There is no present excuse for neglect of our Apprentice Citizens and
helpless guests on account of cost or inability to reach them with
effective methods of character-building. The success of the
kindergarten system, when in the hands of trained teachers who analyze
the hereditary equipment of their children and cultivate them
accordingly, indicates a means for the latter and has proven the cost
to be insignificant in comparison with other branches of government or
education.
That it should be considered _the most important branch of government_
we reiterate because it _actually is the nursery of good citizenship_.
And, as to the expense, it seems so little that it will scarcely be
believed in the light of the cost of the higher branches of education.
Kindergartens have been conducted in Chicago by mission bodies at a
cost of forty-five cents per pupil per month, including whatever
nourishment was necessary to supplement that which the children
received at home, and exclusive of the pennies brought by them. The
room used cost little or nothing, for the school was established in
the depths of one of the lowest slums of the city and wooden horses
and boards served for seats and tables.
This suited the children of the slum better than the elegance of a
modern school building, and it taught the fact that character and good
habits are as essential in mean, as in the most expensive and
luxurious surroundings.
It is a question, worthy of careful consideration, whether the effect
of the teaching is not better by beginning with a school equipment in
keeping with the home surroundings of waifs, adding, of course, the
essential element of cleanliness, and graduating to better things as
the instruction progresses, and whether this is not better for the
children than initial installation in the best of quarters. Character
should not be associated with elegance in the minds of children.
The matter of housing and equipment is mentioned because it is an
important item of cost. The school taken as an example was presided
over by one of the present distinguished heads of the kindergarten
training school movement. She began with eighteen attendants, secured
one hundred and twenty in a few months, and then turned away hundreds
of applicants because there was not room for more.
And this mission of rescue from criminal tendencies and habits cost
not more than forty-five cents per child per month, including the
humble salary of the young teacher, who has now risen to a high place
in her chosen calling.[3]
[3] NOTE.--Reports from the city of St. Louis, where
considerable attention has been paid to kindergartens in
connection with the public schools, declare that the average
cost per child, exclusive of cost for rent of building or
room, is a little more than one dollar per month. Similar
report as to cost is reported from New Orleans, so that the
result noted above must be credited to the personal
sacrifice of the teacher.
The children of Rotterdam cost the municipality an average of eighteen
cents per week each, and much of this is returned by parents as a
voluntary offering in return for the nourishment supplied to their
children.
This insignificant cost is all that stands between a perfect social
quarantine and the present neglect. Much more can be spent, and
eventually must be spent, on manual-training schools and parental
farms by which to test the preferences of children to see what sort of
useful occupation they would rather follow than not, and which they
will pursue with the same delight that children work with at play; but
in the mere matter of rescue from sulphurous conditions of moral
asphyxiation and placing children where good suggestions can be had
and good habits learned, three cents per month, collected from every
citizen of Chicago, would supply kindergarten facilities, such as
described above, to more than one hundred and thirty thousand
children.
Groups of five neglected waifs have been taken to the homes of
large-hearted women and taught after the manner of the kindergarten
until a school has been provided, and then the groups have been
assembled at the school, but this method is open to the objection
stated above, that it associates character and cleanliness with
elegance in the minds of the children thus taught. Better take
suggestions of good character and tidiness into the slums to enlighten
and purify them also.
The contrasts and inconsistency shown by this illustration are striking
in their importance. Instead of a cost of forty cents per month to
every American citizen to free Cuba from the oppression and neglect of
the Spaniards, a cost of _three cents per month_ to every citizen of
Chicago, where extreme conditions of need prevail, would supply
protection for all of the children in need and close up a gap in social
quarantine through which a stream of evils is constantly entering.
With these figures in view, and in the light of the proved results of
character-building institutions for infants, who is there in the
community who would refuse to vote an average appropriation of three
cents per month, or forty cents per month, if needed, and who would
not cheerfully register himself "a Quarantinist?"