Chapter II: Infant Gardens

Dickens wrote the following article for Household Words in 1855. It reveals a surprising mastery of the vital principles of "the new education." He wrote the article to direct attention to the work of the Baroness Von Buelow, who had come to England to introduce the kindergarten system. Dickens's works show that he had long been a close student of Froebel's philosophy. The article must always take a front rank as a strikingly clear, comprehensive, and sympathetic exposition of the principles and processes of the kindergarten. Kindergartens were called "infant gardens" when first introduced into England.

Seventy or eighty years ago there was a son born to the Pastor
Froebel, who exercised his calling in the village of Oberweissbach, in
the principality of Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt. The son, who was called
Frederick, proved to be a child of unusually quick sensibilities,
keenly alive to all impressions, hurt by discords of all kinds; by
quarrelling of men, women, and children, by ill-assorted colours,
inharmonious sounds. He was, to a morbid extent, capable of receiving
delight from the beauties of Nature, and, as a very little boy, would
spend much of his time in studying and enjoying, for their own sake,
the lines and angles in the Gothic architecture of his father's
church. Who does not know what must be the central point of all the
happiness of such a child? The voice of its mother is the sweetest of
sweet sounds, the face of its mother is the fairest of fair sights,
the loving touch of her lip is the symbol to it of all pleasures of
the sense and of the soul. Against the thousand shocks and terrors
that are ready to afflict a child too exquisitely sensitive, the
mother is the sole protectress, and her help is all-sufficient.
Frederick Froebel lost his mother in the first years of his childhood,
and his youth was tortured with incessant craving for a sympathy that
was not to be found.

The Pastor Froebel was too busy to attend to all the little fancies of
his son. It was his good practice to be the peaceful arbiter of the
disputes occurring in the village, and, as he took his boy with him
when he went out, he made the child familiar with all the quarrels of
the parish. Thus were suggested, week after week, comparisons between
the harmony of Nature and the spite and scandal current among men. A
dreamy, fervent love of God, a fanciful boy's wish that he could make
men quiet and affectionate, took strong possession of young Frederick,
and grew with his advancing years. He studied a good deal. Following
out his love of Nature, he sought to become acquainted with the
sciences by which her ways and aspects are explained; his
contemplation of the architecture of the village church ripened into a
thorough taste for mathematics, and he enjoyed agricultural life
practically, as a worker on his father's land. At last he went to
Pestalozzi's school in Switzerland.

Then followed troublous times, and patriotic war in Germany, where
even poets fought against the enemy with lyre and sword. The quick
instincts, and high, generous impulses of Frederick Froebel were
engaged at once, and he went out to battle on behalf of Fatherland in
the ranks of the boldest, for he was one of Luetzow's regiment--a troop
of riders that earned by its daring an immortal name. Their fame has
even penetrated to our English concert rooms, where many a fair
English maiden has been made familiar with the dare-devil patriots of
which it was composed by the refrain of the German song in honour of
their prowess--"Das ist Luetzow's fliegende, wilde Jagd." Having
performed his duty to his country in the ranks of its defenders,
Froebel fell back upon his love of nature and his study of triangles,
squares, and cubes. He had made interest that placed him in a position
which, in many respects, curiously satisfied his tastes--that of
Inspector to the Mineralogical Museum in Berlin. The post was
lucrative, its duties were agreeable to him, but the object of his
life's desire was yet to be attained.

For the unsatisfied cravings of his childhood had borne fruit within
him. He remembered the quick feelings and perceptions, the incessant
nimbleness of mind proper to his first years, and how he had been
hemmed in and cramped for want of right encouragement and sympathy. He
remembered, too, the ill-conditioned people whose disputes had been
made part of his experience, the dogged children, cruel fathers,
sullen husbands, angry wives, quarrelsome neighbours; and surely he
did not err when he connected the two memories together. How many men
and women go about pale-skinned and weak of limb, because their
physical health during infancy and childhood was not established by
judicious management. It is just so, thought Froebel, with our minds.
There would be fewer sullen, quarrelsome, dull-witted men or women if
there were fewer children starved or fed improperly in heart and
brain. To improve society--to make men and women better--it is
requisite to begin quite at the beginning, and to secure for them a
wholesome education during infancy and childhood. Strongly possessed
with this idea, and feeling that the usual methods of education, by
restraint and penalty, aim at the accomplishment of far too little,
and by checking natural development even do positive mischief, Froebel
determined upon the devotion of his entire energy, throughout his
life, to a strong effort for the establishment of schools that should
do justice and honour to the nature of a child. He resigned his
appointment at Berlin, and threw himself, with only the resources of a
fixed will, a full mind, and a right purpose, on the chances of the
future.

At Keilhau, a village of Thuringia, he took a peasant's cottage, in
which he proposed to establish his first school--a village boys'
school. It was necessary to enlarge the cottage; and, while that was
being done, Froebel lived on potatoes, bread, and water. So scanty was
his stock of capital on which his enterprise was started, that, in
order honestly to pay his workmen, he was forced to carry his
principle of self-denial to the utmost. He bought each week two large
rye loaves, and marked on them with chalk each day's allowance.
Perhaps he is the only man in the world who ever, in so literal a way,
chalked out for himself a scheme of diet.

After labouring for many years among the boys at Keilhau,
Froebel--married to a wife who shared his zeal, and made it her labour
to help to the utmost in carrying out the idea of her husband's
life--felt that there was more to be accomplished. His boys came to
him with many a twist in mind or temper, caught by wriggling up
through the bewilderments of a neglected infancy. The first sproutings
of the human mind need thoughtful culture; there is no period of life,
indeed, in which culture is so essential. And yet, in nine out of ten
cases, it is precisely while the little blades of thought and buds of
love are frail and tender that no heed is taken to maintain the soil
about them wholesome, and the air about them free from blight. There
must be Infant Gardens, Froebel said; and straightway formed his
plans, and set to work for their accomplishment.

He had become familiar in cottages with the instincts of mothers, and
the faculties with which young children are endowed by Nature. He
never lost his own childhood from memory, and being denied the
blessing of an infant of his own, regarded all the little ones with
equal love. The direction of his boys' school--now flourishing
vigorously--he committed to the care of a relation, while he set out
upon a tour through parts of Germany and Switzerland to lecture upon
infant training and to found Infant Gardens where he could. He founded
them at Hamburg, Leipzig, Dresden, and elsewhere. While labouring in
this way he was always exercising the same spirit of self-denial that
had marked the outset of his educational career. Whatever he could
earn was for the children, to promote their cause. He would not spend
upon himself the money that would help in the accomplishment of his
desire, that childhood should be made as happy as God in his wisdom
had designed it should be, and that full play should be given to its
energies and powers. Many a night's lodging he took, while on his
travels, in the open fields, with an umbrella for his bedroom and a
knapsack for his pillow.

So beautiful a self-devotion to a noble cause won recognition. One of
the best friends of his old age was the Duchess Ida of Weimar, sister
to Queen Adelaide of England, and his death took place on the 21st of
June, three years ago, at a country seat of the Duke of Meiningen. He
died at the age of seventy, peaceably, upon a summer day, delighting
in the beautiful scenery that lay outside his window, and in the
flowers brought by friends to his bedside. Nature, he said, bore
witness to the promises of revelation. So Froebel passed away.

And Nature's pleasant robe of green,
Humanity's appointed shroud, enwraps
His monument and his memory.

Wise and good people have been endeavouring of late to obtain in this
country a hearing for the views of this good teacher, and a trial for
his system. Only fourteen years have elapsed since the first Infant
Garden was established, and already Infant Gardens have been
introduced into most of the larger towns of Germany. Let us now
welcome them with all our hearts to England.

The whole principle of Froebel's teaching is based on a perfect love
for children, and a full and genial recognition of their nature, a
determination that their hearts shall not be starved for want of
sympathy; that since they are by Infinite Wisdom so created as to find
happiness in the active exercise and development of all their
faculties, we, who have children round about us, shall no longer
repress their energies, tie up their bodies, shut their mouths, and
declare that they worry us by the incessant putting of the questions
which the Father of us all has placed in their mouths, so that the
teachable one forever cries to those who undertake to be its guide,
"What shall I do?" To be ready at all times with a wise answer to that
question, ought to be the ambition of every one upon whom a child's
nature depends for the means of healthy growth. The frolic of
childhood is not pure exuberance and waste. "There is often a high
meaning in childish play," said Froebel. Let us study it, and act upon
hints--or more than hints--that Nature gives. They fall into a fatal
error who despise all that a child does as frivolous. Nothing is
trifling that forms part of a child's life.

That which the mother awakens and fosters,
When she joyously sings and plays;
That which her love so tenderly shelters.
Bears a blessing to future days.

We quote Froebel again, in these lines, and we quote others in which
he bids us

Break not suddenly the dream
The blessed dream of infancy;
In which the soul unites with all
In earth, or heaven, or sea, or sky.

But enough has already been said to show what he would have done. How
would he do it?

Of course it must be borne in mind, throughout the following sketch of
Froebel's scheme of infant training, that certain qualities of mind
are necessary to the teacher. Let nobody suppose that any scheme of
education can attain its end, as a mere scheme, apart from the
qualifications of those persons by whom it is to be carried out. Very
young children can be trained successfully by no person who wants
hearty liking for them, and who can take part only with a proud sense
of restraint in their chatter and their play. It is in truth no
condescension to become in spirit as a child with children, and nobody
is fit to teach the young who holds a different opinion. Unvarying
cheerfulness and kindness, the refinement that belongs naturally to a
pure, well-constituted woman's mind are absolutely necessary to the
management of one of Froebel's Infant Gardens.

Then, again, let it be understood that Froebel never wished his system
of training to be converted into mere routine to the exclusion of all
that spontaneous action in which more than half of every child's
education must consist. It was his purpose to show the direction in
which it was most useful to proceed, how best to assist the growth of
the mind by following the indications Nature furnishes. Nothing was
farther from his design, in doing that, than the imposition of a check
on any wholesome energies. Blindman's buff, romps, puzzles, fairy
tales, everything in fact that exercises soundly any set of the
child's faculties, must be admitted as a part of Froebel's system. The
cardinal point of his doctrine is--take care that you do not exercise
a part only of the child's mind or body; but take thorough pains to
see that you encourage the development of its whole nature. If
pains--and great pains--be not taken to see that this is done,
probably it is not done. The Infant Gardens are designed to help in
doing it.

The mind of a young child must not be trained at the expense of its
body. Every muscle ought, if possible, to be brought daily into
action; and, in the case of a child suffered to obey the laws of
Nature by free tumbling and romping, that is done in the best manner
possible. Every mother knows that by carrying an infant always on the
same arm its growth is liable to be perverted. Every father knows the
child's delight at being vigorously danced up and down, and much of
this delight arises from the play then given to its muscles. As the
child grows, the most unaccustomed positions into which it can be
safely twisted are those from which it will receive the greatest
pleasure. That is because play is thus given to the muscles in a form
they do not often get, and Nature--always watchful on the child's
behalf--cries, We will have some more of that. It does us good. As it
is with the body, so it is with the mind, and Froebel's scheme of
infant education is, for both, a system of gymnastics.

He begins with the newborn infant, and demands that, if possible, it
shall not be taken from its mother. He sets his face strongly against
the custom of committing the child during the tenderest and most
impressible period of its whole life to the care and companionship of
an ignorant nursemaid, or of servants who have not the mother's
instinct, or the knowledge that can tell them how to behave in its
presence. Only the mother should, if possible, be the child's chief
companion and teacher during at least the first three years of its
life, and she should have thought it worth while to prepare herself
for the right fulfilment of her duties. Instead of tambour work, or
Arabic, or any other useless thing that may be taught at girls'
schools, surely it would be a great blessing if young ladies were to
spend some of their time in an Infant Garden, that might be attached
to every academy. Let them all learn from Froebel what are the
requirements of a child, and be prepared for the wise performance of
what is after all to be the most momentous business of their lives.

The carrying out of this hint is indeed necessary to the complete and
general adoption of the infant-garden system. Froebel desired his
infants to be taught only by women, and required that they should be
women as well educated and refined as possible, preferring amiable
unmarried girls. Thus he would have our maidens spending some part of
their time in playing with little ones, learning to understand them,
teaching them to understand; our wives he would have busy at home,
making good use of their experience, developing carefully and
thoughtfully the minds of their children, sole teachers for the first
three years of their life; afterward, either helped by throwing them
among other children in an Infant Garden for two or three hours every
day, or, if there be at home no lack of little company, having Infant
Gardens of their own.

Believing that it is natural to address infants in song, Froebel
encouraged nursery songs, and added to their number. Those contributed
by him to the common stock were of course contributed for the sake of
some use that he had for each; in the same spirit--knowing play to be
essential to a child--he invented games; and those added by him to the
common stock are all meant to be used for direct teaching. It does not
in the least follow, and it was not the case, that he would have us
make all nursery rhymes and garden sports abstrusely didactic. He
meant no more than to put his own teaching into songs and games, to
show clearly that whatever is necessary to be said or done to a young
child may be said or done merrily or playfully; and although he was
essentially a schoolmaster, he had no faith in the terrors commonly
associated with his calling.

Froebel's nursery songs are associated almost invariably with bodily
activity on the part of the child. He is always, as soon as he becomes
old enough, to do something while the song is going on, and the
movements assigned to him are cunningly contrived so that not even a
joint of a little finger shall be left unexercised. If he be none the
better, he is none the worse for this. The child is indeed unlucky
that depends only on care of this description for the full play of its
body; but there are some children so unfortunate, and there are some
parents who will be usefully reminded by those songs, of the necessity
of procuring means for the free action of every joint and limb. What
is done for the body is done in the same spirit for the mind, and
ideas are formed, not by song only. The beginning of a most ingenious
course of mental training by a series of playthings is made almost
from the very first.

A box containing six soft balls, differing in colour, is given to the
child. It is Froebel's "first gift." Long before it can speak the
infant can hold one of these little balls in its fingers, become
familiar with its spherical shape and its colour. It stands still, it
springs, it rolls. As the child grows, he can roll it and run after
it, watch it with sharp eyes, and compare the colour of one ball with
the colour of another, prick up his ears at the songs connected with
his various games with it, use it as a bond of playfellowship with
other children, practise with it first efforts at self-denial, and so
forth. One ball is suspended by a string, it jumps--it
rolls--here--there--over--up; turns left--turns
right--ding-dong--tip-tap--falls--spins; fifty ideas may be connected
with it. The six balls, three of the primary colours, three of the
secondary, may be built up in a pyramid; they may be set rolling, and
used in combination in a great many ways giving sufficient exercise to
the young wits that have all knowledge and experience before them.

Froebel's "second gift" is a small box containing a ball, cube, and
roller (the last two perforated), with a stick and string. With these
forms of the cube, sphere, and cylinder, there is a great deal to be
done and learned. They can be played with at first according to the
child's own humour: will run, jump, represent carts, or anything. The
ancient Egyptians, in their young days as a nation, piled three cubes
on one another and called them the three Graces. A child will, in the
same way, see fishes in stones, and be content to put a cylinder upon
a cube, and say that is papa on horseback. Of this element of ready
fancy in all childish sport Froebel took full advantage. The ball,
cube, and cylinder may be spun, swung, rolled, and balanced in so many
ways as to display practically all their properties. The cube, spun
upon the stick piercing it through opposite edges, will look like a
circle, and so forth. As the child grows older, each of the forms may
be examined definitely, and he may learn from observation to describe
it. The ball may be rolled down an inclined plane and the acceleration
of its speed observed. Most of the elementary laws of mechanics may be
made practically obvious to the child's understanding.

The "third gift" is the cube divided once in every direction. By the
time a child gets this to play with he is three years old--of age ripe
for admission to an Infant Garden. The Infant Garden is intended for
the help of children between three years old and seven. Instruction in
it--always by means of play--is given for only two or three hours in
the day; such instruction sets each child, if reasonably helped at
home, in the right train of education for the remainder of its time.

An Infant Garden must be held in a large room abounding in clear space
for child's play, and connected with a garden into which the children
may adjourn whenever weather will permit. The garden is meant chiefly
to assure, more perfectly, the association of wholesome bodily
exercise with mental activity. If climate but permitted, Froebel would
have all young children taught entirely in the pure, fresh air, while
frolicking in sunshine among flowers. By his system he aimed at
securing for them bodily as well as mental health, and he held it to
be unnatural that they should be cooped up in close rooms, and glued
to forms, when all their limbs twitch with desire for action, and
there is a warm sunshine out of doors. The garden, too, should be
their own; every child the master or mistress of a plot in it, sowing
seeds and watching day by day the growth of plants, instructed
playfully and simply in the meaning of what is observed. When weather
forbids use of the garden, there is the great, airy room which should
contain cupboards, with a place for every child's toys and implements;
so that a habit of the strictest neatness may be properly maintained.
Up to the age of seven there is to be no book work and no ink work;
but only at school a free and brisk, but systematic strengthening of
the body, of the senses, of the intellect, and of the affections,
managed in such a way as to leave the child prompt for subsequent
instruction, already comprehending the elements of a good deal of
knowledge.

We must endeavour to show in part how that is done. The third
gift--the cube divided once in every direction--enables the child to
begin the work of construction in accordance with its own ideas, and
insensibly brings the ideas into the control of a sense of harmony and
fitness. The cube divided into eight parts will manufacture many
things; and, while the child is at work helped by quiet suggestion now
and then, the teacher talks of what he is about, asks many questions,
answers more, mixes up little songs and stories with the play.
Pillars, ruined castles, triumphal arches, city gates, bridges,
crosses, towers, all can be completed to the perfect satisfaction of a
child, with the eight little cubes. They are all so many texts on
which useful and pleasant talk can be established. Then they are
capable also of harmonious arrangement into patterns, and this is a
great pleasure to the child. He learns the charm of symmetry,
exercises taste in the preference of this or that among the hundred
combinations of which his eight cubes are susceptible.

Then follows the "fourth gift," a cube divided into eight planes cut
lengthways. More things can be done with this than with the other.
Without strain on the mind, in sheer play, mingled with songs, nothing
is wanted but a liberal supply of little cubes, to make clear to the
children the elements of arithmetic. The cubes are the things
numbered. Addition is done with them; they are subtracted from each
other; they are multiplied; they are divided. Besides these four
elementary rules they cause children to be thoroughly at home in the
principle of fractions, to multiply and divide fractions--as real
things; all in good time it will become easy enough to let written
figures represent them--to go through the rule of three, square root,
and cube root. As a child has instilled into him the principles of
arithmetic, so he acquires insensibly the groundwork of geometry, the
sister science.

Froebel's "fifth gift" is an extension of the third, a cube divided
into twenty-seven equal cubes, and three of these further divided into
halves, three into quarters. This brings with it the teaching of a
great deal of geometry, much help to the lessons in number,
magnificent accessions to the power of the little architect, who is
provided, now, with pointed roofs and other glories, and the means of
producing an almost infinite variety of symmetrical patterns, both
more complex and more beautiful than heretofore.

The "sixth gift" is a cube so divided as to extend still farther the
child's power of combining and discussing it. When its resources are
exhausted and combined with those of the "seventh gift" (a box
containing every form supplied in the preceding series), the little
pupil--seven years old--has had his inventive and artistic powers
exercised, and his mind stored with facts that have been absolutely
comprehended. He has acquired also a sense of pleasure in the
occupation of his mind.

But he has not been trained in this way only. We leave out of account
the bodily exercise connected with the entire round of occupation, and
speak only of the mental discipline. There are some other "gifts" that
are brought into service as the child becomes able to use them. One is
a box containing pieces of wood, or pasteboard, cut into sundry forms.
With these the letters of the alphabet can be constructed; and, after
letters, words, in such a way as to create out of the game a series of
pleasant spelling lessons. The letters are arranged upon a slate ruled
into little squares, by which the eye is guided in preserving
regularity. Then follows the gift of a bundle of small sticks, which
represent so many straight lines; and, by laying them upon his slate,
the child can make letters, patterns, pictures; drawing, in fact, with
lines that have not to be made with pen or pencil, but are provided
ready made and laid down with the fingers. This kind of Stick-work
having been brought to perfection, there is a capital extension of the
idea with what is called Pea-work. By the help of peas softened in
water, sticks may be joined together, letters, skeletons of cubes,
crosses, prisms may be built; houses, towers, churches may be
constructed, having due breadth as well as length and height, strong
enough to be carried about or kept as specimens of ingenuity. Then
follows a gift of flat sticks, to be used in plaiting. After that
there is a world of ingenuity to be expended on the plaiting, folding,
cutting, and pricking of plain or coloured paper. Children five years
old, trained in the Infant Garden, will delight in plaiting slips of
paper variously coloured into patterns of their own invention, and
will work with a sense of symmetry so much refined by training as to
produce patterns of exceeding beauty. By cutting paper, too, patterns
are produced in the Infant Garden that would often, though the work of
very little hands, be received in schools of design with acclamation.
Then there are games by which the first truths of astronomy, and other
laws of Nature, are made as familiar as they are interesting. For our
own parts, we have been perfectly amazed at the work we have seen done
by children of six or seven--bright, merry creatures, who have all the
spirit of their childhood active in them, repressed by no parent's
selfish love of ease and silence, cowed by no dull-witted teacher of
the A B C and the pothooks.

Froebel discourages the cramping of an infant's hand upon a pen, but
his slate ruled into little squares, or paper prepared in the same
way, is used by him for easy training in the elements of drawing.
Modelling in wet clay is one of the most important occupations of the
children who have reached about the sixth year, and is used as much as
possible, not merely to encourage imitation, but to give some play to
the creative power. Finally, there is the best possible use made of
the paint-box, and children engaged upon the colouring of pictures and
the arrangement of nosegays are further taught to enjoy, not merely
what is bright, but also what is harmonious and beautiful.

We have not left ourselves as much space as is requisite to show how
truly all such labour becomes play to the child. Fourteen years'
evidence suffices for a demonstration of the admirable working of a
system of this kind; but as we think there are some parents who may be
willing to inquire a little further into the subject here commended
earnestly to their attention, we will end by a citation of the source
from which we have ourselves derived what information we possess.

At the educational exhibition in St. Martin's Hall last year, there
was a large display of the material used and results produced in
Infant Gardens which attracted much attention. The Baroness von
Marenholtz, enthusiastic in her advocacy of the children's cause, came
then to England, and did very much to procure the establishment in
this country of some experimental Infant Gardens. By her, several
months ago--and at about the same time by M. and Madame Ronge who had
already established the first English Infant Garden--our attention was
invited to the subject. We were also made acquainted with M. Hoffman,
one of Froebel's pupils, who explained the system theoretically at the
Polytechnic Institution. When in this country, the Baroness von
Marenholtz published a book called Woman's Educational Mission, being
an explanation of Frederick Froebel's System of Infant Gardens. We
have made use of the book in the preceding notice, but it appeared
without the necessary illustrations, and is therefore a less perfect
guide to the subject than a work published more recently by M. and
Madame Ronge: A Practical Guide to the English Kindergarten. This last
book we exhort everybody to consult who is desirous of a closer
insight into Froebel's system than we have been able here to give. It
not only explains what the system is, but, by help of an unstinted
supply of little sketches, enables any one at once to study it at home
and bring it into active operation. It suggests conversations, games;
gives many of Froebel's songs, and even furnishes the music (which
usually consists of popular tunes--Mary Blane, Rousseau's Dream, etc.)
to which they may be sung. Furthermore, it is well to say that any one
interested in this subject, whom time and space do not forbid, may see
an Infant Garden in full work by calling, on a Tuesday morning between
the hours of ten and one, on M. and Madame Ronge, at number 32
Tavistock Place, Tavistock Square. That day these earliest and
heartiest of our established infant gardeners have set apart, for the
help of a good cause, to interruptions and investigations from the
world without, trusting, of course, we suppose, that no one will
disturb them for the satisfaction of mere idle curiosity.