Ever since the normal teaching of kindergartners was begun in America, in 1868, letters have been received from teachers, already at work in the old routine of primary instruction, asking for knowledge of the plays and occupations invented by Frœbel; in order that, by means of them, they may give such prestige to their infant schools as the name of kindergarten may. But this superficial, inappreciative use of Frœbel's processes, is as fatal to his reform as was _judaizing_ to the primitive Christian Church. Frœbel's method is a radical change of direction. It changes the educator's point of view. Instead of looking down upon the child, the kindergartner must clear her mind of all foregone arbitrary conclusions, and humbly look up to the innocent soul, which in its turn sees nothing but the face of the Father in heaven--(for thus Christ explains children's being "of the kingdom of heaven"). This is difficult for her to do, because--not seldom--a shadow has fallen on the original innocence of the children confided to her care, from those human beings in relation to them, who have not done for them what every human being needs by reason of the essential dependence of individuals upon their race.
The child is doubtless an embryo angel; but no less certainly a possible devil. If the immortal will, impassioned by the heart, which never rests permanently satisfied till the mind recognizes God, be puzzled, it may be turned in a wrong direction by what it meets, and then the manifestation will be ugly and more or less hateful. Evil is the inevitable effect of an ignorant, disorderly action of the will; of its not adopting the laws of order, by which God creates the universe, and of which the universe is the unconscious exponent. But knowledge of the laws of order must come to guide the will, from outside the child's conscious individuality, _through the human providence of education_, in which the heavenly Father veils His infinite power, in order that the child may be free to make the choice of good, that shall lift him from the state, of merely instinctive being, into that union of Love and Thought, which characterizes a spirit _creative_, _i.e._, causing effects.
Perhaps you will say that if human influence must embody Divine Providence, in order to educate, then children never will be educated. Well! Except in one instance I admit that children never have been educated up to the ideal standard. But the one instance of the perfectly Divine Son of the perfectly holy Mother; and the partial successes of such fitful good education as history and tradition report, forbid us to despair of making human education a worthy image of Divine Providence. _To despair of this_ is want of the proper action of human free will,--Faith.