS broken. The child never breaks the bond. Chapter XIV Courtesy and reverence One of the much used maxims in regard to child training has been : "Children should be reverent to their elders". It is of much greater importance that the "elders" should be reverent to the children. When all the elders are vitally reverent to children— not to their own children only, but to all children— then all children will naturally be reverent to their elders. When all parents and other adults are genuinely courteous to the children, the children will be as genuinely courteous to adults and to each other, as their seniors are to them and to each other. Vital reverence and genuine courtesy were never developed in a child's char- acter by demanding them. They grow in the child heart not in response to orders from adults, but in response to reverence ar courtesy from adults. 132 Courtesy and reverence 133 The reverence and courtesy of adults must be real. They must not be super- ficial forms merely, they must be the joyous expression of true feelinf:s of reverence and courtesy in the hearts of the adults. Demanding and ordering courtesy from a child makes courtesy a formal matter, and prevents the outgrowth of real courtesy from within the child's heart. The re- sponse of the child is not true courtesy. The reverence given on order is not genuine reverence, it is awe combined with fear. Reverence and courtesy compelled from the child injure the child in two ways; by preventing the growth of true reverence and vital courtesy in his heart, and by com- pelling him to be a hypocrite. A hypocrite is the meanest thing that can be made out of a 1. ing created in the image of God. Reverence and courtesy given in response to loving reverence and genuine consider- ation are as natural as the response of the leaf buds and flower buds to the warmth of the sunshine in the Spring. 134 Adtdt and child The greatest need of humanity in all Its dealings with the child is a more pro- found reverence for the child himself, and for the essential value of the individual soul. Reverence for the individual soul is the real foundation for freedom; for democracy as revealed by Christ. : Chapter XV Freedom and obedience Freedom has meant merely freedom for men; it now means freedom for women too. Freedom for the child will be the greatest step in htiman development. "Free obedience must take the place of blind obedience." All children love to be obedient till some one chills their love. "All evil springs from unused good." So said Plato, Goethe, Ruskin. It is clear- ly true that misused good develops into its corresponding evil. So does every unde- veloped element in the child's nature. Obedience perverted by parental or other adult unwisdom naturally and inevitably degenerates into disobedience. Respect for law in the child naturally becomes rebellion against law, when adults are tyrannical and coercive. Every good element in the nature of a 135 136 Adult and child child will degrade him if it is undeveloped or misused. This should be one of the most suggestive truths to all who have the privilege of assisting in the training of children, because the higher the good ele- ment in a child's heart is, the more quickly and the more deeply it will degrade him if unused, or especially if misused. The highest way in which adulthood can co-operate with childhood in its develop- ment, is by guiding it in the use of the good elements in its life. Law should be directive to the child, instead of restrictive. The child loves the law of the game, and all directive law. This love of law which is natural in the child's life is capable of growth till it becomes one of the supreme elements in his developed and still develop- ing moral nature. When law is used coercively love of law becomes hatred of tyranny, and the child gets a character-destroying attitude to law. Respect for the law of the game should develop, will develop, under respectful Freedom and obedience 137 guidance by making law a .lircctive instead of a restraining force, into respect for law in the schwl, an.l in society— in town, city, state and empire or conniry; and ulti- mately into conscious respect for the laws of our own lives and for the laws of God. Chapter XVI Coercion weakens Coercion in every form interferes with growth, and must therefore prevent the use of the good elements in the lives of children. Coercion weakens and degrades character because it interferes with the use of the child's powers, and all unused or misused powers for good are certain to become powers for evil, negatively or positively, usually both. Coercion may stop wrong doing, but only while the coercive agent is present; and even then it is the most ineffectual, the most dangerous, and the most com- temptible means of stopping wrong doing. The old training stopped, when it could, not only wrong doing, but doing. Doing what the child plans is the supreme way of developing a child's selfhood and making him conscious of it, of revealing his other 1^8 Coercion weakens 139 powers related to his selfhood, and of un- folding to him higher visions of duty. When doing makes a child conscious of his special power, it gives him the only true revelation of his duty to God and to man. Coercion must dwarf power, and when dwarfed and unused, power becomes de- structive of character. Evil springs from misused good. If you always plan for a boy, his own power to plan will become useless; worse than this, it will become an element of evil instead of good. When authority is substituted for reason, the child will become unreasonable. The child should have a life of his own, and in it he should make his own plans' and try independently to work them out.' In the range of his own life you should be his partner, to provide him with ma- terials and tools to carry out his plans, not yours. It is impertinence and destructive im- pertinence for you to interfere with your 140 Adult and child child, when he is trying to achieve his own plans in his own life department. In his own department the child should be free to decide what to do as well as how to do it. Your duty is to approve his effort — not from a man's standpoint but from a child's. Chapter XVII Co-operation stimulates The parent who shows real interest in a child's work, and who expresses kindly appreciation of his efforts will help to kindle his boy better than he could in any other way, and to kindle him is the most vitally productive result that can be achieved in the development of his character and his power. The father should be ready to respond cheerfully and help his child, when he has made a plan too great for him to work out alone. Such co-operation, when the father's experience and skill help to achieve the child's plan, will form a bond of unity between father and son of a vitally pro- ductive character. A boy whose father is his partner in his work, will be glad to be his father's partner in his father's work. Every boy whose father is respectful to him rejoices to be his father's partner 141 it", U 142 Adult and child in doing work planned by his father for the benefit of the home. Work should be joy, not merely labor. When a boy works with his father he is proud to have the honor of doing so, and gradually he will become conscious of his power to render joyous and loving service to father and the other members of the family. Father should be careful always not to chill his son's joy by criticism of his work. Praise the child's work. Remember to ?.hink of the effort he makes, not of the in- trinsic value of the result of his effort. West, the great portrait painter, said his mother's kiss made him a painter. She found him trying to paint a portrait of the baby, when he was a boy, and enthusias- tically kissed him. West's portrait of the baby was a crude picture with many defects. His mother might have criticised it, and destroyed his interest. She kissed him and kindled him at the centre of his greatest power. The four-year-old girl is sweeping with her little broom. Mother says, "O Susan, Co-operation stimulates 143 you are in mother's way." At four Susan enjoyed working for mother. When she was graduated from high school at eighteen she had power to help, but she had lost the joy of service. Who robbed her of that elemental moral power? Not God! Not tl.e devil. Mother did. Men used to believe that the more dis- tasteful work is to a child the more it de- veloped his character. Vitally productive work always gives joy— joy in planning, joy in working, joy in achieving. Sorrow and tears are opposed to the best develop- ment of a child. Men with the mournful philosophy of evil and without vital faith in God taught that as "the earth is a vale of tears" children shoxild be trained to endure sorrow when young so that they might be able to en- dure the evils they would meet in daily life, when they grow up. Children must not be trained to endure evil but to overcome it. Chapter XVIII Life should be joyous Children should be trained to see that the world is full of joy, so that when they meet sorrow they will be sure — with an absolute sureness — that they have within their reach unlimited joy to enable them to overcome their sorrow. Children trained to believe that life should be joyous — not teary — will find at maturity that their sorrows have not left any scars on their hearts. Their joys live on as elements of power to brighten their own lives and the lives of their friends. You may train children to reject the sor- rows that come to them and retain in their lives only the joys. It is a crime against the child to put a blight on his happiness. The old faith in solemnity in the home and school was evil in its every influence on yoimg life. Whoever puts a smile on a child's face is working for God. 144 Life should be joyous 145 The surest way to keep a child happy is to let him play and work, without impu- dently planning his play or his work. The reason a child is happier at play and at work than at any other time, is that play and work are the only supremely vital agencies for developing the child com- pletely, physically, intellectually and spirit- ually. The reason they are thus develop- ing is that they develop the powers of joy- ous interest and productively constructive achievement in his character. The development of joy power and achieving power shot ! J be two of the su- preme aims in child training. "But," many yet say, "the child does not like work. He will play all day but he soon tires of work." Every child likes work. He soon tires of work / plan for him. If he continued to work energetically at work I plan for him, it would be a proof that his original power had been dwarfed by bad training. No boy tires of working with materials suited to his stage of developme it, if he is free to make and the carry out his plans. 146 Adult and child "I suppose a boy would work all day if you let him do as he likes," answers the old trainer. Doing things he likes to do, is the only process by which he may learn to transform conditions in harmony with his own plans based on his own vision, and, therefore, it is the most vital training process for making a transformer of con- ditions in adulthood. If you train your child by allowing him to work at what he likes to do, when he is a child, work in manhood will not be labor, it will still be joy. A man who is not on the alert in adult- hood to see conditions that should be trans- formed into better conditions can never become a truly vital citizen. Allowed to work freely at work he likes because he plans it, a child becomes an independent representative of the Divine who works joyously for the purposes revealed to him. Chapter XIX Achieving vision All children are transformers of con- ditions as soon as they can creep. This roveals the most productive tendency in human character. That most men have practically lost this tendency in manhood is the clearest evidence of the weakness and destructiveness of the training of the past. The saddest tragedy of human life is the loss of this tendency to achieve our visions. Bad training has robbed most men of vision power, and of achieving power. Froude says, "Every one of us whatever our speculative opinions knows better than he practises, and recognizes a better law than he obeys." This is the great hu- man tragedy. When we first crept we tried to achieve every vision that we saw. God meant this tendency to continue to grow stronger in us. We lose the tendency 147 148 Adult and child because our training is dwarfing our indi- vidual power. The tendency to achieve our visions and our plans should increase in power more rapidly than any other power, because it is the most productive element in our char- acter. The highest elements of character should develop most rapidly. It is a serious crime against a child to rob him of his greatest power — his natural achieving tendency. We do this always when we substitute our motives or plans for his by compulsion, or when we merely stop his doing. Don 'ting and stopping are essentially evil and weaken human power in its highest department. Negative training produces negative character. To change the natural positive achieving tendency into the negative type that in adulthood knows better than it does, is the most serious crime against childhood. This crime produces the greatest human tragedy. We may help to produce men and women who do not " > as well as they know by Achievitifi vision 149 teaching them good principles without in- creasing their battery power. You may- know very clearly that you wish to drive your automobile up the hill ahead of you, but you will not get up the hill unless the battery power of your machine is in good order. The emotional power of a man is the battery power of his life, and it should be very carefully trained. You may weaken the influence of your child for good not merely by failure to de- velop his emotional nature, but by develop- ing his good feelings without guiding him to achieve the good he plans in response to his good thoughts and his good feelings or emotions. Some people used to think they had re- ligion when they stirred their feelings to the glory thrill by singing emotional hymns. They were merely weakly selfish, happy because they had temporary thrills of over- powering emotion. When good emotion is kindled in the life of a child it becomes too often a weakness instead of a blessing because it is not used F ' m 150 AiluU and chUd in impelling M"< ^ the doing of some definite good, "'liis is one of many illus- trations of t [jlilosophic truth that "Evil springs; f t:i u lused good." "But" pers- ts ; . objector, "while the child may w.rt -j: Ja" * . let him do what he like: ro ,tn, ' ^> nt stick to one kind of work.' H . .rk would not be very developim; to h m he did "stick to one kind of w<.rk' . If h* does ten kinds of work each day he has become conscious of power to transform conditions in ten ways, so this result is ten times more im- portant than transforming in only one way. As he grows older he will become conscious of moral conditions which he should help to transform into better conditions, and he will have the transforming habit. The only vital way you can develop the transforming habit is by providing suita- ble materials and tools (not a box of tools) for your child and giving him freedom in planning and carrying out his plans. Yov: should show vital sympathy with him, and appreciate his efforts. You should be Achieving vision 151 ready with advice and help, when he asks for it — but not before. No adult can make plans that will fully arouse the interest of a child. By making a child's plans for him, you rob him of initiative : of power to plan inde- pendently, so that he may becc*me creative and not merely imitative; of the essential power of vision; and of the achieving power which is the supreme power ti at most completely de\ elops his other powers and gives them rea value to humanity and to his Creator. i n Chapter XX Habits Locke said, "The g. .at thing is what habits you settle." Another educational writer has said, "Good habits are better than good principles." Think this state- ment over carefully before you reject it. Many men have good principles without achieving much for their fellowmen. The habit of tiansforming conditions into better conditions is more comprehensively vital than any principle. Principles become vital powers only when we develop the habit of applying them^ to the problems of our lives. It is more vita' '.- love right and do it than to know facts or commit catechisms to memory. Even many leaders have incorrect ideals in regard to the formation of habits. Hab- its do not become vital elements in char- acter, when the child acts under the domi- nant control of his parents or teachers. 152 Habits 153 Most people think that if they compel a child to go in a certain path today, and on through the years of his childhood, they are forming in him the habit of following in that path always. They are really forming in his life the habit of submission without thought. That is the basis of slavery. Children whose habits are formed in this way have no vital habits. If they are weak types they may listlessly follow in the path laid out; if they are strong when they leave home, or sooner, they break the bonds of such superficial habits, and being left with- out vital habits they often wreck their lives. It is a pathetic experience for a father who supposed he had given his son good habits to learn of the downfall of his boy; how helpless he appears as he tells his friends how carefully he trained his son, and thought he had made him form good habits. No one but the child himself can develop his habits. The motive that leads to the child's act must be his own, if repetition is to develop a vitally controlHng habit. 154 Adult and child Repetition of the same act is not the true basis of vital habit. Repetition of the use of the same fundamental principles in the achievement of our own visions in ac- cordance with our own plans, develops a really vital directive habit. The parent or teacher should have much to do with the development of the child's habits. He should kindle his nature and reveal ideals of trueness and pureness adapted to his stage of development, and rxot too high for him to take into his life as guiding principles. He should act as a comrade, lead him to despise what is mean, unclean, selfish and ungenerous, and to admire what is manly, frank, clean, and generous; and never fail to show real appreciation by word, or hand clasp, or smile, when he is forming habits by doing things he decides to do himself based on these principles. The one thing to be avoided is attempting to develop habits for the boy by compulsion or by external pressure of any kind. No man can form habits for another and engraft them on the other's life. Habits 155 When we truly reverence the child's individuality we shall give up the old pro- cess of engrafting by compulsion, and learn that all soul growth must be from within out. When we study the child reverently and wisely we shall recognize him as a self-active soul with practically unlimited powers of growth from within, and not as a mere being whom we are to mould, whom we are to inoculate with certain elements of char- acter, whom we are to "sandpaper into a saint" by making him smooth on the out- side, and whom we are to coerce into paths of rectitude by corporal punishment, or by other coercive measures. "God neither ingrafts not inoculates. Development is from life through life to Ufe."— Froebel. "Free obedience must take the place of blind obedience."— Froebel. "A free mind ought to learn nothing as a slave."— Plato. Most trainers of children try to plant habits in children's lives instead of sowing ise Adult and child the seeds of habits. Many sow seeds of habits without preparing the inner life soil of the child, and most of ihose who sow seeds of habits, think they have to make the seeds grow. If we keep the child in right conditions with plenty of oppor- tunity for work with sympathetic partner- ship with his parents, the boy will grow his own character habits. Chapter XXI Power and character Emerson said, "Personal force never goes out of fashion." Personal force of character is developed, when the child is kindled at the centre of his personal self- hood, or individual power; and when his emotional power is developed fully and controlled by true wisdom. No other way has been revealed by which a child may become conscious of his special power — and each child has some special power — except to let him be self-active by doing things he plans himself. You may make your child an aimless failure in life instead of a triumphant suc- cess by interfering with his freedom in working out his own plans, especially during his early years. Your child will grow to be relatively a failure, when considered with what he 157 I ■M 158 Adult and child might have been unless he becomes con- scious of his real selfhood The greatest thing a child's parents and teachers can do for him is to help him to become conscious of his greatest element of power. Most parents and teachers yet are con- tent to develop a child's power to study and memorize certain kinds of knowledge. These processes develop just two powers — memory and concentration, and both powers are developed in the weakest possi- ble way by ordinary school processes. Such concentration and memory de- velopment are storing processes only, and therefore cannot develop vital character, which is essentially propelling, productive, creative and achieving. Such work in the schools leaves the vital elements of human power and character unkindled and undeveloped, and life can never be so productive for the child him- self or for humanity as it should have been. Most parents and teachers yet test the success of a child's educational develop- Power and character 159 ment by his brightness in book work. This is the most unreUable of all the tests. Few head boys become great leaders in dealing with the problems of life. Edward Everett Hale said that a distin- guished teacher told him that few parents had ever forgiven him if he said; "Your boy is thoroughly pure and good, but he is not quick or bright"; but if he said, "Your boy learns his lessons well; he is at the head of his class", nine out of ten parent were satisfied even if he added, "I wish I could say he was honest, pure and unself- ish." Cleverness in book knowledge is abso- lutely unreliable as a test of character, because to be clever in study does not call into action any of the fundamentally vital elements of power and character. A boy at an examination wrote, "A col- lege is a cemetery of learning." So long as schools and colleges direct attention to learning from books, mainly, and neglect the development of the child's productive character powers, this deunition will entitle 160 Adult and child the boy who wrote it to receive a good pass mark for his definition. President Eliot said, "The fruit of liberal education is not learning, but the capacity and desire to learn; not knowledge, but power." We should never forget that all children "desire to learn" in response to the leading of their natural wonder power, till they go to school, and are changed from problem finders to problem solvers. Aristotle wrote, "The intellect is per- fected not by knowledge, but by activity." This statement is more comprehensively vital than the statement of President Eliot. Montaigne said, "To know by heart is not to know at all." Sir Joshua Fitch said, "Of all the exer- cises of the school there is none which has so little heart learning as learning by heart." Miss Blow said, "Knowledge is good, but creation is life." There are many things more vitally im- portant in the development of character than knowledge. Some day the work of Power and character 161 the schools will be based on the child, and not on the studies to be learned; on the specified human powers regarded as vital, and not on preparation for the passing of prescribed examinations. Thring, the great English headmaster said; "Knowledge with its broken victuals, and its half-starved paupers snatching at the scraps, has lorded it long enough. It is high ti'ne to turn to better things, to liberty, to the free use of active powers" Never forget that all the old educational processes that are based, mainly, on the direct development of the child's memory are ineffective even in the development of memory itself, and useless in the culti- vation of real individual executive power, if not destructive of it. Remember especially that all teaching is weak if not positively evil, that weakens the individual power of the child by the processes used in communicating knowledge to him. You are responsible if you let any school dwarf your boy, by keeping him at work on the lowest levels of his power instead 162 Adult and child i.m of guiding him to the free use of his highest powers to develop his mind most fully, to promote constructive productivity, creative activity, and vital achieving character. Never worry yourself, nor your child, because he does not keep near the head of his class in book knowledge. On the whole that may be a hopeful indication. Chapter XXII Good and bad children Never call a child "bad". By doing so you define the ideal of badness instead of goodness in his mind. The man or woman who fixes in the na- ture of a child the idea that he is bad is an agent of evil. The ideal degrades the child even if the adult does not understand the senous results of the crime against the child Tram your child to do good, not merely to keep away from evil. A dodger of bad may be of no use to humanitv or to God Do not train your boy to be afraid of evil; tram him to understand that he can overcome the uTong. Give him faith in right so that he may believe that evil is not strong, when men and women of real faith attack it. One of the most pathetic illustrations ot human weakness is a man who says he beheves in God, and yet dreads to face the powers of evil. 163 164 Adult and child If there is a boy in your neighborhood who in your opinion is not as good as you think he should be, do not be a social craven and refuse to let your boy associate with him. The comradeship of your son may sweeten the boy's life and help him to be a true man. It is remarkable how many good (not goody) men were called bad when they were young. It is wonderful how many ways a boy may be bad in the opinion of old fellows who act as if they had never been boys themselves. The wickedest men in a community are sometimes men who assume to be Christ's followers, and yet spend a good deal of time manufacturing new sins for boys to commit. Some preachers and some teachers yet tell children not to associate with those whom they call "bad". Try to imorove them, and remind them of their predecessors who found fault with Christ because "He received sinners and even ate with them." If they will not improve, send your boy to Good and bad children 165 some other teacher, and try to get a better pastor. One of the clearest lessons taught by Christ was the value of social unity and the interdependence of the men and women and children of society. Do not risk your boy's future with a teacher who tries to rob the boy who probably more than any otht r boy in the neighborhood nciuis ccinrade- ship, of the right to social uniiy with his fellows. Help your child to become a doer of un- selfish things, not a mere dodger of evil --especially not a self-righteous dodger of his fellows. A mother came to a gentleman who was lecturing on educational subjects in her city and said; "I am the mother of the worst three-year-old child in this state. I was a teacher till I was married, and I know all about training children. I cannot understand his case. I have never left him alone during the time he was awake, and I have never permitted him to play with another child. I have punished him and punished him, so it cannot be my fault 166 Adult and child that he is bad. What would you advise me to do?" The heartless man replied; "If you are prepared to die, die. Your boy has no chance with you in control of his training. If you are not willing to die yet, get him an intelligent, jolly, young woman as comrade, and abdicate in her favor. Let her take him to a kinder- garten every day to see the children play and work. Tell her to get him the ma- terials he sees the other children using so that he may use them to make things that he likes to make. Ask her to invite other little children to play with him in your yard. When he is old enough let her take him and leave him in the kindergarten. You have stood between the child and God in almost every way possible. "You have robbed him of companionship and by doing that alone you have inter- fered with the growth of nearly every spirit- ual and communal element of his power. "By preventing the growth of his good elements of power, you have not desf oyed them. You have done much worse than that— you have perverted them. All Good and bad children 167 the powers of evil you say he possesses were gifts of his Creator as powers for good to make him sweet, and pure, and un- selfish, and sociable, and spiritual, but his mother • erverted them, and the identical elements intended to bless him and his fellowmen, you have used to degrade him. "A pure spring will make a pestilential marsh instead of a rippling stream if the freedom of its flow is prevented. You have stopped the free outflox- of the greatest elements in your child's life, and turned blessmgs into blighting evils. "You say he destroys the toys you buy for him just to gratify his destructive ten- dencies. This should prove to you that he has great natural constructive power. The elements of power that were given to make children constructive and ultimately productive will, when unused or misused, make them destructive. ^ "You strangled most of his good tenden- cies, as soon as he got out of his cradle. Unless you get them to work along natural hnes 'their ghosts will return in after years in the form of grovelling sensuality.' " Chapter XXIII The right of choice One unused or misused element of po'^er will weaken character. It may unbalance character. Will power without conscious power of choice may become mere stubborn wilful- ness. Begin very early to give your child the right of choosing his or her personal belong- ings. Take yotir little three-year-old J^rl with you when you are going to buy her a hair ribbon or a dress. Let her see severU ribbons or dress patterns at the price you intend to pay, and let the child choose the color or pattern she likes best. You spend exactly the same amount as you would have spent by treating the child's taste with contempt and choosing the color or pattern you liked best, and you make the child genuinely haopy. Better even than that, you make hor conscious of choice- power, which is essential in developimg effective will power. 168 The right of choice 169 Take your ten-year-old boy with you to a store. Tell the salesman the amount you can afford to pay for the boy's new suit. Get out several suits of different cut and color, and let the boy choose his own clothes. He has to wear them, not you. He will have a feeling much more developing to his better manhood, when he wears that suit, than he would have enjoyed if you had selected the same suit for him. Recognize in every department of your child's life his right of choice within the limit of directive law, or you miss three great opportunities for his true develop- ment; partnership with you, consciousness of the right of choice, and respect for di- rective law. The preservation of the harmony between liberty and law in your child's mind must be developed by experience and not by instruction, if it is to have vital influence in his moral force. You should not even choose the pro- fession or occupation your child is to follow through life. When he is old enough to think clearly, you should say, "I will not 170 Adult and child decide for you. I will give you advice as fully as I can, when you begin to consider the matter ; and when you have chosen after consideration, I will be your partner in giving the best preparation I can afford for your work." Two questions are often asked of teachers "What shall I make of my boy?" and "What do you think my boy is best fitted for?" The first is adult presumption; the second is considerate wisdom. The modem movement for vocational guidance in schools is most important. Parents, teachers, and graduating children should most carefully consider the step that will have most vital influence in de- ciding the future life of the children. In .the conference regarding the child's voca- tion, the child himself should be the central figure. Parents and teachers should be advisory comrades. Be sure that the decision in regard to the child's life work is not left to chance. Children should be trained early to under- stand the value of money, not for itself The right of choice 171 but for the uses that may be made of it. Thrift is a fundamental virtue. Wastefulness, indifference in regard to saving small things of small value, rags, papers, old rubbers, old metal, etc. is one of the universal sins. When grandpa gives five cents to a child and says, "Go and buy yourself some candy, dear," he does so from kindness of heart, but he is really giving the child a training in two character-destroying tendencies: wastefulness by spending money for what he does not need, and the gratification of appetite which may lay the foundation for degrading indulgence of appetite in later years. Even the food of children during their early years requires careful study by parents and physicians. It is quite possible to give a child debasing appetites by improper feeding before he is four years old. Every child should have a garden of his own where he may grow what he pleases, flowers or vegetables or both, not mainly for the profit there may be in his work. 172 Adult and child but for the moral and spiritual uplift of partnership with God in producing beauty and value. All that a boy can save from the produce of his garden or from any other way of earning money, he should be trained to deposit in his school bank in order to de- velop the important habit of thrift. Chapter XXIV Spiritual vision Relate your child to Nature. All child- ren love nature. Train your child to see the beauty of flowers and trees, of river and lake, of hill and dale. Let him find his own temple in the shady glen or under the hemlock on the hilltop. Let him enjoy the ecstasy of being alone in the open or in his chosen temple. He may have visions there that he could never get from books, or in the most beautiful temples ever built by man. He may not be conscious of his visions, but they will sink deep into his soul and in due time will become the centres of his spiritual vision and power. Do not try to fill your child's life with your adult spiritual visions. Spiritual dyspepsia is the most soul-destroying dis- ease known to humanity. Knowledgi^ cramming is absurdly wicked, spiritual cramming is infinitely worse. 17.3 174 Adult and child It is foolish to think that children can be trained to think by "letting other peo- ple's thoughts run through their heads"; it is more disastrously foolish to suppose that children's spiritual power can be de- veloped by letting other people's spiritual visions or ideals pass through their souls. Before a mental ideal can be understood we must have formed by experience ap- perceptive centres in our minds related to the new ideal. It is more vitally true that before new spiritual vision can come to our souls, we must have developed by experience apperceptive elements of cor- responding spiritual vision in our souls. The best way to prepare the soul of a child for spiritual insight and vitally un- folding spiritual vision, is tc relate him to God through Nature in her growth pro- cesses from life to higher life, and through the wonders of the universe. The greatest things in the child's life are developed by his consciousness of the unseen life in life and in life behind life. James Freeman Clarke wrote; "He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak." No Spiritual vision 175 man can preach or teach in words vital faith in unseen power to a child so as to kindle him, but it is easy to relate even a little child to Nature and the universe so that a definite consciousness of the un- seen power behind them and through them may be revealed to him. The supreme purposes in training a child should be: — 1. The revelation of his selfhood. 2. The revelation of his responsibility for using for humanity the special power he possesses. This is the only vital basis on which his sense of duty rests. 3. The consciousness that new power and new vision come to him only by using today the vision and power he has. 4. The most vitally developing con- sciousness of all, that there is an unseen power which is the source of all power. He should ultimately know that this power is God. These four elements are the vital ele- ments of strong and triumphantly happy character. 176 Adult and child Train your child to feel it in the fibre of his being that though he may fall, he cannot fail so long as h(" rises again and re- news the struggle towafls the crest. Lowell says, "The greatest ^ut the hero leaves his race is to have bt n a hero." Have faith in the children. You can never help your child to go higher than your faith in him. If you have perfect faith in him, he will come to have perfect faith in you. Be your child's genuine comrade. You cannot pass any spurious chumship on him. Develop the power of living with your children, not merely for them. Try to remember your own viewpoint in childhood, so that you may develop the vital power of looking at the child and his world from his standpoint in dealing with him, and in estimating the value of his work. With your child be as fully as you can be in head and in heart a child. Patterson Du Bois said that of the thou- sands of questions written to him while he was editor of the Sunday School Times, Spiritual vision 177 about training children, only one was based on the child's viewpoint. A great teacher said: "When I was four years old I got a pencil and some paper and I made a picture. It meant a great deal to me. It was a visible representation of an ideal of my own. My joy was in- tense. I ran to share my joy with my mother. She was busy. She glanced at my picture but saw nothing but meaning- less lines though the vision in my soul was clear and inspiring to me. She merely said, 'If I could not draw better than that I would not draw at all.' My mother shut a gate between her soul and mine that day that was nev re-opened." It is easy to shut gates between your soul and your child's soul. It is hard to re- open them. You may put a scar on your child's heart easily, without intending to do so, but you may not easily remove the scar. If you prick a tender leaf in the spring you will form a scar that will remain on the leaf till the autumn winds bear it away. It is a serious thing to scar a child's heart. MICROCOPY RESOIUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1^ ■ 50 3.2 2.2 2.0 1.8 A >^PPLIED IM/1GE Inc 1653 East Moin Street Rochester. New York 14609 USA (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone (716) 288- 5989 -Fox PV 178 Adult and child To the sensitively considerate heart of an adult — parent or teacher — there can be no memory more full of poignant regret than the memory of a child's face on which we put a dark shadow, or a tear that ran from a tender heart wounded by lack of sympathy and considerate response on our part. To keep our lives in tune with our children it will help to remember the re- morse of the father who wrote: 'Twas the dear little girl that I scolded — For, "Was it a moment Uke this," I said, "when she knew I was busy, To come romping in for a kiss? Come rowdying up from her mother And clamoring there at my knee For 'one 'ittle kiss for my dolly. And one 'ittle uzzer for me'?" God pity the heart that repelled her And the cold hand that turned her away! And take from the lips that denied her This answerless prayer of today! Take, Lord, from my memory forever That pitiful sob of despair. 'Spiritual vision 179 And the patter and trip of the little bare feet, And the one p"jrcing cry on the stair! Solomon said; "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Remember that . "HE" and "GO" are the most important words in Solomon's advice. Remember, too, that the word translated "train" in Solomon's advice is used only three times in the Bible and that it means clearing away difficulties that prevent vital action. y^ ■■■•»y Chapter XXV A vital educational creed I believe: That God is the Creator, the source of life, the essence of life which gives it the power of evolution to higher life, and the centre of universal unity. That God and the child are the essential elements in all true educational thought and investigation. Thti' n?f,n'3 highest destiny is unity or inner connection with God. That the perfect community of humanity is the only sure foundation f^'- the complete unity of humanity with God. That the fullest development of the individual is the true basis for the perfect community or inter-relationship of hu- manity. Race-inclusive ind: iduals form an individual race. T' ■- the highest function of education is tu ctid in the complete development of individuality as the true basis for the com- 180 A vital educational creed 181 munity of humanity and the unity of hu- manity with God. That the self-good of the child is the element of divinity in it. That no one can be a true teacher, until his reverence for the sacredness of individu- ality or self-hood is strong enough to pre- vent his interference with its perfect de- velopment. That self-activity— the activity of self- hood—is the only possible process by which self -hood or individuality can be developed. That activity in response 'f^ the direct suggestion or command of another is in no sense true self-activity. That every individual should be self- propulsive and self-directing; positive, not negative. That children who, during their school and college cources, study and act only in response to suggestions or instructions from their teachers, are being trained to be obe- dient followers merely, who may possibly act well under direction, but whose only positiveness of character results from their 182 Adult and child incidental training outside the school and college. That even responsive activity is infinitely better than receptive passivity on the part of the pupil; but the only true developing activity is that in which the child's ex- ecutive work results from its own origina- tive and directive powers. That self-expression is the only ideal of expression worthy of recognition by edu- cators. All lower ideals of expression, orally, or in writing, or by drawing, mod- eling, painting, or in any other way, are destructive of power. Expression should be the highest agency for developing power instead of destroying it. That the best test of efficiency of an edu- cational method is the amount of true self-activity it requires of the child in the originative, directive, and executive de- partments of its power. That there are evolutionary stages, or culture epochs, in the complete develop- ment of individual power and character. That complete development in maturity is impossible, unless there has been complete A vital educational creed 183 appropriate development in each of the preceding stages of evolution. That development is always arrested, when work adapted to a higher evclution- ary stage is forced prematurely upr the attention of a child. That it is a grievous wrong to give a child more knowledge or more power to acquire knowledge, without at the same time, and, as far as possible by the same process, increasing its power and tendency to use knowledge. That the educational methods of the past have developed the sensor at the ex- pense of the motor system, and that there- fore men have become more receptive than executive. Educational methods should develop the motor system and es- tablish the necessary reactions between the sensor and motor systems. That the power of problem discovery is the greatest intellectual power. The schools dwarf pupils by making them problem solvers only. Before children go to school they are problem discoverers as well as problem solvers. 184 Adult and child That the natural wonder-power and the power of problem discovery would in- crease throughout a man's whole life, :i their development were not arrested by unwise methods in schools. That wonder-power and problem-dis- covery, are the essential elements in alert and aggressive interest. That alert, aggressive, persistent, and self-active interest is the true stimulus to productive intellectual effort. That the child's attention should be self- active. Teachers have no right to control attention. Interest and attention act spon- taneously if the proper conditions of in- terest aie provided. Thp"^ <■ i"? always wrong to substitute the t interests for the child's in- terest teacher's duty is to provide condit. of interest adapted to the evo- lutionary stage of the child. That one of the most important duties of educators is to form by experience in the child's mind in the earliest stage of its development, as wide a range as possi- ble of apperceptive centers of feeling, that A vital educational creed 185 thoughts communicated during the period of conscious development may have vi- tality and meaning. The outer can never be made clear, unless there is in the mner at least a germ to which the outer may be related. That new knowledge becomes a part of our permanent mental equipment and an element in character only when the corres- ponding inner feeling and knowledge are aroused sufficiently to lead to a perfect unir^n between the old and new. The increase of knowledge should be by amal- gamation, not by mere accumulation. That the activity of the self-hood of the child is the only certain way of making the mind actively and aggressively apper- ceptive; the only way by which interest can become persistently investigative and truly stimulative. That the child's centre of interest is the true guide in the correlation or concentra- tion of studies. That Nature is the most attractive, the most suggestive, the most enlightening 186 Adult and child and the most productive cor elating centre for childhood. That the history of man's achievements, the revelation of the best ideals of civiliza- tion, and the co-ordination of the uplifting forces of society are the central rivers to which all educational streams should be tributary above the primary school, includ- ing the work in colleges and universities. That the physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures should be trained as a unity, and that the weakest department of power should receive most careful culture. That informal training is more pro- ductive than formal training in all depart- ments of human power. That children -c productive work better than idlentw^. They may not like the work we choose for them. It would indicate deterioration if they did. They like more developing work than ours, if we have wisdom sufficient to place them in conditions of proper independent choice. The power to choose wisely, to decide correctly, and to contrc' one's own powers in achieving good purposes, is even more A vital educational creed 1H7 important than the power of accomplish- ment, which becomes merely mechanical if divorced from orijjinality of conception. That it is not necessary to destroy a child's power in order to change it; direc- tion. Most of what has been called disci- pline in schools has crippled in order to control. That coercion is always destructive of character power. That while human tendency is not always towards the Divine, human power is al- ways divine. That if *^he child's power is used in crea- tive self-activity for right purposes, it will lift the child progressively towards the Divine.