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DEVELOPMENT OF THE KINDERGARTEN.

LETTER FROM MISS PEABODY TO THE EDITOR:

DEAR SIR: Nothing, it seems to me, can do more to establish the Kindergarten on a permanent foundation, and place its principles and methods fairly before American parents and teachers, than the full and exhaustive treatment which you propose to give, in the last volume of your truly Encyclopediac Journal, of the whole subject of child culture, as held by eminent educators, at home and abroad, giving due prominence to its latest development in the Kindergarten as devised by Frederic Fröbel and others trained in his spirit and methods. Your willingness to issue these papers in a connected form, and detached from other discussions, will enable Kindergartners to possess themselves, at a moderate price, of a volume (a manual I think it will prove to be), in which the Fröbel idea and institute will be presented in their historical development, and in their pedagogical connection with other systems of human culture. I respond cordially to your invitation to co-operate in this work and to secure contributions from my correspondents and fellow-laborers in this field, in our own and other countries; and I will begin at once with the subject suggested by yourself, the "Development of the Kindergarten," as it was suggested to Fröbel by his study of the vegetable kingdom of Nature, and his insight into the gracious purposes of the Father of Spirits.

The Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow, in her "Reminiscences of Fröbel," has told us of her discovery, in 1849, of this great genius; and her introduction of him to the Duke of Weimar, and to the leading educators of Germany; and of the instantaneous acceptance of him by Diesterweg and others as "a prophet."

Three years afterwards he died, when the reactionary government of Prussia had forbidden the introduction of his Kindergartens into the public system of education; instinctively divining that an education which recognizes every human being as self-active, and even creative, in his moral and intellectual nature, must be fatal, in the end, to all despotic governments.

But already, through the friendship of the ducal family of

Weimar, Fröbel's normal school for Kindergartners was established at Marienthal; and through the influence of Diesterweg over Madame Johanna Goldschmidt, he had established another at the free city of Hamburgh; and the governmental prohibition in Prussia had stimulated the founding of private Kindergartens in Berlin and elsewhere. Some years after, his eminent and appreciative pupil and chosen apostle, the Baroness, brought about the rescinding of the prohibitory decree. Nevertheless, not even yet, as you will see from a letter I send you, written by Frau Bertha Meyer on their present condition in Berlin, are there any but private Kindergartens in Prussia. These, indeed, are patronized by the best people, led by the Crown Princess of Germany,-Victoria of England, who has not only had her own children educated by strictly Fröbelian Kindergartners, but has interested among others the Princess Helena of Russia in the system, and lets herself be named as Lady Patroness of the training school for Kindergartners at 17 Tavistock square, London.

Only two governments in Europe yet have recognized the Kindergarten as a public interest-that of Austria, which imposes on all pupils of normal schools in the empire, of whatever grade of instruction, to make themselves acquainted with Fröbel's principles; and makes compulsory on the people to send all their children under six to some Kindergarten; also the government of Italy, where Kindergartens were first established by the Italian Minister of Education, whose attention had been directed to the subject, in 1868, by our own American minister, the Hon. George P. Marsh. This attempt was, however, rather premature, for Italian Kindergartners were not yet properly prepared for the work, and though Fröbel's educational method is found to be harmonious with the deepest motherly instinct, when that is understood, it does not come by instinct into a systematic form. In 1871-2 the Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow was solicited by the Italian minister to go to Florence and lecture upon the training, and she taught a large class. The resumé of her lectures was printed in a pamphlet, in 1872, and translated and published by our Bureau of Education at Washington, in its circular of July, and forms an admirable syllabus for the training of teachers. In that same year, 1872, Madame Salis-Schwab introduced the system at Naples at great expense to herself of money and labor, and gained from the municipality the promise to make it the first grade of the public education, when Kindergartners should be trained for

it. You must publish in your volume the report of the successful Kindergarten now kept in the Collegio Medici, a copy of which I hope to furnish you. This proves one of the greatest charities in Europe, and princes send their children as pupils.

But though the European governments do not yet adopt the system, Kindergartens are established widely in all the German states, in Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Switzerland, France, Belgium, even in Spain, also in England, Scotland and Ireland; and wherever there are Kindergartens there are more or less inadequate attempts at training Kindergartners, Koehler's establishment at Saxe-Gotha, and lately the Fröbel Stiftung at Dresden, being the best. The latter will probably swallow up the former, as Koehler has lately died.

In England, in 1872, there was an association formed, among whose members are famed scientists like Huxley, as well as dignitaries of the Church of England, who have founded an institution for training Kindergartners at Manchester, to be examined. for certificates after two years study with observation in a model Kindergarten now kept by Miss Anna Snell, a pupil of Middendorf. Two years afterwards another training class was founded, as a part of the Stockwell training school for primary teachers in London, S. W., and another pupil of Middendorf, Miss Eleanor Heerwart, who had been keeping Kindergarten some years near Dublin, Ireland, was made its teacher and the principal of the Stockwell model Kindergarten. Also, in 1874, the London Fröbel Society was founded by Miss Doreck and Mr. Payne, whose present president, Miss Emily Shirreff, and her sister, the Hon. Mrs. Grey, have published most valuable lectures, among which I would mention, as most important, Miss Shirreff's "Life of Fröbel," and her essay on the right of his Kindergarten to the name of the "New Education." This London society has a monthly meeting and lecture, and I can send you for your volume one of these: Miss E. A. Manning's lecture on "The Discouragements and Encouragements of the Kindergartner." She has sent it to me to be read at the meeting of our American Fröbel Union, which was appointed for December 29-31, 1879, but had to be postponed. Some other articles were sent; one by Miss Shirreff, one by Miss Lychinska, and one by Miss Heerwart, which are at your service also; and I hope to have Miss Shirreff's article about a chart of Kindergarten employments, made by Madame du Portugall for the direction of the Swiss Kindergart

ners, and which has been asked for by the English Education Journal for publication in its pages.

It was the Baroness Marenholz-Bülow who may be said to have started and done the most in this great propagandism. Acknowledged by Fröbel, in 1849, as the one who more deeply than any one else saw into his "last thought," she must be considered as his most complete representative, and most effective apostle.

In 1858 she went to Paris and, taking rooms at the Louvre, summoned to her parlor-lectures the most distinguished men of the time in Paris, of all churches, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish, and outsiders of every school of philosophy. Their wonderful unanimity in accepting the idea and system, as developed in her lectures, was expressed in letters to her from all of them, including the Cardinal of Tours, afterwards Archbishop of Paris, the Abbé Michaud, and many Catholic savants; Michelet, Edgar Quinet, Auguste Comté, Protestant pastors, Harmonists, etc, etc. These letters she has printed as an appendix, making onehalf of her volume, which is entitled "Die Arbeit,” relative to Fröbel's Education, which was the résumé of her lectures at the Louvre. This unanimity of assent is the best proof that the element in which the Kindergarten works is that of universal humanity, not yet narrowed from "the kingdom of heaven," which Christ declared that children represent, in their pre-intellectual era, when the Kindergarten takes them from the mother's nursery, to initiate them into the society of their equals. Madame Marenholtz also carried the system into Belgium, and the first guide-book of the method "Le Jardin des Enfants" was published in Brussels by F. Claasen, with an introduction by herself. She then went into England, where, however, she had been preceded by Madame Rongé, one of that Meyer family of North Germany which has been always a munificent benefactor of education,-Henry Adolf having given to Hamburg its Zoological Garden and Aquarium, the finest foundations of the kind in the world; and he is still the most enthusiastic patron of Fröbel's Kindergarten.

But in England some accidental collateral circumstances interfered with Madame Rongé's perfect work, and broke her heart. The seeds of Kindergarten were however planted in several localities, and some good work done, among others by Madame du Portugall at Manchester, who is now the Inspector of Primary Education in her native city, Geneva, Switzerland, and is gradu

ally making the Kindergarten the foundation of the primary education there.

But the most important establishment on the Continent for the education of Kindergartners is in Dresden, founded in.1872 by the Union, which grew up since 1867, out of the Committee of Education of the Congress of Philosophers that met in Prague that year. This committee was appointed to inquire into the ultimate results on individuals of the Kindergarten education given by Fröbel with Middendorf, who had been his faithful friend and coadjutor at the school for boys founded by them both at Keilhau in 1817, long before the Kindergarten was named in 1839. It took more than twenty years of earnest experimenting to enable Fröbel to arrive at the complete Kindergarten practically. In that year he gave it its very expressive name. As long before as 1827 he had published Erziehung der Mensch (the Education of Mankind), a book addressed to the mother, in which is found all the elementary principles of Kindergarten except one. In this book he took the ground that the mother exclusively should be the educator of the child till it was seven years old; but a dozen years of observation had taught him in 1839, that no mother had the leisure and strength to do for her child all that needed to be done in its first seven years, without assistants and in the narrow precinct of a single family. For the social and moral nature, after three years old, requires a larger company of equals. The Kindergarten does just what neither the home nor the primary school can do for a child.

In 1867, at the re-assembling of the "Congress of Philosophers" at Frankfort-on-the-Main, the Committee of Inquiry appointed at Prague, of which Prof. Fichte of Stuttgart, son of the great J. G. Fichte, was chairman, reported that the pupils taught at the Kindergarten age by Fröbel himself, had been looked up at the universities and elsewhere, and been found to be of exceptional intelligence: and that they themselves ascribed it to their Fröbel education in the "connection of contrasts or "law of equipoise," that secret of all nature and true life.

At this meeting at Frankfort-on-the-Main, the Baroness Marenholtz had four afternoons assigned her to explain Fröbel's idea and method, and the result was the formation of the General Union, and the establishment of its organ, Die Erziehung der Gegenwart, together with the Training College, at Dresden.

I will send you the first report of the activity of this society

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