The Child under Eight | Page 2

to gather together
certain recognised principles, and to show in the light of actual
experience how these may be applied to existing circumstances.
The day is coming when all teachers will seek to understand the true
value of Play, of spontaneous activity in all directions. Its importance is
emphasised in nearly all the educational writings of the day, as well in

the Senior as in the Junior departments of the school, but we need a full
and deep understanding of the saying, "Man is Man only when he
plays." It is easy to say we believe it, but it needs strong faith, courage,
and wide intelligence to weave such belief into the warp of daily life in
school.
E.R. MURRAY. H. BROWN SMITH.

CONTENTS

PART I
THE CHILD IN THE NURSERY AND KINDERGARTEN
BY E. R. MURRAY
CHAP.
I. "WHAT'S IN A NAME?" II. THE BIOLOGIST EDUCATOR III.
LEARNING BORN OF PLAY IV. FROM 1816 TO 1919 V. "THE
WORLD'S MINE OYSTER" VI. "ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE"
VII. JOY IN MAKING VIII. STORIES IX. IN GRASSY PLACES X.
A WAY TO GOD XI. RHYTHM XII. FROM FANCY TO FACT XIII.
NEW NEEDS AND NEW HELPS

PART II
THE CHILD IN THE STATE SCHOOL
BY H. BROWN SMITH
I. THINGS AS THEY ARE

XIV. CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF GROWTH XV. THE
INFANT SCHOOL OF TO-DAY XVI. SOME VITAL PRINCIPLES
II. PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF VITAL PRINCIPLES
XVII. THE NEED FOR EXPERIENCE XVIII. GAINING
EXPERIENCE BY PLAY XIX. THE UNITY OF EXPERIENCE XX.
GAINING EXPERIENCE THROUGH FREEDOM
III. CONSIDERATION OF THE ASPECTS OF EXPERIENCE
XXI. EXPERIENCES OF HUMAN CONDUCT. XXII.
EXPERIENCES OF THE NATURAL WORLD XXIII.
EXPERIENCES OF MATHEMATICAL TRUTHS XXIV.
EXPERIENCES BY MEANS OF DOING. XXV. EXPERIENCES OF
THE LIFE OF MAN XXVI. EXPERIENCES RECORDED AND
PASSED ON XXVII. THE THINGS THAT REALLY MATTER.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX


PART I
THE CHILD IN THE NURSERY AND KINDERGARTEN

CHAPTER I
"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