GUIDE TO THE KINDERGARTEN
AND INTERMEDIATE CLASS,
AND
MORAL CULTURE OF INFANCY,
REVISED EDITION.
NEW YORK:
E. STEIGER.
1877.
The present volume is a revised edition of the bookwhich under the title
and
Kindergarten Guide
has been in the market since 1860, latterly published byMessrs. J. W. Schermerhorn & Co. of New York.
| Cambridge, | Elizabeth P. Peabody. |
| October 1st, 1877. | Mary Mann. |
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
J. W. Schermerhorn & Co.,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
Copyright, 1877, by E. Steiger.
PREFACE.
Since publishing the first edition of what I meant to bea Guide to those who undertake to give Kindergarten culture,I have been in Europe, and made a special study ofthe Kindergartens established in Hamburgh, Berlin, andDresden, by Froebel himself, and his most distinguishedscholars.
This study has more and more confirmed the conviction Iderived from reading Froebel's "Essay on the Education ofthe Human Race;" viz., that no greater benefit could beconferred on our country, than the far and wide spread ofKindergartens, as an underpinning, so to say, of our noblepublic-school system, giving adequate moral foundation,thoroughness, and practicality to the national education.
But I also learned that no book could be written thatwould make an expert Kindergartner. It was the carefulobservations and earnest experiments of half a century, thatgave to Froebel himself that profound knowledge of childhoodwhich enabled him to formulate the principles, deducethe rules, and call forth the spirit of a genuine art ofeducation. But though no genius and industry less than hisown could have originated this art, any soundly cultured,intelligent, genial-tempered young woman, who loves children,can appreciate and practise it, if—and only if—sheis trained by a living teacher engaged in the work at themoment.
This, I myself have proved experimentally also; for myknowledge was first obtained only from books. I had thebest manuals and guides, but did not know that they wereintended merely for the convenience of already trainedteachers; and that they necessarily omitted the characteristic[iv]peculiarity of the method, because written words cannotdo justice to the fine steps by which the child is led togradually carry its total spontaneity forwards, on ever