What Charlotte Mason Thought About Kindergarten

This week we are reading Further Considerations of the Kindergarten in Home Education. In this section, we hear more about what Charlotte Mason thought about the educational philosophy of Friedrich Froebel and the kindergarten model of her day.

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL’S KINDERGARTEN

Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) was a German educator who created (and named) the first kindergarten. While schools and care centers did exist for young children prior to Froebel, formal schooling in Germany at that time did not begin until age 7. Froebel’s schools were for children aged 3-6. He believed that “a child’s nature needs to be tended and cultivated like a good gardener tends a young plant” and used the metaphor of a “thirsty plant” for a child’s natural curiosity.1 Hence the name “kindergarten,” which mean’s “children’s garden” in German.

“Children are like tiny flowers; they are varied and need care, but each is beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers.” -Friedrich Froebel, The Education of Man2

He believed that women, with their maternal instincts, should be the teachers in the kindergarten, and that these teachers should be an extension of the child’s own mother. The kindergarten was to be characterized by songs, movement, self-directed play, and exposure to nature. His kindergarten provided children with “gifts” (educational toys Froebel designed for the students), “occupations” (materials and equipment children could use to build and make things), and “mother songs” (songs and games from his book Mother Play and Nursery Songs).

Home Education was published in 1886, almost 50 years after Froebel’s first kindergarten was opened in 1837. By this time, Friedrich Froebel’s ideas had spread to other countries, and the kindergarten became a popular educational idea worldwide. Some parts of the world, such as the UK, were assimilating Froebel’s ideas into their existing educational systems. Other countries were creating distinct kindergarten classrooms. The kindergarten classrooms were extremely popular in America. The first publicly funded kindergarten opened in the 1870s, and by the 1880s more than 400 kindergartens had opened across the country.

CHARLOTTE MASON CONSIDERS THE ‘KINDERGARTEN’

While Charlotte Mason admired much in Froebel3, she was concerned about teachers and parents widely adopting a philosophy of education without thoughtfully considering its implications. Charlotte Mason warned that the “cravings of our lazy human nature” tempt us to thoughtlessly accept the educational systems handed down to us. She believed we all must think through, and work out, what the education and bringing-up of a child requires. And we must do this thinking and working for ourselves.4 Despite the widespread popularity and adoption of the kindergarten, Charlotte Mason asked her readers to reconsider some of its tenets.

She primarily asked her readers to reconsider the very name “kindergarten.” She had many reservations about using a metaphor that compares children to plants in a garden, especially if that makes the parent or teacher the gardener. Charlotte Mason valued the personhood and individuality of children too highly to be comfortable with this way of thinking:

“Our first care should be to preserve the individuality, give play to the personality, of children. Now persons do not grow in a garden, much less in a greenhouse. It is a doubtful boon to a person to have conditions too carefully adapted to his needs. The exactly due sunshine and shade, pruning and training, are good for a plant whose uses are subordinate, so to say, to the needs and pleasures of its owner. But a person has other uses in the world, and mother or teacher who regards him as a plant and herself as the gardener, will only be saved from grave mistakes by the force of human nature in herself and in her child.”5

Charlotte Mason believed the metaphor undervalued the child’s own intelligence and abilities, and overvalued intervention from the parent and teacher. While parents and teachers do, of course, guide and instruct the children in their care, Charlotte Mason believed that Nature and the Holy Spirit were also directly influencing the child, and that parents should be careful not to interfere too much.

“The notion of supplementing Nature from the cradle is a dangerous one. A little guiding, a little restraining, much reverent watching, Nature asks of us; but beyond that, it is the wisdom of parents to leave children as much as be to Nature, and ‘to a higher Power than Nature itself.’”6

Charlotte Mason was willing to concede that “kindergarten” may have been a fitting name for Froebel’s original intentions, if it was to mean “an out-of-door garden life for the children.”7 But she argued that the term became a false analogy: “the child became a plant in a well-ordered garden.”8 And while the image may seem appealing at first, this is what makes it all the more dangerous:

“Because the analogy of the garden plant is very attractive, it is the more misleading; manifestations of purpose in a plant are wonderful and delightful, but in a person such manifestations are simply normal. The outcome of any thought is necessarily moulded by that thought, and to have a cultivated garden as the ground-plan for our educational thought, either means nothing at all, which it would be wronging the Master to suppose, or it means undue interference with the spontaneous development of a human being.”9

She believed the dignity and personality of all children should be respected, and that even small children should be allowed some ordering of their own life. Pupils should not be treated as a phenomenon, but as a person.10

She hoped “educationalists” would give up the name kindergarten, especially as she watched America impulsively and zealously adopt the name and framework. While the form of kindergarten has certainly changed over the years, Charlotte Mason’s wish was not granted. The term has not only stuck, but here in America, it has also become deeply embedded into the public education system.

We may not be able to change the name. But we can change how we view our children, and how we view our role in their education. Are they plants to be pruned, or persons to be respected? Charlotte Mason believed the latter.