"New social and individual wants demand new solutions of the problem
of education."
"Social reform!" It is always rather an awe-striking phrase. It seems
as if one ought to be a philosopher, even to approach so august a
subject. The kindergarten--a simple unpretentious place, where a lot
of tiny children work and play together; a place into which if the
hard-headed man of business chanced to glance, and if he did not stay
long enough, or come often enough, would conclude that the children
were frittering away their time, particularly if that same good man of
business had weighed and measured and calculated so long that he had
lost the seeing eye and understanding heart.
Some years ago, a San Francisco kindergartner was threading her way
through a dirty alley, making friendly visits to the children of her
flock. As she lingered on a certain door-step, receiving the last
confidences of some weary woman's heart, she heard a loud but not
unfriendly voice ringing from an upper window of a tenement-house just
round the corner. "Clear things from under foot!" pealed the voice, in
stentorian accents. "The teacher o' the _Kids' Guards_ is comin' down
the street!"
"Eureka!" thought the teacher, with a smile. "There's a bit of
sympathetic translation for you! At last, the German word has been put
into the vernacular. The odd, foreign syllables have been taken to the
ignorant mother by the lisping child, and the _kindergartners_ have
become the _Kids' Guards!_ Heaven bless the rough translation,
colloquial as it is! No royal accolade could be dearer to its
recipients than this quaint, new christening!"
What has the kindergarten to do with social reform? What bearing have
its theory and practice upon the conduct of life?
A brass-buttoned guardian of the peace remarked to a gentleman on a
street-corner, "If we could open more kindergartens, sir, we could
almost shut up the penitentiaries, sir!" We heard the sentiment,
applauded it, and promptly printed it on the cover of three thousand
reports; but on calm reflection it appears like an exaggerated
statement. I am not sure that a kindergarten in every ward of every
city in America "would almost shut up the penitentiaries, sir!" The
most determined optimist is weighed down by the feeling that it will
take more than the ardent prosecution of any one reform, however
vital, to produce such a result. We appoint investigating committees,
who ask more and more questions, compile more and more statistics, and
get more and more confused every year. "Are our criminals native or
foreign born?" that we may know whether we are worse or better than
other people? "Have they ever learned a trade?" that we may prove what
we already know, that idle fingers are the devil's tools; "Have they
been educated?"--by any one of the sorry methods that take shelter
under that much-abused word,--that we may know whether ignorance is
a bliss or a _blister_; "Are they married or single?" that we may
determine the influence of home ties; "Have they been given to the use
of liquor?" that we may heap proof on proof, mountain high, against
the monster evil of intemperance; "What has been their family
history?" that we may know how heavily the law of heredity has laid
its burdens upon them. Burning questions all, if we would find out the
causes of crime.
To discover the why and wherefore of things is a law of human
thought. The reform schools, penitentiaries, prisons, insane asylums,
hospitals, and poorhouses are all filled to overflowing; and it
is entirely sensible to inquire how the people came there, and to
relieve, pardon, bless, cure, or reform them as far as we can.
Meanwhile, as we are dismissing or blessing or burying the
unfortunates from the imposing front gates of our institutions, new
throngs are crowding in at the little back doors. Life is a bridge,
full of gaping holes, over which we must all travel! A thousand evils
of human misery and wickedness flow in a dark current beneath; and the
blind, the weak, the stupid, and the reckless are continually falling
through into the rushing flood. We must, it is true, organize our
life-boats. It is our duty to pluck out the drowning wretches, receive
their vows of penitence and gratitude, and pray for courage and
resignation when they celebrate their rescue by falling in again. But
we agree nowadays that we should do them much better service if we
could contrive to mend more of the holes in the bridge.
The kindergarten is trying to mend one of these "holes." It is a tiny
one, only large enough for a child's foot; but that is our bit of the
world's work,--to _keep it small!_ If we can prevent the little people
from stumbling, we may hope that the grown folks will have a surer
foot and a steadier gait.
A wealthy lady announced her intention of giving $25,000 to some Home
for Incurables. "Why," cried a bright kindergartner, "_don't_ you give
twelve and a half thousand to some Home for _Curables_, and then your
other twelve and a half will go so much further?"
In a word, solicitude for childhood is one of the signs of a growing
civilization. "To cure, is the voice of the past; to prevent, the
divine whisper of to-day."
What is the true relation of the kindergarten to social reform?
Evidently, it can have no other relation than that which grows out of
its existence as a plan of education. Education, we have all glibly
agreed, lessens the prevalence of crime. That sounds very well; but,
as a matter of fact, has our past system produced all the results in
this direction that we have hoped and prayed for?
The truth is, people will not be made much better by education until
the plan of educating them is made better to begin with.
Froebel's idea--the kindergarten idea--of the child and its powers,
of humanity and its destiny, of the universe, of the whole problem of
living, is somewhat different from that held by the vast majority
of parents and teachers. It is imperfectly carried out, even in
the kindergarten itself, where a conscious effort is made, and is
infrequently attempted in the school or family.
His plan of education covers the entire period between the nursery and
the university, and contains certain essential features which bear
close relation to the gravest problems of the day. If they could be
made an integral part of all our teaching in families, schools, and
institutions, the burdens under which society is groaning to-day
would fall more and more lightly on each succeeding generation. These
essential features have often been enumerated. I am no fortunate
herald of new truth. I may not even put the old wine in new bottles;
but iteration is next to inspiration, and I shall give you the result
of eleven years' experience among the children and homes of the poorer
classes. This experience has not been confined, to teaching. One does
not live among these people day after day, pleading for a welcome for
unwished-for babies, standing beside tiny graves, receiving pathetic
confidences from wretched fathers and helpless mothers, without facing
every problem of this workaday world; they cannot all be solved, even
by the wisest of us; we can only seize the end of the skein nearest to
our hand, and patiently endeavor to straighten the tangled threads.
The kindergarten starts out plainly with the assumption that the moral
aim in education is the absolute one, and that all others are purely
relative. It endeavors to be a life-school, where all the practices of
complete living are made a matter of daily habit. It asserts boldly
that doing right would not be such an enormously difficult matter if
we practiced it a little,--say a tenth as much as we practice the
piano,--and it intends to give children plenty of opportunity for
practice in this direction. It says insistently and eternally, "Do
noble things, not dream them all day long." For development, action is
the indispensable requisite. To develop moral feeling and the power
and habit of moral doing we must exercise them, excite, encourage, and
guide their action. To check, reprove, and punish wrong feeling and
doing, however necessary it be for the safety and harmony, nay, for
the very existence of any social state, does not develop right feeling
and good doing. It does not develop anything, for it stops action,
and without action there is no development. At best it stops wrong
development, that is all.
In the kindergarten, the physical, mental, and spiritual being
is consciously addressed at one and the same time. There is no
"piece-work" tolerated. The child is viewed in his threefold
relations, as the child of Nature, the child of Man, and the child
of God; there is to be no disregarding any one of these divinely
appointed relations. It endeavors with equal solicitude to instill
correct and logical habits of thought, true and generous habits of
feeling, and pure and lofty habits of action; and it asserts serenely
that, if information cannot be gained in the right way, it would
better not be gained at all. It has no special hobby, unless you would
call its eternal plea for the all-sided development of the child a
hobby.
Somebody said lately that the kindergarten people had a certain stock
of metaphysical statements to be aired on every occasion, and that
they were over-fond of prating about the "being" of the child. It
would hardly seem as if too much could be said in favor of the
symmetrical growth of the child's nature. These are not mere "silken
phrases;" but, if any one dislikes them, let him take the good,
honest, ringing charge of Colonel Parker, "Remember that the whole boy
goes to school!"
Yes, the whole boy does go to school; but the whole boy is seldom
educated after he gets there. A fraction of him is attended to in the
evening, however, and a fraction on Sunday. He takes himself in hand
on Saturdays and in vacation time, and accomplishes a good deal,
notwithstanding the fact that his sight is a trifle impaired already,
and his hearing grown a little dull, so that Dame Nature works at a
disadvantage, and begins, doubtless, to dread boys who have enjoyed
too much "schooling," since it seems to leave them in a state of coma.
Our general scheme of education furthers mental development with
considerable success. The training of the hand is now being
laboriously woven into it; but, even when that is accomplished, we
shall still be working with imperfect aims, for the stress laid upon
heart-culture is as yet in no way commensurate with its gravity. We
know, with that indolent, fruitless half-knowledge that passes for
knowing, that "out of the heart are the issues of life." We feel,
not with the white heat of absolute conviction, but placidly and
indifferently, as becomes the dwellers in a world of change, that
"conduct is three fourths of life;" but we do not crystallize this
belief into action. We "dream," not "do" the "noble things." The
kindergarten does not fence off a half hour each day for moral
culture, but keeps it in view every moment of every day. Yet it is
never obtrusive; for the mental faculties are being addressed at the
same time, and the body strengthened for its special work.
With the methods generally practiced in the family and school, I fail
to see how we can expect any more delicate sense of right and wrong,
any clearer realization of duty, any greater enlightenment of
conscience, any higher conception of truth, than we now find in the
world. I care not what view you take of humanity, whether you have
Calvinistic tendencies and believe in the total depravity of infants,
or whether you are a disciple of Wordsworth and apostrophize the child
as a
"Mighty prophet! Seer blest,
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find;"
if you are a fair-minded man or woman, and have had much experience
with young children, you will be compelled to confess that they
generally have a tolerably clear sense of right and wrong, needing
only gentle guidance to choose the right when it is put before them. I
say most, not all, children; for some are poor, blurred human scrawls,
blotted all over with the mistakes of other people. And how do we
treat this natural sense of what is true and good, this willingness
to choose good rather than evil, if it is made even the least bit
comprehensible and attractive? In various ways, all equally dull,
blind, and vicious. If we look at the downright ethical significance
of the methods of training and discipline in many families and
schools, we see that they are positively degrading. We appoint more
and more "monitors" instead of training the "inward monitor" in each
child, make truth-telling difficult instead of easy, punish trivial
and grave offenses about in the same way, practice open bribery by
promising children a few cents a day to behave themselves, and weaken
their sense of right by giving them picture cards for telling the
truth and credits for doing the most obvious duty. This has been
carried on until we are on the point of needing another Deluge and a
new start.
Is it strange that we find the moral sense blunted, the conscience
unenlightened? The moral climate with which we surround the child is
so hazy that the spiritual vision grows dimmer and dimmer,--and
small wonder! Upon this solid mass of ignorance and stupidity it is
difficult to make any impression; yet I suppose there is greater
joy in heaven over a cordial "thwack" at it than over most blows at
existing evils.
The kindergarten attempts a rational, respectful treatment of
children, leading them to do right as much as possible for right's
sake, abjuring all rewards save the pleasure of working for others and
the delight that follows a good action, and all punishments save
those that follow as natural penalties of broken laws,--the obvious
consequences of the special bit of wrong-doing, whatever it may be.
The child's will is addressed in such a way as to draw it on, if
right; to turn it willingly, if wrong. Coercion in the sense of fear,
personal magnetism, nay, even the child's love for the teacher, may
be used in such a way as to weaken his moral force. With every free,
conscious choice of right, a human being's moral power and strength of
character increase; and the converse of this is equally true.
If the child is unruly in play, he leaves the circle and sits or
stands by himself, a miserable, lonely unit until he feels again in
sympathy with the community. If he destroys his work, he unites the
tattered fragments as best he may, and takes the moral object lesson
home with him. If he has neglected his own work, he is not given the
joy of working for others. If he does not work in harmony with his
companions, a time is chosen when he will feel the sense of isolation
that comes from not living in unity with the prevailing spirit of good
will. He can have as much liberty as is consistent with the liberty
of other people, but no more. If we could infuse the _spirit_ of this
kind of discipline into family and school life, making it systematic
and continuous from the earliest years, there would be fewer morally
"slack-twisted" little creatures growing up into inefficient,
bloodless manhood and womanhood. It would be a good deal of trouble;
but then, life is a good deal of trouble anyway, if you come to that.
We cannot expect to swallow the universe like a pill, and travel on
through the world "like smiling images pushed from behind."
Blind obedience to authority is not in itself moral. It is necessary
as a part of government. It is necessary in order that we may save
children dangers of which they know nothing. It is valuable also as
a habit. But I should never try to teach it by the story of that
inspired idiot, the boy who "stood on the burning deck, whence all
but him had fled," and from whence he would have fled if his mental
endowment had been that of ordinary boys. For obedience must not
be allowed to destroy common sense and the feeling of personal
responsibility for one's own actions. Our task is to train
responsible, self-directing agents, not to make soldiers.
Virtue thrives in a bracing moral atmosphere, where good actions are
taken rather as a matter of course. The attempt to instill an idea of
self-government into the tiny slips of humanity that find their way
into the kindergarten is useful, and infinitely to be preferred to the
most implicit obedience to arbitrary command. In the one case, we may
hope to have, some time or other, an enlightened will and conscience
struggling after the right, failing often, but rising superior to
failure, because of an ever stronger joy in right and shame for wrong.
In the other, we have a "_good goose_" who does the right for the
picture card that is set before him,--a "trained dog" sort of child,
who will not leap through the hoop unless he sees the whip or the lump
of sugar. So much for the training of the sense of right and wrong!
Now for the provision which the kindergarten makes for the growth of
certain practical virtues, much needed in the world, but touched upon
all too lightly in family and school.
The student of political economy sees clearly enough the need of
greater thrift and frugality in the nation; but where and when do we
propose to develop these virtues? Precious little time is given to
them in most schools, for their cultivation does not yet seem to be
insisted upon as an integral part of the scheme. Here and there an
inspired human being seizes on the thought that the child should
really be taught how to live at some time between the ages of six and
sixteen, or he may not learn so easily afterward. Accordingly, the
pupils under the guidance of that particular person catch a glimpse of
eternal verities between the printed lines of their geographies and
grammars. The kindergarten makes the growth of every-day virtues so
simple, so gradual, even so easy, that you are almost beguiled into
thinking them commonplace. They seem to come in, just by the way, as
it were, so that at the end of the day you have seen thought and
word and deed so sweetly mingled that you marvel at the "universal
dovetailedness of things," as Dickens puts it. They will flourish
better in the school, too, when the cheerful hum of labor is heard
there for a little while each day. The kindergarten child has "just
enough" strips for his weaving mat,--none to lose, none to destroy;
just enough blocks in each of his boxes, and every one of them, he
finds, is required to build each simple form. He cuts his square of
paper into a dozen crystal-shaped bits, and behold! each one of these
tiny flakes is needed to make a symmetrical figure. He has been
careless in following directions, and his form of folded paper does
not "come out" right. It is not even, and it is not beautiful. The
false step in the beginning has perpetuated itself in each succeeding
one, until at the end either partial success or complete failure
meets his eye. How easy here to see the relation of cause to effect!
"Courage!" says the kindergartner; "better fortune next time, for we
will take greater pains." "Can you rub out the ugly, wrong creases?"
"We will try. Alas, no! Wrong things are not so easily rubbed out, are
they?" "Use your worsted quite to the end, dear: it costs money." "Let
us save all the crumbs from our lunch for the birds, children; do not
drop any on the floor: it will only make work for somebody else."
And so on, to the end of the busy, happy day. How easy it is in the
kindergarten, how seemingly difficult later on! It seems to be only
books afterward; and "books are good enough in their own way, but they
are a mighty bloodless substitute for life."
The most superficial observer values the industrial side of the
kindergarten, because it falls directly in line with the present
effort to make some manual training a part of school work; but twenty
or twenty-five years ago, when the subject was not so popular,
kindergarten children were working away at their pretty, useful
tasks,--tiny missionaries helping to show the way to a truth now fully
recognized. As to the value of leading children to habits of industry
as early in life as may be, that they may see the dignity and
nobleness of labor, and conceive of their individual responsibilities
in this world of action, that is too obvious to dwell upon at this
time.
To Froebel, life, action, and knowledge were the three notes of one
harmonious chord; but he did not advocate manual training merely that
children might be kept busy, nor even that technical skill might be
acquired. The piece of finished kindergarten work is only a symbol of
something more valuable which the child has acquired in doing it.
The first steps in all the kindergarten occupations are directed or
suggested by the teacher; but these dictations or suggestions are
merely intended to serve as a sort of staff, by which the child can
steady himself until he can walk alone. It is always the creative
instinct that is to be reached and vivified: everything else is
secondary. By reproduction from memory of a dictated form, by taking
from or adding to it, by changing its centre, corners, or sides,--by a
dozen ingenious preliminary steps,--the child's inventive faculty is
developed; and he soon reaches a point in drawing, building, modeling,
or what not, where his greatest delight is to put his individual ideas
into visible shape. The simple request, "Make something pretty of your
own," brings a score of original combinations and designs,--either the
old thoughts in different shape or something fresh and audacious which
hints of genius. Instead of twenty hackneyed and slavish copies of
one pattern, we have twenty free, individual productions, each the
expression of the child's inmost personal thought. This invests labor
with a beauty and power, and confers upon it a dignity, to be gained
in no other way. It makes every task, however lowly, a joy, because
all the higher faculties are brought into action. Much so-called "busy
work," where pupils of the "A class" are allowed to stick a thousand
pegs in a thousand holes while the "B class" is reciting arithmetic,
is quite fruitless, because it has so little thought behind it.
Unless we have a care, manual training, when we have succeeded in
getting it into the school, may become as mechanical and unprofitable
as much of our mind training has been, and its moral value thus
largely missed. The only way to prevent it is to borrow a suggestion
from Froebel. Then, and only then, shall we have insight with power
of action, knowledge with practice, practice with the stamp of
individuality. Then doing will blossom into being, and "Being is the
mother of all the little doings as well as of the grown-up deeds and
heroic sacrifices."
The kindergarten succeeds in getting these interesting and valuable
free productions from children of four or five years only by
developing, in every possible way, the sense of beauty and harmony and
order. We know that people assume, somewhat at least, the color of
their surroundings; and, if the sense of beauty is to grow, we must
give it something to feed upon.
The kindergarten tries to provide a room, more or less attractive,
quantities of pictures and objects of interest, growing plants and
vines, vases of flowers, and plenty of light, air, and sunshine. A
canary chirps in one corner, perhaps; and very likely there will be
a cat curled up somewhere, or a forlorn dog which has followed the
children into this safe shelter. It is a pretty, pleasant, domestic
interior, charming and grateful to the senses. The kindergartner
looks as if she were glad to be there, and the children are generally
smiling. Everybody seems alive. The work, lying cosily about, is neat,
artistic, and suggestive. The children pass out of their seats to the
cheerful sound of music, and are presently joining in an ideal sort of
game, where, in place of the mawkish sentimentality of "Sally Walker,"
of obnoxious memory, we see all sorts of healthful, poetic, childlike
fancies woven into song. Rudeness is, for the most part, banished. The
little human butterflies and bees and birds flit hither and thither
in the circle; the make-believe trees hold up their branches, and the
flowers their cups; and everybody seems merry and content. As they
pass out the door, good-bys and bows and kisses are wafted backward
into the room; for the manners of polite society are observed in
everything.
You draw a deep breath. This is a _real_ kindergarten, and it is like
a little piece of the millennium. "Everything is so very pretty and
charming," says the visitor. Yes, so it is. But all this color,
beauty, grace, symmetry, daintiness, delicacy, and refinement, though
it seems to address and develop the aesthetic side of the child's
nature, has in reality a very profound ethical significance. We have
all seen the preternatural virtue of the child who wears her best
dress, hat, and shoes on the same august occasion. Children are tidier
and more careful in a dainty, well-kept room. They treat pretty
materials more respectfully than ugly ones. They are inclined to be
ashamed, at least in a slight degree, of uncleanliness, vulgarity,
and brutality, when they see them in broad contrast with beauty and
harmony and order. For the most part, they try "to live up to" the
place in which they find themselves. There is some connection between
manners and morals. It is very elusive and, perhaps, not very deep;
but it exists. Vice does not flourish alike in all conditions and
localities, by any means. An ignorant negro was overheard praying,
"Let me so lib dat when I die I may _hab manners_, dat I may know what
to say when I see my heabenly Lord!" Well, I dare say we shall need
good manners as well as good morals in heaven; and the constant
cultivation of the one from right motives might give us an unexpected
impetus toward the other. If the systematic development of the sense
of beauty and order has an ethical significance, so has the happy
atmosphere of the kindergarten an influence in the same direction.
I have known one or two "solid men" and one or two predestinate
spinsters who said that they didn't believe children could accomplish
anything in the kindergarten, because they had too good a time. There
is something uniquely vicious about people who care nothing for
children's happiness. That sense of the solemnity of mortal conditions
which has been indelibly impressed upon us by our Puritan ancestors
comes soon enough, Heaven knows! Meanwhile, a happy childhood is an
unspeakably precious memory. We look back upon it and refresh our
tired hearts with the vision when experience has cast a shadow over
the full joy of living.
The sunshiny atmosphere of a good kindergarten gives the young human
plants an impulse toward eager, vigorous growth. Love's warmth
surrounds them on every side, wooing their sweetest possibilities into
life. Roots take a firmer grasp, buds form, and flowers bloom where,
under more unfriendly conditions, bare stalks or pale leaves would
greet the eye,--pathetic, unfulfilled promises,--souls no happier
for having lived in the world, the world no happier because of their
living. "Virtue kindles at the touch of joy." The kindergarten takes
this for one of its texts, and does not breed that dismal fungus of
the mind "which disposes one to believe that the pursuit of knowledge
must necessarily be disagreeable."
The social phase of the kindergarten is most interesting to the
student of social economics. Coöperative work is strongly emphasized;
and the child is inspired both to live his _own full_ life, and yet to
feel that his life touches other lives at every point,--"for we are
members one of another." It is not the unity of the "little birds," in
the couplet, who "agree" in their "little nests," because "they'd
fall out if they didn't," but a realization, in embryo, of the divine
principle that no man liveth to himself.
As to specifically religious culture, everything fosters the spirit
out of which true religion grows.
In the morning talks, when the children are most susceptible and ready
to "be good," as they say, their thoughts are led to the beauty of the
world about them, the pleasure of right doing, the sweetness of
kind thoughts and actions, the loveliness of truth, patience, and
helpfulness, and the goodness of the Creator to all created things.
No parent, of whatever creed or lack of creed, whether a bigot or
unbeliever, could object to the kind of religious instruction given in
the kindergarten; and yet in every possible way the child-soul and the
child-heart are directed towards everything that is pure and holy,
true and steadfast.
If the child love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love
God whom he hath not seen? "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor,
therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." There is a vast deal of
practical religion to be breathed into these little children of the
street before the abstractions of beliefs can be comprehended. They
cannot live on words and prayers and texts, the thought and feeling
must come before the expression. As Mrs. Whitney says, "The world is
determined to vaccinate children with religion for fear they should
take it in the natural way."
Some wise sayings of the good Dr. Holland, in "Nicholas Minturn,"
come to me as I write. Nicholas says, in discussing this matter of
charities, and the various means of effecting a radical cure of
pauperism, rather than its continual alleviation: "If you read the
parable of the Sower, I think that you will find that soil is quite as
necessary as seed--indeed, that the seed is thrown away unless a
soil is prepared in advance.... I believe in religion, but before I
undertake to plant it, I would like something to plant it in. The
sowers are too few, and the seed is too precious to be thrown away and
lost among the thorns and stones."
Last, but by no means least, the admirable physical culture that goes
on in the kindergarten is all in the right direction. Physiologists
know as much about morality as ministers of the gospel. The vices
which drag men and women into crime spring as often from unhealthy
bodies as from weak wills and callous consciences. Vile fancies and
sensual appetites grow stronger and more terrible when a feeble
physique and low vitality offer no opposing force. Deadly vices are
nourished in the weak, diseased bodies that are penned, day after day,
in filthy, crowded tenements of great cities. If we could withdraw
every three-year-old child from these physically enfeebling and
morally brutalizing influences, and give them three or four hours a
day of sunshine, fresh air, and healthy physical exercise, we should
be doing humanity an inestimable service, even if we attempted nothing
more.
I have tried, as briefly as I might in justice to the subject, to
emphasize the following points:--
I. That we must act up to our convictions with regard to the value of
preventive work. If we are ever obliged to choose, let us save the
children.
II. That the relation of the kindergarten to social reform is simply
that, as a plan of education, it offers us valuable suggestions in
regard to the mental, moral, and physical culture of children, which,
in view of certain crying evils of the day, we should do well to
follow.
The essential features of the kindergarten which bear a special
relation to the subject are as follows:--
1. The symmetrical development of the child's powers, considering him
neither as all mind, all soul, nor all body; but as a creature capable
of devout feeling, clear thinking, noble doing.
2. The attempt to make so-called "moral culture" a little less
immoral; the rational method of discipline, looking to the growth of
moral, self-directing power in the child,--the only proper discipline
for future citizens of a free republic.
3. The development of certain practical virtues, the lack of which
is endangering the prosperity of the nation; namely, economy thrift,
temperance, self-reliance, frugality industry, courtesy, and all
the sober host,--none of them drawing-room accomplishments and
consequently in small demand.
4. The emphasis placed upon manual training, especially in its
development of the child's creative activity.
5. The training of the sense of beauty, harmony, and order; its
ethical as well as aesthetical significance.
6. The insistence upon the moral effect of happiness; joy the
favorable climate of childhood.
7. The training of the child's social nature; an attempt to teach the
brotherhood of man as well as the Fatherhood of God.
8. The realization that a healthy body has almost as great an
influence on morals as a pure mind.
I do not say that the consistent practice of these principles will
bring the millennium in the twinkling of an eye, but I do affirm
that they are the thought-germs of that better education which shall
prepare humanity for the new earth over which shall arch the new
heaven.
Ruskin says, "Crime can only be truly hindered by letting no man
grow up a criminal, by taking away the will to commit sin!" But, you
object, that is sheer impossibility. It does seem so, I confess,
and yet, unless you are willing to think that the whole plan of an
Omnipotent Being is to be utterly overthrown, set aside, thwarted,
then you must believe this ideal possible, somehow, sometime.
I know of no better way to grow towards it than by living up to the
kindergarten idea, that just as we gain intellectual power by doing
intellectual work, and the finest aesthetic feeling by creating
beauty, so shall we win for ourselves the power of feeling nobly and
willing nobly by doing "noble things."