KINDERGARTENS.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1225, 6 February 1878, Page 3

KINDERGARTENS.

The annual meeting of the Frobel Society was held in London in December, Sir Charles Reed in the chair. The Frobel Society has for its object to promote the knowledge and extension' of the Kindergarten system which Frobel described. Sir Charles having addressed the meeting in support of the system, Miss Shirreff, President of the Society, read a paper on “The Kindergarten in relation to the school.” She said that if the Kindergarten were to be considered alone, and not as connected with later education, its importance was a secondary matter, but if considered as a thorough groundwork for all future education it was one of the most urgent questions of the day. A Kindergarten was not a child’s garden, though gardens were an important adjunct; but it was a garden of children, as we might say a garden of roses —a place of culture for the most wonderful thing that lives and grows upon the earth, the infant human being. The metaphor corresponds with that other which calls a training place for plants “a nursery.” In the schools children were taught that they are recipients of knowledge ; in Frobel’s system they were beings endowed with faculties of many kinds that must develop freely according to their nature, that must not be urged in this direction or cramped in another, but he placed in the most favourable circumstances to attain their full growth. The ordinary schoolmaster thought most of what the children knew, of what their memory had re " a 'P etl ready for use ; Frobel, most of what were, of what they could do, and ot wnat form they could give to the thought or reeling that was in„them. The school must bein a great measure devoted to giving certain kinds of ko9wledp—to iuptmtion ratllfF w* ll

education; for time is short, and the exigencies of life require particular kinds of knowledge, Frobel rejected all instruction for little children that was addressed to the memory alone ; he presented objects to them —form, colour, tangible and visible properties not words and symbols. He asked them to learn nothing that they could not completely understand, and he did not seek to make them understand anything but what they could observe and compare for themselves. By specific “gifts” and exceptions the children were taught to observe resemblance and differences, to reason from one thing to another, to observe forms and direction of lines, and to reproduce them ; to use accurate terms, to become familiar in a concrete form with the operations of arithmetic up to fractions, to know in the same manner many geometrical figures and truths concerning them. Physical training was an integral [part of Frobel’s method, the games and occupations being framed to employ the eye, the ear, the hand, and to habituate them to delicate and accurate exercise. He would have no dim perception of sights or sounds, no uncertain movements of the fingers, and the occupations by means of which his training was given afforded full scope also to the child’s natural instinct of activity, and tended to awaken and develope the creative faculty inherent in man. Thus children learnt to work ns well as to understand, and to reproduce forms as well as to distinguish them. In the games the limbs were used to rhythmical movements, which exorcised the ear at the same time, and, while kindling the truest childish mirth, kept the mind awake to perceptions of order and harmony. Besides the faculties of observation, discrimination, reasoning, and imagination, a most important quality was trained, without which the rest lost their highest value—the quality of accuracy. The child trained in the Kindergarten did none but accurate work ; it got into the habit of knowing and doing thoroughly. There was no room for slipshod performance. We had only to consider what a child is and knows when it comes to school at seven or eight years old, and what it has to be taught during school time to appreciate the difference it would make if children came with senses and intelligence prepared as in the Kindergarten. The difficulty of teaching a child to read is that it cannot perceive accurately the difference of form in the letters ; of teaching to write the same, with the addition of the manual difficulty arising from feeble and clumsy hands. All these hindrances are cleared away by the time a child has been one year in the Kindergarten. In all classes of schools —the highest, those for the middle-class, and those for the poor—the advantage is felt. Especially where (hose trained in the Kindergarten take up a manual employment the benefit of early training is felt in accuracy of eye and hand, in sureness and delicacy of manipulation. Experience shows that the Kindergarten is not merely play—that it is a part of education.