CHAPTER VI

"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE"


A wedding or a festival, a mourning or a funeral...
As if his whole vocation were endless imitation.

In every country and in every age those who have eyes to see have
watched the same little dramas. What Wordsworth saw was seen nineteen
hundred years ago in the Syrian market-place, where the children
complained of their unresponsive companions: "We have piped the glad
chaunt of the marriage, but ye have not danced, we have wailed our
lamentation, but ye have not joined our mourning procession."

Since the very name Kindergarten is to imply a teaching which fulfils
the child's own wants and desires, it must supply abundant provision for
the dramatic representation of life. Adults have always been ready to
use for their own purposes the strong tendency to imitate, which is a
characteristic of all normal children, but few even now realise to what
extent a child profits by his imitative play. The explanation that
Froebel found for this will now be generally accepted, viz. that only by
acting it out can a child fully grasp an idea, "For what he tries to
represent or do, he begins to understand." He thinks in action, or as
one writer put it, he "apperceives with his muscles." This explanation
seems to cover imitative play, from the little child's imitative wave of