Froebel's general position is that spiritual monism which conceives material and mental evolution as continuous phases of one spiritual movement.18

In the Mother-Play Book are presented typical experiences of life which the historic kindergarten utilizes today in the same form as when first written, and as Miss Blow says,

By playing all the ideals which interpret nature and human life, the kindergarten flings the rainbow bridge between the heart of childhood and the vision of manhood, and through the allurement of the beautiful impels intellect to wrestle for truth, and persuades will to a prevailing struggle for goodness."

Again,

The merit of the kindergarten games will be more closely discerned if we pause to define accurately the meaning of typical characters. A typical character is the concrete embodiment of some generic or creative aspect of human nature, or of some native passion which collides with generic selfhood.

The characters represented in kindergarten games must have three marks. They must be typical, elementary, and ideal. Children should not waste time dramatizing the merely capricious. They should not represent elementary types of evil. They should not represent complex types of either good or evil.

The question arises, then, do children of kindergarten age respond most vitally, or embody most truly, this class of plays selected by adults? I think not. Would not the best evidence or test of their value be to discover what games or plays are most commonly chosen by children when undirected by adults? "It is this freedom of choice and action at this early age which must inevitably be the criterion of judgment of kindergarten games.” To summarize this statement: We present the point of view of the advantage to kindergarten education of philosophic adult ideals, versus the child's own ideals.

II

A. If it is true, as we believe, that freedom of choice and action are fundamental to the pedagogy of the kindergarten,

18

19 J. A. MacVannal, Educational Theories of Herbart and Froebel, pp. 97-116. See also S. E. Blow, Educational Issues of the Kindergarten, p. 271.

then the relation of the children to environment and heredity must be carefully considered. We do not believe that "nature and heredity" are radically false, but that the children can be trusted to select much that will be nutritive physically, mentally, and morally. The young child is non-moral, and only gradually can he grow into a consciousness of moral values, through concrete need in his own daily life, and "only by experience will he learn the meaning of truth and the value in accomplishing his ends." Often what is true for him is not our view of truth, but is his vividness of imagery, his ideal, and he has not learned, as yet, to distinguish between it and the real world. His consciousness of moral worths is somewhat comparable to his own stages of growth; I, impulsive; 2, tending toward co-operation; 3, social regard and greater reliability, etc. The child needs, therefore, a social environment that presents a variety of experiences, both from the point of view of the objective world and the possibilities of subjective reactions. This will offer large scope for those instinctive activities that are so essential to all his later life, for out of them, or upon them, it is made.

They are all impulses, congenital, blind at first, and productive of motor reactions of a rigorously determinate sort. Each one of them, then, is an instinct, as instincts are commonly defined. But they contradict each other -"experience" in each particular opportunity of application usually deciding the issue.20

Man has a far greater variety of impulses than any lower animal Owing to man's memory, power of reflection, and power of inference, they come each one to be felt by him, after he has once yielded to them and experienced their results, in connection with a foresight of those results."

The relation of these instinctive acts to the emotional life of the child is fundamental, but general, 22 and while slight,23 is significant. While the play-life of the child is undoubtedly instinctive, play is a general term descriptive of many aspects of activity, or is "simply a way of looking at things."25 In the

20

James, Psychology, Vol. II, p. 293.

22 Angell, Psychology, pp. 313, 325.

24 Kirkpatrick, Fundamentals of Child 25 Angell, Psychology, pp. 106-8.

Ibid., p. 390.

23 James, Vol. II, p. 450. Study, p. 50.

words of Mr. James, life is all play and fairy-tale and learning the external properties of things.26 Happily the fairy-tales form a most important part of his life, for they incite to activity of the best order.

The directive work in the kindergarten, so far as guiding activity is concerned, must lie mainly in the direction of organizing the tyrannical but necessary reflexes that we call habits. Infant education should be mainly concerned with stocking and directing the subconscious nerve centers.

And in the kindergarten all this training of the lower nerve centers takes place in a social atmosphere to which the children are fully alive and to which they freely respond. Sympathy, emulation, hope, fear, selfishness, altruism, all the passions that gather round social life and intercourse are available for the teacher who knows how to use them. Hence the work and play must be directed to group activities that will give wide and ordered activity to all the feelings of social life."

In Section I we noted that Froebel's effort was to bring the child to an apprehension of adult truth by analogy. According to the modern point of view

there is a tacit assumption that it is a good indication of future mental ability for the child's expressions and attitudes to show early a similarity to adult types. To emphasize these analogues to adult life is to lay stress on the least important aspects of child-life. The daily spontaneous outgo of energy in play, imagery, and work is of far more importance as an indication of the future than are the clever doings which are often mere imitations-not the sparklings of intelligence that they seem to be to the adult, but simply efforts, along with many others, that the child puts forth to express himself.28

This view of the developing life of the child is most clearly and satisfactorily stated by Mr. King in the following words:

The functional point of view emphasizes, first of all, the intimate interrelation of all forms of mental activity, and the impossibility of describing any one aspect of consciousness except with reference to the organization of consciousness as a whole.

It (the conscious state) is no longer regarded as an imperfect manifestation of that which it is hoped may mean something in a later stage

James, pp. 401, 427.

Earl Barnes, Elementary School Teacher, October, 1908, pp. 60, 61; cf. Irving King, Psychology of Child Development, Introduction by John Dewey, p. xviii.

of life. The conscious state exists here and now, and it must be interpreted entirely with reference to its origin and meaning in the here and now.29

The life of the child is to be considered from this unitary point of view, in his developing of consciousness.

Nothing can be more uncertain than to judge of consciousness by its so-called expressions. The conclusions must rest on the assumption that certain activities are necessarily connected with certain conscious statesan assumption that for any particular case must be more or less hypothetical. In others words, we must depend on the mere assumption that such and such an act expresses such and such a conscious state.

The situation is, however, quite different if we know what is the functional relation of consciousness to activity. We know, on the one hand, that the consciousness of the child changes with its growth, from a relatively vague to a highly specialized form. We know also that its activities, its possibilities of movement, change enormously with maturing years.

Consciousness is related, not to activity, but to the growth of

activity.

The point to be emphasized is that there must be a unified consciousness from the very first, even though it be a vague one. . . . . Emotion is no more capable of being defined in and of itself than is any other mental attitude. . . . . Just as a co-ordinated movement of any kind must occur with reference to some end that is to be accompilshed, so with the emotion that arises within such co-ordination.

30

In other words, there is no such thing as emotion in general; it is always directed toward something."

Emotional attitudes are as much differentiated products as any other mental function, and it is impossible to postulate their presence before there have been built up consciously co-ordinated sets of activity with reference to definite things and persons. We do not attempt to find the first appearance of emotion. The really important question is to discover the kind of a process or situation that tends to call for the division of labor that the emotional attitude represents. . . . . The true method is to take the experience and note what sort of activity it stands for, how it differentiates and grows in complexity as the demands made upon it increase. . . . . We are not concerned with finding in the child analogues of adult events, but in defining "conditions" in terms of their meaning and significance in the experience in which they occur."

....

20 Ibid., pp. 5, 6 (italics mine).

30 Psychology of Child Development, pp. 30, 32, 35 (italics mine).

33

Imitation in the play-life of the child must be considered from the same functional point of view to derive its full worth." This gives added weight and value to those simple, repetitional forms of play that so often are disregarded by the young kindergartner as too trivial to claim her attention, viz.; arm and leg movements, clapping, etc., play with sand, playthings, etc., repetitional acts.

Sufficient inductive study has been made by many able and sympathetic child students with thousands of children, to make very clear certain tendencies in the plays and games of undirected or self-directed children.84 But, perhaps, of even greater importance from the point of view of development, are the results of investigation concerning nascent stages.35 For the period of childhood the two fundamental requirements are that (1) suggestion should play an important rôle, and (2) the spontaneity of the child should have full freedom. These needs are fully outlined, and every teacher of young children would do well to take them to heart.

The testimony of all the observers of children in self-directed play is the close relation it bears to the environmental conditions, growth, pleasure and greater power in movement, understanding and initiative result. Whitman adds his tribute:

There was a child went forth every day, and the first object he looked upon he became,

And that object became a part of him, for the day or a certain part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

A great many of the tendencies to action that we shall have to consider are usually accounted for in a vague and useless fashion by being described as recapitulation from early race history. We shall attempt to state them in terms connected with the immediate life-processes of the child itself. If such a statement is possible, it will certainly be more illuminating than one in which the emphasis is largely on the past.

33 Ibid., pp. 119, 122, 123, 127, 128.

Dr. Gulick, Ped. Sem., Vol. VI, No. 2; Mr. Cooswell, ibid., p. 315; Dr. McGhee, ibid., Vol. VII, p. 459; E. Barnes, Studies in Education, Vol. I, No. 6.

5 E. B. Bryan, Ped. Sem., Vol. VII, p. 357.