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Updated: May 26, 2025
He has left us two definitions or descriptions, one announced shortly before the first Kindergarten was opened, which runs: "An institution for the fostering of human life, through the cultivation of the human instincts of activity, of investigation and of construction in the child, as a member of the family, of the nation and of humanity; an institution for the self-instruction, self-education and self-cultivation of mankind, as well as for all-sided development of the individual through play, through creative self-activity and spontaneous self-instruction."
It has been often supposed that the only way to do this is to use reference books, to study up the lesson or some topics of it outside of the regular order. But self-activity is by no means limited to such outside work. A child's self-activity may be often aroused by the manner of studying a simple lesson from a text-book.
Interest is awakened and self-activity exercised at every step in the progress toward general truths. By the reflective habit these truths will be seen in their origin and causal connection, and the line of similarity, contrast, causal relation, analogy and coincidence will be thoughtfully traced.
With as much reason, in approaching the subject of mental education that one third of education which with too many persons stands for the whole we must pause a moment for a few reflections on the nature of mind and the necessary results thereof. "Mind is essentially self-activity."
Cosmic Will, however, does not work into our existence only in such a way that, in the form of old and therefore rigid Will, it puts up resistance against the young will-power of the I, so that in overcoming this resistance the I may waken to self-activity. Cosmic Will is also present in us in an active form.
This is the pure product of a process of abstraction from everything material and accidental, a pure object free from every subjective barrier, a pure state of self-activity without any admixture of passive sensations.
Mechanical organization of the classroom, it seems, crushes the child's spontaneity, represses his self-activity, prevents the effective operation of the principle of self-realization. How, then, did these three groups exchange places, for I felt that the doctrine of self-realization would not permit them to remain in the same employment during the entire session.
If, then, during this period the child is left wholly to gather his experiences as he may, he no doubt acquires by his own self-activity a world of new ideas, but the result of this unregulated process will be that the knowledge gained will be largely unsystematised, and much of the experience acquired may be of a nature which may give a false direction to his whole after-development.
At first we only admitted a few, and when these began to improve, gradually increased the numbers to thirty-five. They needed great patience and care, but they responded wonderfully to the love given them, and before long they were real Kindergarten children, full of vigour, merriment and self-activity."
Much has been said about the importance of "self-activity" in education, but the conception has too frequently been restricted to something merely internal something excluding the free use of sensory and motor organs.
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