criminal for the same length of time. Reformation being costly and uncertain, punishment often deprives the person of self-respect and engenders a hatred and distrust of society. Prevention is, therefore, the only safe way, and the duty of the state is to apply it. When the parent or guardian is delinquent in the discharge of those duties that the good judgment of all men declare as indispensable in the reasonable proper training of the child, the separation should be enforced as a bounden duty the state owes to the child, to the country and to God. FREE KINDERGARTENS VS. THE REFORM SCHOOL. BY MRS. D. L. KIEHLE. Child study is the order of the day. The anthropologist, the psychologist, the doctor, the parent, the teacher, by different methods and for diverse purposes, are all studying the child. The science of human culture, based upon all other sciences and arts, is at last receiving the recognition it deserves. It is a hopeful and encouraging indication when not only the hearts of fathers are turning toward the children, but scientist and philanthropist are earnestly scanning life and nature to learn God's thought and purpose for the child. No more important problem confronts society to-day than this question of properly caring for its neglected children. Statistics show that the dangerous and destructive elements of society are, in all lands, making decidedly greater progress than the conserving, that an appalling increase of crime endangers everywhere the safety of society and threatens to eventually engulf the race itself. They show us, too, that the measures heretofore employed for the suppression of lawlessness have not only failed in their object but have favored and abetted the increase of crime. Some one has said that every case of vagabondage has its root in some neglected child. If so, how necessary that we look after the neglected children, the children of poverty and crime, children of vicious or ignorant or drunken parents-many of them, by the inexorable law of heredity, imbued from birth with evil propensities and vicious tendencies. This is the element from which our great army of paupers and criminals is yearly recruited, the element from which our mobs are made. The simple question is: Shall we indolently and helplessly submit to a burdensome system of taxation for the support of our ever-overflowing prisons and reformatories, or shall we expend our energies and means in the ef fort to make valuable citizens of these unfortunate children? The statistics of juvenile crime are fearful to contemplate. The police of Chicago arrested one year over seven thousand boys and girls for petty crimes. Our own State Reform School has a daily aver age of three hundred inmates. Of two hundred admitted in the past two years over one-half are under fourteen years of age, and sad to say, one of them is only seven! Of the seventeen hundred in the reformatory at Elmira a large proportion are mere boys between the ages of sixteen and twenty. Theoretically the ounce of prevention has long been recognized as of far greater value than the pound of cure, but practically we have ignored the truism and bent our energies on plans for redeeming the fallen rather than on saving others from falling. We neglect the generation to come, giving our time and thought and money in the vain endeavor to effect radical changes in the generation present. We forget that formation is wiser and cheaper than reformation. From the establishing of jails and prisons for the punishment of crime to the building of reformatories and asylums for the reformation of the criminal is truly a long step in advance. But, as one says, wisely: "We have learned that crime cannot be hindered by punishment, we have yet to learn that it can only be truly hindered by letting no man grow up a criminal, by taking away the will or desire to commit sin." Crime, small and great, can only be truly stayed by education. Not the education of the intellect only, which is, on some men wasted, and for others mischievous, but education of the heart, which is alike good and necessary for all. That is, we must have the education which has in it the elements of character building. The importance of the early years of childhood for laying the foundations of character has always been recognized. The strength and permanence of early impressions have been harped on from time immemorial. We quote the wise and good among the ancfents-Plato and Aristotle and Juvenal and Kant, the great philosopher-who all contended that the first seven years of a child's life are the decisive years of his history, in which opinion modern educators all agree. And yet, until very recently, until the introduction and development of Froebel's beautiful system of child culture these precious first years have been practically wasted. The limits of this paper forbid any attempt at an exposition of the principles underlying Froebel's educational theories. is a system founded upon a philosophy too deep to be mastered in That it a brief study no one disputes. But fortunately no understanding of the principles is necessary to appreciate the good results. Many of its most beautiful and practical developments can be easily comprehended by any intelligent observer interested in the development of child life. That it is a work fraught with the richest benefits to the human race, a work the most vital and far reaching of any department of human beneficence, can no longer be questioned. As the corner stone long rejected by the builders, the kindergarten has at last found its recognized place in the foundation of the educational systems of the day. It is firmly established as a most important and interesting department in the congresses of our state and national educational associations; it has been introduced into the public schools of one hundred of our cities; its methods have modified the primary school and the infant department of the Sunday school. It has been adopted by our keen sighted temperance reformers, is established in hospitals, orphan asylums and institutions for the deaf and blind and feeble-minded. It has been made an important factor in the work of our foreign mission fields. Our normal schools are incomplete without their training class for kindergartners. Our prominent educators have been heard to declare that they would rather their sons would miss the last two years of college than the first two years of kindergarten training; and Superintendent Draper of New York goes so far as to say: "If it becomes a question as to which should be dispensed with, the kindergarten or the high school, the high school ought to go." Was not Froebel endowed with prophetic vision when he declared that in America his theories should find their highest interpretation and their most complete application? Admitting then the educational value of this new system of child culture from an intellectual standpoint, we have now to investigate its value in moral training. So closely linked in the human being are the physical, mental and moral faculties, it is impossible to divorce the influences that mould each division of the three-fold nature and designate certain ones as bearing exclusively on the moral nature. The education of hand, heart and head must be carried forward together. In the kindergarten is laid the true foundation for industrial training. The manual work of the kindergarten is peculiarly adapted to promoting moral culture. Observe the little three-year-old wrestling patiently but successfully with thread and needle to formulate a pattern on the dainty card board, or watch him as he carefully adjusts the blocks on the table before him. Do you not see that habits of accuracy, concentration, patience, perseverance and method are being established-habits which cannot fail to have a powerful influence in developing the moral virtues of truthfulness, conscientiousness, thrift and self-reliance! the very qualities that are lacking in our criminal classes. A recent report of the Prison Association of New York states th Few people realize that the sentiments of love and pity and ter derness toward dumb animals need to be cultivated in little children by proper teaching and stimulation. It is the neglect of this early training that necessitates later on our “Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." Have you never observed the apparently natural cruel instincts of a young child? Nearly all very little children will kill or injure any helpless little creature thrown in their way. But the kindergarten training is especially adapted to awakening and developing the sentiments of love and pity and cultivating a tender feeling of nurturing care for helpless little animals, which leads finally to a true sympathy for all creat ed things. Another sentiment requiring early culture is that of patriotism. Recognized as the prime safeguard and virtue of the state, this elevating and ennobling sentiment has hitherto been regarded as spontaneous in the human soul. In the kindergarten, memorial days are observed, when by story and dramatic action the lives of illustrious men are made vivid and real to the child, and important incidents of our country's history are simplified to the infant comprehension. Thus early, by the aid of patriotic song and waving flag, the little mind is impressed with a feeling of loyalty and rever ence for the mother land. One of the first results of kindergarten training is the learning of self-respect. "That holy reverence of each for his own intrinsic gift of manhood," what Milton termed "The inward reverence of a man toward his own person," is one of the chief principles of all godly and virtuous action. It is the secret of every manly life. It is the restoration of the lost self-respect that makes the reformation of the fallen so difficult. Can we implant it too early or cherish it too assiduously? True character building can only be effected through association with companions. If morality involves conduct of individuals toward one another and requires such action as will enable people to dwell together in a community, can we begin too early to train them to the virtues necessary for this condition? A child brought up in isolation from its fellows has little conception of the rights or regard for the feeling of others. But under the fostering care of the true kindergartner-who must combine the executive ability of the teacher with the sympathy of the mother and the reverent insight of the philosopher-all the relations of the children to each other are made to emphasize the beauty of unselfishness, of love, of kindness and helpfulness. The genuine happiness of children in a well ordered kindergarten is always apparent. Furnished with an agreeable outlet to their boundless activities, an atmosphere of joy and content is created in which ill will and selfishness cannot thrive. Organized play furnishes the very best means of social training; and, as the children gather in the circle, the personality of each is dropped to share in the larger personality of the many. An intelligent visitor in a kindergarten lately expressed great pleasure and surprise on observing the self-control and evident sympathy of a large circle of children as they patiently waited for a somewhat dull child to choose the game. Was not this a training in morals of much value? Listen to this testimony from the primary teachers of Boston public schools, when asked to report the results of their observation of the effects of kindergarten teaching on pupils received into their departments: "The effects of good kindergarten training are traceable in the first manifestations of a sense of justice, one child learning to recognize the rights of other children as limitations on his own rights; in habitual acts of kindness and generosity, evincing a disposition to yield to others what may gratify them, but cannot be demanded by them as a matter of right; in polite manners; in truthfulness-its opposite never being fostered by harsh discipline; in an eager desire to please the teacher; and, finally, to refer to a characteristic which may certainly be ranked as a virtue, in personal cleanliness and neatness." From a principal of twenty-five years' experience in primary schools of San Francisco comes this invaluable testimony: "I wish to tell you why I am so strongly in favor of kindergar tens. My school is in a crowded neighborhood. I have many children from tenement houses and from the narrow streets south of Market street. "Before the days of the kindergarten these children, as soon as they could crawl, spent their waking lives on the sidewalks. From the age of two to six years they pursued the education of the street. The consequences were that at six they came to us with a fund of information of the worst description, and a vocabulary that might excite the envy of the Barbary Coast. |