"WHAT'S IN A NAME?"
It is an appropriate time to produce a book on English schools for little children, now that Nursery Schools have been specially selected for notice and encouragement by an enlightened Minister for Education. It was Madame Michaelis, who in 1890 originally and most appropriately used the term Nursery School as the English equivalent of a title suggested by Froebel[1] for his new institution, before he invented the word Kindergarten, a title which, literally translated, ran "Institution for the Care of Little Children."
[Footnote 1: Froebel's Letters, trans. Michaelis and Moore, p. 30.]
In England the word Nursery, which implies the idea of nurture, belongs properly to children, though it has been borrowed by the gardener for his young plants. In Germany it was the other way round; Froebel had to invent the term child garden to express his idea of the nurture, as opposed to the repression, of the essential nature of the child. Unfortunately the word Kindergarten while being naturalised in England had two distinct meanings attached to it. Well-to-do people began to send their children to a new institution, a child garden or play school. The children of the people, however, already attended Infant Schools, of which the chief feature was what Mr. Caldwell Cook calls "sit-stillery," and here the word Kindergarten, really equivalent to Nursery School, became identified with certain occupations, childlike in origin it is true, but formalised out of all recognition. How a real Kindergarten strikes a child is illustrated by the recent remark from a little new boy who had been with us for perhaps three mornings. "Shall I go up to the nursery now?" he asked.
The first attempt at a Kindergarten was made in 1837, and by 1848 Germany possessed sixteen. In that eventful year came the revolution in Berlin, which created such high hopes, doomed, alas! to disappointment. "Instead of the rosy dawn of freedom," writes Ebers,[2] himself an old Keilhau boy, "in the State the exercise of a boundless arbitrary power, in the Church dark intolerance." It must have been an easy matter to bring charges of revolutionary doctrines against the man who said so innocently, "But I—I only wanted to train up free-thinking, independent men."
[Footnote 2: Author of An Egyptian Princess, etc.]
It was from "stony Berlin," as Froebel calls it, that the edict went forth in the name of the Minister of Education entirely prohibiting Kindergartens in Prussia, and the prohibition soon spread. At the present time it seems to us quite fitting that the bitter attack upon Kindergartens should have been launched by Folsung, a schoolmaster, "who began life as an artilleryman." Nor is it less interesting to read that it was under the protection of Von Moltke himself that Oberlin schools were opened to counteract the attractions of the "godless" Kindergarten.
Little wonder that the same man who in 1813 had so gladly taken up arms to resist the invasion of Napoleon, and who had rejoiced with such enthusiasm in the prospect of a free and united Fatherland, should write in 1851:
"Wherefore I have made a firm resolve that if the conditions of German life will not allow room for the development of honest efforts for the good of humanity; if this indifference to all higher things continues—then it is my purpose next spring to seek in the land of union and independence a soil where my idea of education may strike deep root."
And to America he might have gone had he lived, but he died three months later, his end hastened by grief at the edict which closed the Kindergartens. The Prussian Minister announced, in this edict, that "it is evident that Kindergartens form a part of the Froebelian socialistic system, the aim of which is to teach the children atheism," and the suggestion that he was anti-Christian cut the old man to the heart. There had been some confusion between Froebel and one of his nephews, who had democratic leanings, and no doubt anything at all democratic did mean atheism to "stony Berlin" and its intolerant autocracy.
For a time, at least in Bavaria, a curious compromise was allowed. If the teacher were a member of the Orthodox Church, she might have her Kindergarten, but if she belonged to one of the Free Churches, it was permissible to open an Infant School, but she must not use the term Kindergarten.
Froebel was by no means of the opinion that, if only the teacher had the right spirit, the name did not matter. Rather did he hold with Confucius, whose answer to the question of a disciple, "How shall I convert the world?" was, "Call things by their right names." He refused to use the word school, because "little children, especially those under six, do not need to be schooled and taught, what they need is opportunity for development." He had great difficulty in selecting a name. Those originally suggested were somewhat cumbrous, e.g. Institution for the Promotion of Spontaneous Activity in Children; another was Self-Teaching Institution, and there was also the one which Madame Michaelis translated "Nursery School for Little Children."
But the name Kindergarten expressed just what he Wanted: "As in a garden, under God's favour, and by the care of a skilled intelligent gardener, growing plants are cultivated in accordance with Nature's laws, so here in our child garden shall the noblest of all growing things, men (that is, children), be cultivated in accordance with the laws of their own being, of God and of Nature."
To one of his students he writes: "You remember well enough how hard we worked and how we had to fight that we might elevate the Darmstadt crèche, or rather Infant School, by improved methods and organisation until it became a true Kindergarten. … Now what was the outcome of all this, even during my own stay at Darmstadt? Why, the fetters which always cripple a crèche or an Infant School, and which seem to cling round its very name—these fetters were allowed to remain unbroken. Every one was pleased with so faithful a mistress as yourself, … yet they withheld from you the main condition of unimpeded development, that of the freedom necessary to every young healthy and vigorous plant. … Is there really such importance underlying the mere name of a system?—some one might ask. Yes, there is. … It is true that any one watching your teaching would observe a new spirit infused into it, expressing and fulfilling the child's own wants and desires. You would strike him as personally capable, but you would fail to strike him as priestess of the idea which God has now called to life within man's bosom, and of the struggle towards the realisation of that idea—education by development—the destined means of raising the whole human race. … No man can acquire fresh knowledge, even at a school, beyond the measure which his own stage of development fits him to receive. … Infant Schools are nothing but a contradiction of child-nature. Little children especially those under school age, ought not to be schooled and taught, what they need is opportunity for development. This idea lies in the very name of a Kindergarten. … And the name is absolutely necessary to describe the first education of children."
For an actual definition of what Froebel meant by his Nursery School for Little Children or Kindergarten, it is only fair to go to the founder himself. He has left us two definitions or descriptions, one announced shortly before the first Kindergarten was opened, which runs:
"An institution for the fostering of human life, through the cultivation of the human instincts of activity, of investigation and of construction in the child, as a member of the family, of the nation and of humanity; an institution for the self-instruction, self-education and self-cultivation of mankind, as well as for all-sided development of the individual through play, through creative self-activity and spontaneous self-instruction."
A second definition is given in Froebel's reply to a proposal that he should establish "my system of education—education by development"—in London, Paris or the United States:
"We also need establishments for training quite young children in their first stage of educational development, where their training and instruction shall be based upon their own free action
