"Where is thy brother Abel?"
We will suppose, for the sake of argument, that the rights of our own
children are secured; but though such security betokens an admirable
state of affairs, it does not cover the whole ground; there are always
the "other people's children." The still small voice is forever
saying, "Where is thy brother Abel?"
There are many matters to be settled with regard to this brother
Abel, and we differ considerably as to the exact degree of our
responsibility towards him. Some people believe in giving him the
full privileges of brotherhood, in sharing alike with him in every
particular, and others insist that he is no brother of theirs at all.
Let the nationalists and socialists, and all the other reformers,
decide this vexed question as best they can, particularly with
regard to the "grown-up" Abels. Meanwhile, there are a few sweet and
wholesome services we can render to the brother Abels who are not big
enough to be nationalists and socialists, nor strong enough to fight
for their own rights.
Among these kindly offices to be rendered, these practical agencies
for making Abel a happy, self-helpful, and consequently a better
little brother, we may surely count the free kindergarten.
My mind convinces me that the kindergarten idea is true; not a perfect
thing as yet, but something on the road to perfection, something full
of vitality and power to grow; and my heart tells me that there is no
more beautiful or encouraging work in the universe than this of taking
hold of the unclaimed babies and giving them a bit of motherliness to
remember. The Free Kindergarten is the mother of the motherless, the
father of the fatherless; it is the great clean broom that sweeps the
streets of its parentless or worse than parentless children, to the
increased comfort of the children, and to the prodigious advantage of
the street.
We are very much interested in the cleaning of city streets, and well
we may be; but up to this day a larger number of men and women have
concerned themselves actively about sweeping them of dust and dirt
than of sweeping them free of these children. If dirt is misplaced
matter, then what do you call a child who sits eternally on the
curbstones and in the gutters of our tenement-house districts?
I believe that since the great Teacher of humanity spoke those simple
words of eternal tenderness that voiced the mother side of the divine
nature,--"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them
not,"--I believe that nothing more heartfelt, more effectual, has come
ringing down to us through the centuries than Froebel's inspired and
inspiring call, "Come! let us live with the children!"
This work _pays_, in the best and the highest sense as well as the
most practical.
It is true, the kindergartner has the child in her care but three
or four hours a day; it is true, in most instances, that the home
influences are all against her; it is true that the very people for
whom she is working do not always appreciate her efforts; it is true
that in many cases the child has been "born wrong," and to accomplish
any radical reform she ought to have begun with his grandfather; it is
true she makes failures now and then, and has to leave the sorry task
seemingly unperformed, giving into the mighty hand of One who bringeth
order out of chaos that which her finite strength has failed to
compass. She hears discouraging words sometimes, but they do not make
a profound impression, when she sees the weary yet beautiful days go
by, bringing with them hourly rewards greater than speech can testify!
She sees homes changing slowly but surely under her quiet influence,
and that of those home missionaries, the children themselves; she gets
love in full measure where she least expected so radiant a flower to
bloom; she receives gratitude from some parents far beyond what she
is conscious of deserving; she sees the ancient and respectable
dirt-devil being driven from many of the homes where he has reigned
supreme for years; she sees brutal punishments giving place to sweeter
methods and kinder treatment; and she is too happy and too grateful,
for these and more encouragements, to be disheartened by any cynical
dissertations on the determination of the world to go wrong and the
impossibility of preventing it.
It is easier, in my opinion, to raise money for, and interest the
general man or woman in, the free kindergarten than in any other
single charity. It is always comparatively easy to convince people of
a truth, but it is much easier to convince them of some truths than of
others. If you wish to found a library, build a hospital, establish a
diet-kitchen, open a bureau for woman's work, you are obliged to argue
more or less; but if you want money for neglected children, you have
generally only to state the case. Everybody agrees in the obvious
propositions, "An ounce of prevention"--"As the twig is bent"--"The
child is father to the man"--"Train up a child"--"A stitch in
time"--"Prevention is better than cure"--"Where the lambs go the
flocks will follow"--"It is easier to form than to reform," and so on
_ad infinitum_--proverbs multiply. The advantages of preventive work
are so palpable that as soon as you broach the matter you ought to
find your case proved and judgment awarded to the plaintiff, before
you open your lips to plead.
The whole matter is crystal clear; for happily, where the protection
of children is concerned, there is not any free-trade side to the
argument. We need the public kindergarten educationally as the
vestibule to our school work. We need it as a philanthropic agent,
leading the child gently into right habits of thought, speech, and
action from the beginning. We need it to help in the absorption and
amalgamation of our foreign element; for the social training, the
opportunity for coöperation, and the purely republican form of
government in the kindergarten make it of great value in the
development of the citizen-virtues, as well as those of the
individual.
I cannot help thinking that if this side of Froebel's educational idea
were more insisted on throughout our common school system, we should
be making better citizens and no worse scholars.
If we believe in the kindergarten, if we wish it to become a part
of our educational system, we have only to let that belief--that
desire--crystallize into action; but we must not leave it for somebody
else to do.
It is clearly every mother's business and father's
business,--spinsters and bachelors are not exempt, for they know not
in what hour they may be snatched from sweet liberty, and delivered
into sweeter slavery. It is a lawyer's business, for though it will
make the world better, it will not do it soon enough to lessen
litigation in his time. It is surely the doctor's business, and the
minister's, and that of the business man. It is in fact everybody's
business.
The beauty of this kindergarten subject is its kaleidoscopic
character; it presents, like all truth, so many sides that you can
give every one that which he likes or is fitted to receive. Take the
aggressively self-made man who thinks our general scheme of education
unprofitable,--show him the kindergarten plan of manual training. He
rubs his hands. "Ah! that's common sense," he says. "I don't believe
in your colleges--I never went to college; you may count on me."
Give the man of esthetic taste an idea of what the kindergarten does
in developing the sense of beauty; show him in what way it is a
primary art school.
Explain to the musician your feeling about the influence of music;
show the physical-culture people that in the kindergarten the body has
an equal chance with mind and heart.
Tell the great-hearted man some sad incident related to you by one of
your kindergartners, and as soon as he can see through his tears, show
him your subscription book.
Give the woman who cannot reason (and there are such) an opportunity
to feel. There is more than one way of imbibing truth, fortunately,
and the brain is not the only avenue to knowledge.
Finally, take the utter skeptic into the kindergarten and let
the children convert him. It commonly is a "him" by the way. The
mother-heart of the universe is generally sound on this subject.
But getting money and opening kindergartens are not the only cares
of a Kindergarten Association. At least there are other grave
responsibilities which no other organization is so well fitted to
assume. These are the persistent working upon school boards until they
adopt the kindergarten, and, much more delicate and difficult, the
protection of its interests after it is adopted; the opening of
kindergartens in orphanages and refuges where they prove the most
blessed instrumentality for good; the spreading of such clear
knowledge and intelligent insight into the kindergarten as shall
prevent it from deterioration; the insistence upon kindergartners
properly trained by properly qualified training teachers; the gentle
mothering and inspiring and helping those kindergartners to realize
their fair ideals (for Froebel's method is a growing thing, and she
who does not grow with it is a hopeless failure); the proper equipment
and furnishing of class-rooms so that the public may have good
object-lessons before its eyes; the insistence upon the ultimate
ideals of the method as well as upon details and technicalities,--that
is, showing people its soul instead of forever rattling its dry bones.
And when all is said and done, the heaviest of the work falls upon the
kindergartner. That is why I am convinced that we should do everything
that sympathy and honor and money can do to exalt the office, so that
women of birth, breeding, culture, and genius shall gravitate to it.
The kindergartner it is who, living with the children, can make her
work an integral part of the neighborhood, the centre of its best
life. She it is, often, who must hold husband to wife, and parent
to child; she it is after all who must interpret the aims of the
Association, and translate its noble theories into practice. (Ay! and
there's the rub.) She it is, who must harmonize great ideal principles
with real and sometimes sorry conditions. A Kindergarten Association
stands for certain things before the community. It is the
kindergartner alone who can prove the truth, who can substantiate the
argument, who can show the facts. There is no more difficult
vocation in the universe, and no more honorable or sacred one. If a
kindergartner is looked upon, or paid, or treated as a nursery maid,
her ranks will gradually be recruited from that source. The ideal
teacher of little children is not born. We have to struggle on as best
we can, without her. She would be born if we knew how to conceive her,
how to cherish her. She needs the strength of Vulcan and the delicacy
of Ariel; she needs a child's heart, a woman's heart, a mother's
heart, in one; she needs clear judgment and ready sympathy, strength
of will, equal elasticity, keen insight, oversight; the buoyancy of
hope, the serenity of faith, the tenderness of patience. "The hope of
the world lies in the children." When we are better mothers, when men
are better fathers, there will be better children and a better world.
The sooner we feel the value of beginnings, the sooner we realize that
we can put bunglers and botchers anywhere else better than in nursery,
kindergarten, or primary school (there are no three places in the
universe so "big with Fate"), the sooner we shall arrive at better
results.
I am afraid it is chiefly women's work. Of course men can be useful
in many little ways; such as giving money and getting other people
to give it, in influencing legislation, interviewing school boards,
securing buildings, presiding over meetings, and giving a general air
of strength and solidity to the undertaking. But the chief plotting
and planning and working out of details must be done by women. The
male genius of humanity begets the ideas of which each century has
need (at least it is so said, and I have never had the courage to deny
it or the time to look it up); but the female genius, I am sure, has
to work them out, and "to help is to do the work of the world."
If one can give money, if only a single subscription, let her give
it; if she can give time, let her give that; if she has no time for
absolute work, perhaps she has time for the right word spoken in due
season; failing all else, there is no woman alive, worthy the name,
who cannot give a generous heartthrob, a warm hand-clasp, a sunny,
helpful smile, a ready tear, to a cause that concerns itself with
childhood, as a thank-offering for her own children, a pledge for
those the hidden future may bring her, or a consolation for empty
arms.
There is always time to do the thing that _ought_ to be, that _must_
be done, and for that matter who shall fix the limit to our powers of
helpfulness? It is the unused pump that wheezes. If our bounty be dry,
cross, and reluctant, it is because we do not continually summon and
draw it out. But if, like the patriarch Jacob's, our well is deep, it
cannot be exhausted. While we draw upon it, it draws upon the unspent
springs, the hill-sides, the clouds, the air, and the sea; and the
great source of power must itself suspend and be bankrupt before ours
can fail.
The kindergarten is not for the poor child alone, a charity; neither
is it for the rich child alone, a luxury, corrective, or antidote;
but the ideas of which it tries to be the expression are the proper
atmosphere for every child.
It is a promise of health, happiness, and usefulness to many an
unfortunate little waif, whose earthly inheritance is utter blackness,
and whose moral blight can be outgrown and succeeded by a development
of intelligence and love of virtue.
The child of poverty and vice has still within him, however overlaid
by the sins of ancestry, a germ of good that is capable of growth, if
reached in time. Let us stretch out a tender strong hand, and touching
that poor germ of good lifting its feeble head in a wilderness of
evil, help it to live and thrive and grow!