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Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology. E. R. Murray
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isbn 4064066232443
Автор произведения E. R. Murray
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
In like manner Dr. Ward accuses psychologists of having “usually represented mental advance as consisting fundamentally in the combination and recombination of various elementary units, the so-called sensations and primitive movements, or, in other words, in a species of mental chemistry.”
That Froebel seems to have avoided the error thus pointed out by those two psychologists, is surprising enough, but it is even more surprising to find that this is probably due to the fact that his conception of the earliest possible consciousness is very much like theirs.
In rejecting “the atomistic view,” Professor Ward maintains that “the further we go back, the nearer we approach to a total presentation, having the character of one general continuum in which differences are latent.”
Froebel’s account, as given in “The Education of Man,” is very similar:
“Although in itself made up of the same objects and of the same organization, the external world comes to the child at first, out of its void, as it were, in misty, formless indistinctness, in chaotic confusion, even the child and the outer world merge into one another.”—E., p. 40.
This description reminds us of Professor James’ picturesque expression, “big, blooming, buzzing confusion,” which is so often quoted, but which does not really convey so true a picture as Dr. Ward’s account, for where there is no distinction there can surely be no confusion. But a few pages further on we find Froebel describing the infant consciousness before speech begins, as “still an unorganized, undifferentiated unity” (noch eine ungegliederte mannigfaltigkeitslose Einheit). This is identical with the expression used by Professor Stout, who, in speaking of the stage to which he gives the name “implicit apprehension,” the apprehension of an unanalysed whole, uses the phrase “distinctionless unity.” Froebel talks of the child feeling himself a whole and “so also, though unconsciously, seeking to grasp a whole, never merely a part as such.” And just as Dr. Ward claims for psychology as well as for biology “what may be called a principle of progressive differentiation or specialization,” so Froebel writes:
“The child mind develops according to the law which governs world development, viz.: that of progression from the unlimited to the limited, from the general to the special, from the whole to the part.”—P., p. 170.
In this, of course, lies the reason for Froebel’s correct apprehension of the infant mind, he was biologist first, and his mind was full of the idea of development.
“At the same time there begins in the child, as in the seed-corn, a development towards complexity.”—P., p. 172.
“Whether we are looking at a seed or an egg, whether we are watching feeling or thought, what is definite proceeds everywhere from what is indefinite and this is the way in which your child’s life is sure to show itself.”—M., p. 121.
Professor Ward goes on to discuss what is implied in this process of differentiation or mental growth, saying that if analogies are to be taken from the physical world at all, the growth of a seed or embryo, will furnish far better illustrations of the unfolding of the contents of consciousness than the building up of molecules.
It was the endeavour, and quaint enough it seems to us, to translate this psychological truth into educational practice, that led Froebel to lay so much stress on the fact that the earliest of his so-called “Gifts” are indivisible wholes:
“Let us place ourselves at the nursery table, and try to perceive what the child is impelled to do in the beginning of his self-employment. Let us sit ourselves as unnoticed as possible considering how the child, after he has examined the self-contained tangible object in its form and colour, has moved it here and there and proved its solidity, how he then tries to divide it, at least to change its form. … Thus after perception of the whole, the child desires to see it separated into parts. … Let us stop at this significant phenomenon and try to discern through it what plaything following on the self-contained ball, hard and soft, and the solid hard cube, we should for inner reason and without arbitrariness give to the child.”—P., p. 117.
Then come directions as to the manner in which the toy is to be presented:
“in order to give the child the impression of the whole (den Eindrück des Ganzen). From this as the first fundamental perception (der ersten Grundanschauung) everything proceeds and must proceed.”[21]
Starting from the conception of an undifferentiated totality or objective continuum, Dr. Ward says, “Of the very beginnings of this continuum we can say nothing, absolute beginnings are beyond the pale of science. Actual presentation consists in this continuum being differentiated; every differentiation constitutes a new presentation. Hence the common-place of psychologists: ‘We are only conscious as we are conscious of change.’ ” …
As to absolute beginnings, Froebel too writes that these are past finding out, but he does so in order to call the mother’s attention to the importance of the very earliest steps:
“Do not say, It is much too early. … Too early? Do you know when, where and how your child’s intellectual development begins? Can you tell when and where is the boundary of existence that has not yet begun, and of its actual beginning, and how this boundary manifests itself?”—M., p. 154.
Coming now to what Froebel has to say as to how his “unorganized unity” becomes differentiated, we shall not find that his brief account differs in any really fundamental way from that of Professor Ward. Some of his expressions have a very modern sound, such as: “how the outer world begins to divide and analyse itself”; how “out of the indefinite outside and around the child comes the definite”; or again how the child gains “the three great perceptions of object, space and time, which at first were one collective perception.” (“Die drei grossen Wahrnehmungen von Gegenstand, Raum und Zeit; welche anfangs in einer Gesammtwahrnehmung in dem Kinde ruhten.”)—P., p. 37.
Commenting upon the phrase “We are only conscious as we are conscious of change,” Dr. Ward remarks that the word change does not sufficiently explain what happens in differentiation, for this implies that the increased complexity is due to the persistence of former changes; such persistence being essential to the very idea of growth or development. … At the same time he is careful to point out that neither in “retentiveness” nor in assimilation is there “any confronting of the old with the new,” any “active comparison.” Without change of impression consciousness would be a blank, but “a difference between presentations is not at all the same as the presentation of that difference. The former must precede the latter; the latter, which requires active comparison, need not follow … we must recognize objects before we can compare them.”
Froebel says that:
“All the development of the child has its foundation in almost imperceptible attainments and perceptions … the first perceptions, in the beginning almost imperceptible and evanescent, are fixed, increased and clarified by innumerable repetitions, and by change.”—P., p. 38.
Froebel, too, goes back to this very earliest stage, the stage when a baby “begins to notice.” He says that this indication of an intellect (Seelenaeusserung) begins when the child is a few weeks old, and is occasioned at first by the movement, that is change in position, of a bright object, “in and by means of the motion the child first perceives the object.”—P., p. 64.
In another passage Froebel speaks of change as “a dim conception of sequence, and thus of dim comparison.”
“These first impressions come to the child by means of perception and seeing, and by means of coming, staying and vanishing (of the ball); by means of change, thus also, in a certain point of view by means of early dim conceptions of sequence, of foundation and result, of cause and effect, and thus of dim comparison.”—P., p. 65.
A change or difference