Little journeys to the homes of great teachers

Hubbard, Elbert
Little journeys

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IVal. 22

JUNE, MCMVIII

No. 6

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BY ELBERT HUBBARD

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THE SUBJECTS ARE AS FOLLOWS

MOSES

CONFUCIUS

PYTHAGORAS

PLATO

KINO ALFRED

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

THOMAS ARNOLD

ERASMUS

HYPATIA

ST. BENEDICT

MARY BAKER EDDY

LITTLE JOURNEYS for 1908, THE PHILIS-
TINE Magazine for One Year and a De Luxe
Leather Bowd ROYCROFT BOOK, ALL FOR TWO DOLLARS

Entered at postofGlce, East Aurora, N. Y.jfor transmission as second-
class matter. Copyright, 1908, by Elbert Hubbard, Editor & Publisher

O T I C E

ONVENTION OF PUBLICISTS
AND PRINTERS to be held at

East Aurora, June 1 st to 7th, 1 908,
inclusive. The Roy croft Inn — chaser
only — Headquarters. On this Joyous Jinkstide,
there will be discussed the Fifty-Seven Varieties
of Plans whereby the eye, cerebrum and large,
furry ear of the Public can be effectively
reached. The Calculi to be dissolved will
include Bill-boards, Board-bills, Bull-heads,
Belfry-bats, Bink-bubbles and Bank-balances.
There will be two formal meetings — but not
too formal — daily, when Representative Ad-
vertisers will illuminate questions which are
naturally opaque. C[ Incidentally, there will be a
baseball game or two, walks 'cross country, passing
of the Medicine Ball, a little relating betimes of
tales of persiflage that are in their anecdotage;
also music by Merry Villagers, and bucolic
players on sweet zithem strings ^ You are
invited to be present.

FELIX, Sec'y to the Committee
R. S. V. P. East Aurora, New York

THE BRONCHO BOOK

;HE ROYCROFTERS have roped and hog=tied, very
nixola, a volume entitled the ''THE BRONCHO
BOOK, OR BUCK-JUMPS IN VERSE," by Captain
Jack Crawford— done for the relief of the author
and the divertisement of tenderfeet. QThe poems of
Captain Jack form a genuine individual note in
American Literature, a note that is soon to die away,
never again to be heard, save as an echo of things that were.
Captain Jack has been called this, also that, as every man has,
who does not allow society to corral him and dictate his hat and
haberdashery ^ But no man ever looked into Jack's face and
directed an epithet at him — not for fear Jack would give a straight
short arm jolt — and Jack, being Irish, might supply that if the
other fellow insisted on having it — but because the whole presence
of the man is one of absolute candor and simple, childlike honesty.
Jack is genume. He is so genuine that he disarms criticism — he
is a man ; a clean, wholesome, manly man, without sophistry,
vanity or pretence. He is so natural that some have called him a
poser. He lives where the hand of God is seen. Q Captain Jack
enlisted in the Civil War when sixteen and fought in the same
regiment with his father. He was wounded several times and once
reported as a "deserter," because he ran away from the hospital
to take part in an approaching battle. Those of us who have seen
him at the OV Swimmin' Hole have noticed that his cosmos is
covered with the marks of claws, hoofs, bullets, arrows, knives,
bayonets and sabre thrusts. Yet out of all life's scrimmages he has
emerged strong, buoyant, hopeful, with a soul of song, and heart
of love for every living thing. Q Captain Jack was the last man,
since the death of Custer in 1876, to hold the position in the
United S^tates Army of * ' Chief of Scouts. ' ' He served with Generals
Phil. Sheridan, Wesley Merritt, John A. Logan, John L. BuUis,
Edward Hatch and H. W. Lawton. All of these men held Captain
Jack in close and affectionate regard, as many letters from each
attest. Q There is no stain on the war- record of Captain Jack-
he was a fighter from a long ways up the creek. And as a poet he
has placed his branding iron on a lot of lusty maverick thoughts.
He is not only original, but aboriginal. Q A , portrait, sketched
from life by Gaspard as frontispiece to the book. Bound in limp
bob-cat ^ Oh, say TWO DOLLARS, prepaid, and sent suspic-
iously. Give the ki-yi and the book will come a-running AAA

THE ROYCROFTERS, EAST AURORA, NEW YORK

VER since you were a small toddler,
candy has been a special hobby.
Your first lemon sticks were, of
course, the best of all — that's ad-
mitted. But the time when Mother
kept pennies in the Ginger Jar for
Good Kids is now long past ; the last lemon stick
you tried had somehow lost its flavor. All candy,
in fact, that we buy in the Big Towns now-a-
days, has a ^^ Professional Taste" that never quite
satisfies e^ <^

When next your thoughts ramble back to the
Maple Sugar of Childhood, ^nd you have dire
longings, write a note to the

Roy croft Kandy Kitchen Girls

They make real Boy and Girl Kandy — Fresh —

for Grown-ups.

The material used by the Kandy Kitchen Girls

is right from Nature's Heart «^ Every day they

attach their pails to the Roycroft Maple Sugar

Trees, and the Sap — it comes to you in the form

of Patties J* ^

Roycroft Kandy Renews Youth ^ Address the

ROYCROFT KANDY KITCHEN GIRLS
EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK

TO THE BIBLIOZINE BLASE
F you are jaded with the
commonplace in maga-
zines, why not surprise
your cerebrum, and give
your convolutions a treat?
C(The Fra is printed by printers; in
make-up it is strictly bosarty.
The Fra will increase your will-power;
help your capacity for friendship ; better
your thinkery; bolster your ideals; and
by adding to your health will double
for you the joys of life; avert that burnt
sienna taste, distance the ether cone,
and send the undertaker into receiver-
ship. Fra means Friend and spells
Success. <|We just must have your
subscription for your own good and
ours. The rate is Two Dollars a Year,
Twenty-five Cents a Number, Please
reply abruptly and with precision

THE ROYCROFTERS, East Aurora, New York

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M C M VIII

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2b05
no. 6

JUN 14 1967

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FRIEDRICH PROEBEL

FREDRIOinOEBn.

THE purpose of the Kindergarten is to provide the necessary and
natural help which poor mothers require, who have to be about
their work all day, and must leave their children to themselves. The
occupations pursued in the Kindergarten are the following : free play
of a child by itself ; free play of several children by themselves ; asso-
ciated play under the guidance of a teacher; gymnastic exercises;
several sorts of handiwork suited to little children ; going for walks ;
learning music, both instrumental and vocal; learning the repetition
of poetry; story-telling; looking at really good pictures; aiding in
domestic occupations; gardening.

— FROEBEL.

LITTLE JOURNEYS

RIEDRICH FROEBEL was born
in a Thuringian village, April
2ist, 1782. His father was pastor
of the Lutheran Church. When
scarcely a year old his mother
died. Ere long a stepmother came
to fill her place — but didn't J^
This stepmother was the kind
we read about in the *'Six Best
Sellers." Her severity, lack of
love, and needlessly religious
zeal served the future Kinder-
gartener a dark background upon which to paint a joyous
picture. Froebel was educated by antithesis. His home was
the type etched so unforgetably by Col. Ed. Howe in his
"Story of a Country Town," which isn*t bad enough to be one
of the Six Best Sellers. At the age of ten, out of pure pity,
young Friedrich was rescued from the cuckoo's nest by an
uncle who had a big family of his own and love without limit.
There was a goodly brood left, so little Friedrich, slim,
slender, yellow, pensive and sad, was really never missed.
flThe uncle brought the boy up to work, but treated him like a
human being, answering his questions, even allowing him to
have stick horses and little log houses and a garden of his
own ^ jt

At fifteen his nature had begun to awaken, and the uncle
barkening to the boy's wish, apprenticed him for two years
to a forester. The young man's first work was to make a list

131

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

of the trees in a certain tract and approximate their respec-
tive ages. The night before his work began he lay awake
thinking of the fun he was going to have at the job.
In after years he told of this incident in showing that it was
absurd to try to divorce work from play.
The two years as forester's apprentice, from fifteen to seven-
teen, were really better for him than any university could
have been. His stepmother's instructions had mostly been in
the line of prohibition. From earliest babyhood he had been
warned to "look out." When he went on the street it was
with a prophecy that he would get run over by a cart, or
stolen by the gypsies, or fall off the bridge and be drowned Jt,
The idea of danger had been dinged into his ears so that fear
had become a part of the fabric of his nature. Even at fif-
teen, he took pains to get out of the woods before sundown
to avoid the bears. At the same time his intellect told him
there were no bears there. But the shudder habit was upon
him jt ^

Yet by degrees the work in the woods built up his body and he
grew to be at home in the forest, both day and night. His
duties taught him to observe, to describe, to draw, to in-
vestigate, to decide. Then it was transplantation, and per-
haps the best of college life consists in taking the youth out
of the home environment and supplying him new surround-
ings ^ jt

Forestry in America is a brand-new science. To clear the
ground has been our desire, and so to strip, bum and de-
stroy, saving only such logs as appealed to us for "lumber'*
132

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

was the desideratum. But now we are seriously considering
the matter of tree-planting and tree-preservation, and per-
haps it would be well to ask ourselves if two years at forestry,
right out-of-doors, in contact with nature, wrestling with the
world of wood, rock, plant and living things, would n't be
better for the boy than double the time in stuffy dormitories
and still more stuffy recitation rooms — listening to stuffy
lectures about things that are foreign to life.
I would say that a boy is a savage, but I do not care to give
offense to fond mammas. To educate him in the line of his
likes, as the race has been educated, seems sensible and
right. How would Yellowstone Park answer for a National
University, with Captain Jack Crawford, William Muldoon,
John Burroughs, John Dewey, Stanley Hall and a mixture
of men of these types do for a faculty?
Froebel thought his two years in the forest saved him from
consumption, and perhaps from insanity, for it taught him to
look out, not in, and to lend a hand. At times he was a little
too sentimental, as it was, and a trifle more of morbidity and
sensitiveness would have ruined his life, absolutely.
The woods and God's great out-of-doors, gave him balance
and ballast, good digestion and sweet sleep o' nights.
The two years past, he went to Jena, where he had an elder
brother. This brother was a star scholar, and Friedrich
looked up to him as a pleiad of pedagogy. He became a prof-
fessor in a Jena preparatory school and then practiced medi-
cine, but never had the misfortune to affront public opinion,
and so oblivion lured and won him, and took him as her own.

133

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

fl At Jena poor Froebel did not make head. His preparatory
work hadn't prepared him. He floundered in studies too deep
for one of his age, then followed some foolish advice, and
hired a tutor to fetch him along. Then he fell down, was
plucked, got into debt, and also into the "career," where he
boarded for nine weeks at the expense of the State.
In the career he didn't catch up in his studies, quite naturally,
and the imprisonment almost broke his health. Had he been
in the career for dueling, he would have emerged a hero J(>
But debt meant that he neither had money nor friends.
When he was given his release, as an economic move, he
slipped away between two days and made his way to the
Forestry OflEice, where he applied for a job as laborer ^He
got it. In a few days he was promoted to chief of apprentices.
^ Forestry meant a certain knowledge of surveying, and
this Froebel soon acquired. Then came map-making, and
that was only fun ^ Jt

From map-making to architecture is but a step, and Froebel
quit the woods to work as assistant to an architect at
ten pounds a year and found. It was confining work,
and a trifle more exacting than he had expected — it re-
quired a deal of mathematics, and mathematics was
FroebePs short suit. Froebel was disappointed and so was his
employer — when something happened. It usually does in
books, and in life, always.

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

Not skill, nor books, but life itself is the foundation of all edu-
cation.

ENIUS has its prototype. Before
Froebel comes Pestalozzi, the
Swiss, who studied theology and
law, and then abandoned them
both as futile to human evolu-
tion, and turned his attention to
teaching. Pestalozzi was inspired
by Jean Jacques Rousseau, and
read his Emile religiously. To
teach by natural methods and mix
work and study, and make both
play was his theme. Pestalozzi
believed in teaching out-of-doors, because children are both
barbaric and nomadic — they want to go somewhere. His was
the Aristotle method, as opposed to those of the closet and the
cloister. But he made the mistake of saying that teaching
should be taken out of the hands and homes of the clergy, and
then the clergy said a few things about him.
Pestalozzi at first met with very meager encouragement.
Only poor and ignorant people intrusted their children to his
care, and some of the parents were actually paid in money
for the services of the children. The thought that the children
were getting an education and being useful at the same time
was quite beyond their comprehension.
Pestalozzi educated by stealth. At first he took several boys

135

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL,

and girls of eight, ten or twelve years of age, and had them
work with him in his garden. They cared for fowls, looked
after the sheep, milked the cows. The master worked with them
and as they worked they talked. Going to and from their
duties, Pestalozzi would call their attention to the wild birds,
and the flowers, plants and weeds. They would draw pictures
of things, make collections of leaves and flowers and keep a
record of their observations and discoveries. Through keep-
ing these records they learned to read and write and acquired
the use of simple mathematics. Things they did not imder-
stand they would read about in the books found in the
teacher's library ^ But books were secondary and quite
incidental in the scheme of study. When work seemed to
become irksome they would all stop and play games. At other
times they would sit and just talk about what their work
happened to suggest. If the weather was unpleasant, there
was a shop where they made hoes and rakes and other tools
they needed. They also built bird-houses, and made simple
pieces of furniture, so all the pupils, girls and boys, became
more or less familiar with carpenter's and blacksmith's tools.
They patched their shoes, mended their clothing and at times
prepared their own food.

Pestalozzi found that the number of pupils he could look
after in this way was not more than ten. But to his own satis-
faction, at least, he proved that children taught by his
method surpassed those who were given the regular set
courses of instruction. His chief diflSculties lay in the fact
that the home did not co-operate with the school, and that
136

FRIEDRICH FROEBELr

there was always a tendency to " return to the blanket."
^Pestalozzi wrote accounts of his experiments, emphasizing
his belief that we should educate through the child's natural
activities, and that all growth should be pleasurable. His
shibboleth was, " From within out. " He thought educa-
tion was a development and not an acquirement.
One of Pestalozzi's little pamphlets fell into the hands of
Friedrich Froebel, architect's assistant, at Frankfort.
Froebel was twenty-two years old, and fate had tossed him
around from one thing to another since babyhood. All of his
experiences had been of a kind that prepared his mind for the
theories that Pestalozzi expressed.

Beside that, architecture had begun to pall upon him jt jt
<< Those who can, do ; those who can't, teach. " It was said in
derision, but holds a grain of truth. Froebel had a great
desire to teach. Now in Frankfort there was a Model School or
a school for teachers, of which one Herr Gruner was master.
This school was actually carrying out some of the practical
methods suggested by Pestalozzi. Quite by accident Gruner
and Froebel met. Gruner wanted a teacher who could teach
by the Pestalozzi methods. Froebel straightway applied to
Herr Gruner for the position. He was accepted as a combina-
tion janitor and instructor and worked for his board and ten
marks, or two dollars and a half a week.
The good cheer and enthusiasm of Froebel won Gruner's
heart. Together they discussed Pestalozzi and his works, read
all that he had written, and opened up a correspondence with
the great man. This led to an invitation that Froebel should

137

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

visit him at his farm-school, near Yverdon, in Switzerland.
flGruner supplied Froebel the necessary money to replace his
very seedy clothes for something better, and the yoxmg man
started away. It was a walk of over two hundred miles, but
youth and enthusiasm count such a tramp as an enjoyable
trifle. Froebel wore his seedy clothes and carried his good
ones, and so he appeared before the master spick and span.
^ Pestalozzi was sixty years old at this time, and his hopes
for the ** new method " were still high. He had met opposi-
tion, ridicule and indifference, and had spent most of his
little fortune in the fight, but he was still at it and resolved to
die in harness. ^Froebel was not disappointed in Pestalozzi,
and certainly Pestalozzi was delighted and a bit amused at
the earnestness of the young man. Pestalozzi was working
in a very economical way, but all the place lacked, Froebel
in his imagination made good.
Froebel found much, for he had brought much with him.

138

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

We have to do with the principles of development of human
beings, and not with methods of instruction concerning
specific things «^ ^

IROEBEL returned to Frankfort
from his visit to Pestalozzi, full
of enthusiasm, and that is the
commodity without which no
teacher succeeds. Gruner al-
lowed him to gravitate. And soon
FroebePs room was the central
point of interest for the whole
school.

But trouble was ahead for
Froebel.

He had no college degrees. His
pedagogic pedigree was very short. He hoped to live down his
university record, but it followed him. Gruner*s school was
under government inspection, and the gentlemen with
double chins, who came from time to time to look the place
over, asked who this enthusiastic young person was, and why
had the worthy janitor and ex-forester been so honored by
promotion ^ ^

In truth, during his life Froebel never quite escaped the taunt
that he was not an educated man. That is to say, no college
had ever supplied him an alphabetic appendage. He had been
a forester, a farmer, an architect, a guardian for boys and a
teacher of women, but no institution had ever said officially

139

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

he was fit to teach men. ^Gruner tried to explain that
there are two kinds of teachers — people who are teachers
by nature, and those who have acquired the methods by long
study. The first, having little to learn, and a love for the
child, with a spontaneous quality of giving their all, succeed
best jt ji

But poor Gruner's explanations did not explain.
Then the matter was gently explained to Froebel, and he saw
that in order to hold a place as teacher he must acquire a
past. ** Time will adjust it," he said, and started away on a
second visit to Pestalozzi. His plan was to remain with the
master long enough so he could secure a certificate of pro-
ficiency Jk Jt>

Again Pestalozzi welcomed the young man, and he slipped
easily into the household and became both pupil and teacher.
His willingness to work — to do the task that lay nearest him
— his good nature, his gratitude, won all hearts.
At this time the plan of sending boys to college with a tutor,
who was both a companion and a teacher, was in vogue with
those who could afford it. It will be remembered that William
and Alexander von Humboldt received their early education
in this way — going with their tutor from university to
university, teacher and pupils entering as special students,
getting into the atmosphere of the place, soaking themselves
full of it and then going on.

And now behold, through Gruner or Pestalozzi or both, a
woman with wealth with three boys to educate applied to
Froebel to come over into Macedonia and help her.
140

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

It was in 1807 that Froebel became tutor in the von Holz-
hausen family. He was twenty-five years old, and this was his
first interview with wealth and leisure. That he was hungry
enough to appreciate it, need not be emphasized.
He got goodly glimpses of Gottingen, Berlin, and was long
enough at Jena to rub the blot off the 'scutcheon. A stay at
Weimar, in the Goethe country, completed the four years'
course ,^ J^

The boys had grown to men, and proved their worth in after
years, but whether they had gotten as much from the migra-
tions as their teacher is very doubtful. He was ripe for oppor-
tunity— they had had a surfeit of it.

Then came war. The order to arms and the rush of students to
obey their country's call caught Froebel in the patriotic
vortex, and he enlisted with his pupils.
His service was honorable, even if not brilliant, and it had
this advantage : the making of two friends, companions in
arms, who caught the Pestalozzian fever, and lived out their
lives preaching and teaching " the new method."
These men were William Middendorf and Henry Langenthal.
This trinity of brothers evolved a bond as beautiful as it is
rare in the realm of friendship.

Forty years after their first meeting, Middendorf gave an
oration over the dead body of Froebel that lives as a classic,
breathing the love and faith that endure «^ And then
Middendorf turned to his work, and dared prison and dis-
grace by upholding the Kindergarten System and the life and
example of his dear, dead friend. The Kindergarten Idea

141

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

would probably have been buried in the grave with Froebel—
interred with his bones — were it not for Middendorf and
Langenthal j^ J>

We grow through the three fundamental principles of human
existence — Feeling, Thinking, Doing.

[HE first Kindergarten was es-
tablished in 1836, at Blanken-
burg, a little village, near Keil-
hau. Froebel was then fifty-four
years old, happily married to a
worthy woman who certainly
did not hamper his work, even if
she did not inspire it. He was
childless that all children might
call him father.

The years had gone in struggles
to found Normal Schools in Ger-
many after the Pestalozzian and Gruner methods. But dis-
appointment, misunderstanding and stupidity had followed
Froebel. The set methods of the clergy, accusations of revolu-
tion and heresy, tilts with pious pedants as to the value of
dead languages, all combined with his own lack of business
shrewdness, had wrecked his various ventures.
Froebers argument that women were better natural teachers
142

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL,

than men on account of the mother-instinct, brought forth a
retort from a learned monk to the effect that it was indelicate
if not sinful for an unmarried female, who was not a nun, to
study the natures of children.

Parents with children old enough to go to school would not
entrust their darlings with the teaching-experimenter, this
on the advice of their pastors.

Middendorf and Langenthal were still with him, partners in
the disgrace or failure, for none were willing to give up the
fight for education by the natural methods.
A great thought and a great word came to them, all at once
— out on the mountain side!

Begin with children before the school age, and call it the
Kindergarten ! ^Hurrah ! They shouted for joy, and ran down
the hill to tell Frau Froebel.

The schools they had started before had been called, " The
Institution for Teaching according to the Pestalozzi Method
and the Natural Activities of the Child," "Institution for the
Encouragement and Development of the Spontaneous
Activities of the Pupil," and " Friedrich Froebers School for
the Growth of the Creative Instinct which makes for a Use-
ful Character."

A school with such names, of course, failed. No one could
remember it long enough to send his child there — it meant
nothing to the mind not prepared for it. What *s in a name?
Everything. Books sell or become dead stock on the name.
Commodities the same. Railroads must have a name people
are not afraid to pronounce.

143

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL,

The oflScers of the law came and asked to see Froebers license
for manufacturing. Others asked as to the natiire of his wares,
and one dignitary called and asked, "Is Herr Pestalozzi in?"
^ The Kindergarten I The new name took. The children
remembered it. Overworked mothers liked the word and were
glad to let the little other-mothers take the children to the
Kindergarten, certainly.

Froebel had grown used to disappointments — he was an
optimist by nature. He saw the good side of everything,
including failure.

He made the best of necessity. And now it was very clear to
him that education must begin " a hundred years before the
child is born." He would reach the home and the mother
through the children. " It will take three generations to
prove the truth of the Kindergarten Idea," he said.
And so the songs, the gifts, the games — all had to be
invented, defended, tried and tried again. Pestalozzi had a plan
for teaching the youth ; now a plan had to be devised to teach
the child. Love was the keystone, and joy, unselfishness and
unswerving faith in the Natural or Divine impulses of
humanity crowned the structure.

144

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

Stand far away from the tender blossoms of childhood, and
brush not off the flower-dust with your rough fist.

^ROEBEL invented the school-
ma'am. That is, he discovered
the raw product and adapted it.
He even coined the word, and it
struck the world as being so very
f imny that we forthwith adopted
it and used it as a term of pro-
vincial pleasantry and quasi-
reproach. The original term used
was " school-mother," but when
it reached these friendly shores
we translated it "school-marm."
Then we tittered, also sneezed.

Froebel died in 1852. His first Kindergarten was not a success
until he was nearly sixty years old, but the idea had been per-
fecting itself in his mind more or less unconsciously for over
thirty years.

He had been thinking, writing, working, experimenting all
these years on the subject of education, and had become well-
nigh discouraged. He had observed that six was the " school
age." That is, no child could go to school until he was six
years old — then his education began.
But Froebel had been teaching in a country school and board-
ing 'round, and he had discovered that long before this the
child had been learning by observing and playing and that

145

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

these were formative influences, quite as potent as actual
school e^t J,

In the big families where Froebel boarded he noticed that the
older girls took charge of the younger ones. So, often a girl
of ten, with dresses to her knees, carried one baby in her arms
and two toddled behind her, and this child of ten was really
the other-mother. The true mother worked in the fields or
toiled at her housework, and the little other-mother took the
children out to play and thus amused them while the mother
worked Ji> J^

The desire of Froebel was to educate the race, but what are a
few hours in a schoolroom a day with a totally unsym-
pathetic home environment!

To reach and interest the mother in the problem of education
was well-nigh impossible. Toil, deprivation, poverty had
killed all the romance and enthusiasm in her heart. She was
the victim of arrested development, but the little other-
mother was a child, impressionable, immature, and she could
be taught. The home must co-operate with the school, other-
wise all the school can teach will be forgotten in the home.
Froebel saw, too, that often the little other-mother was so
overworked in the care of her charges that she was taken
from school. Beside, the idea was abroad that education was
mostly for boys, anyway.

And here Froebel stepped in and proved himself a law-
breaker, just as Ben Lindsey was when he inaugurated the
juvenile court and waived the entire established legal pro-
cedure, even to the omission of swearing his witnesses, and
146

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

believed in the little truant even though he lied. Froebel told
the little other-mothers to come to school anyway and bring
the babies with them. And then he set to work showing these
girls how to amuse, divert and teach the babies. And he used
to say the babies taught him.

Some of these half -grown girls showed a rare adaptability as
teachers. They combined mother-love and the teaching
instinct. Froebel utilized their services in teaching others in
order that he might teach them. He saw that the teacher is
the one who gets most out of the lessons, and that the true
teacher is a learner. These girl teachers he called school-
mothers, and thus was evolved the word and the person.
Froebel founded the first normal and model school for the
education of women as teachers, and this was less than a
hundred years ago.

The years went by and the little mothers had children of their
own, and these children were the ones that formed the first
actual, genuine kindergarten. Also these were the mothers
who formed the first mothers* clubs. And it was the success
of these clubs that attracted the attention of the authorities,
who could not imagine any other purpose for a club than to
hatch a plot against the government.

Anyway, a system which taught that women were just as
wise, just as good and just as capable as men — just as well
fitted by nature to teach — would upset the clergy. If women
can break into the school, they will also break into the
church. Moreover, the encouragement of play was atrocious.
Mein Gott, or words to that effect, play in a schoolroom!

147

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

Why, even a fool would know that that is the one thing that
stood in the way of education, the one fly in the pedagogic
ointment. If Meinheer Froebel wotild please invent a way to
do away with play in schoolrooms, he would be given a
pension j/t> jf>

The idea that children were good by nature was rank heresy.
Where does the doctrine of regeneration come in and how
about being bom again 1 The natural man is at enmity against
God. We are conceived in sin and born in iniquity. The Bible
says it again and again. And here comes a man and thinks he
knows more than all the priests and scholars who have ever
lived, and fills the heads of fool women with the idea that
they are bom to teach instead of to work in the fields and keep
house and wait on men.

Mein Gott in Himmel, the women know too much, already I
If this thing keeps on, men will have to get off the face of the
earth and women and children will run the world, and do it
by means of play. Aha! What does Solomon say? Spare the
rod and spoil the child. Aber nicht, say these girls.
This thing has got to stop before Germany becomes the joke
of mankind — the cat-o-nine-tails for anybody who uses the
word kindergarten I

r

Z48

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

God creates through us : we are the instruments of Divinity:
to work in joy is the Divine Will.

lUFFER little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not,
for of such is the Kingdom of
Heaven." Had the man who
uttered these words been given a
little encouragement he probably
would have inaugurated a child-
garden and provided a place and
environment where little souls
could have bloomed and blos-
somed. He was by nature a
teacher, and his best pupils were
women and children. Male men are apt to think they already
know and so are immtme from ideas.

Jerusalem, nineteen hundred years ago, was about where
Berlin was in 1850. In both instances the proud priest and
aristocrat-soldier were supreme. And both were quite satis-
fied with their own mental attainments and educational
methods. They were sincere. It was a very similar combina-
tion that crucified Jesus to that which placed an interdict on
Friedrich Froebel, making the Kindergarten a crime, and
causing the speedy death of one of the gentlest, noblest,
purest men who has ever blessed this earth.
Froebel was just seventy when he passed out. "His eye was
not dimmed nor his natural force abated" — he was filled

149

FRIEDRICH FROEBELr

with enthusiasm and hope as never before. His ideas were
spreading — success, at last, was at the door, he had inter-
ested the women and proved the fitness of women to teach
— his mothers' clubs were numerous — love was the watch-
word. And in the midst of this flowering time, the official
order came, without warning, apology or explanation, and
from which there was no appeal. The same savagery, chilled
with fear, that sent Richard Wagner into exile, crushed the
life and broke the heart of Friedrich Froebel. But these
names now are the glory and pride of the land that scorned
them. Men who govern should be those with a reasonable
doubt concerning their own infallibility, and an earnest
faith in men, women and children. To teach is better than
to rule. We are all children in the Kindergarten of God.

150

HOW TO TEACH

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