times they sing together, and then how pleasant it sounds. Sometimes these singers hum very softly, so every one must listen well to tell which one is singing. So the ear is trained to distinguish tones, and the musical sense is awakened. The world lies at our door, the wonderful world of light, of color, and of tone.

"Everywhere the gate of Beauty

Fresh across the pathway swings,
As we follow truth or duty
Inward to the heart of things.
And we enter, foolish mortals,
Thinking now the heart to find,

There to gaze on vaster portals!

Still the glory lies behind."

To open the door, to make the mind a mansion for all lovely forms, the soul a dwelling place of all sweet sounds and harmonies; that is the office of the Kindergarten, and with this revelation of outward truth and beauty, through eye and ear, comes the vision of that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard. Through this opened gate of Beauty, young eyes being to behold the face of the Father.

I shall direct your attention at once to what seems to me to lie at the root of the various short comings of current work in the Kindergartens, viz.: a certain one-sided, exclusive and more or less pharisaical intellectualism that takes pride in wordy phrases and formulas and looks with indifference or contempt on the active and emotional phases of life, an undue regard for mere so-called knowing and for purposeless formal culture and corresponding disregard of efficiency in a life of creative doing.

For this condition I can find no better name than that of schoolishness. It is, indeed, a fault that effects injuriously not only the Kindergarten, but all educational work from the cradle to the university. Nor is it confined to educational work, but stretches its benumbing influence into literature, philosophy and art. It has fullest sway, however, in the traditional school, and for this reason I have chosen for it the name of schoolishness.

Froebel directed all his effort against this spirit or lack or spirit in educational work. The Kindergarten is a protest against its dominion, and every so-called Kinder

*Extracts read from a paper by W. N. Hailman at the National Educational Association at St. Paul.

garten principle is directed squarely against it.

The exclusive business of the traditional school is to give information. This it does with reference to the subject of instruction. Whatever concession it may make to physiological, psychological and ethical needs of the child, it makes with reference to its special business of giving information.

In its work it appeals to verbal memory even where it makes a show of logical analysis, relies on the repetition of words and formulas, and finds its highest achievement in imitation. On the other hand the Kindergarten and the school that follows the principles of the Kindergarten seek to develop the child. Their labors are, therefore, in constant relation to the child's ability, they measure their lessons by their qualitative contents with reference to the child's powers to see and to do. In their work they appeal chiefly to the imagination. and spontaneity, rely on experience and joyous interest and find their highest achievements in productive or creative tendency and skill.

The traditional school subjects the child to its authority, demands submission to its rules, lays almost exclusive stress on certain mediate virtues of subordination, such

as punctuality and promptness, buries its work in drudgery, finds its arcana in slavish obedience to all sorts of conventionalism. On the other hand the Kindergarten and the rational school labor to secure cheerful obedience to law, they lay greatest stress on the immediate virtues of justice, truth, and love, they lead from joyful earnest play to cheerful earnest work, they seek to establish freedom, i. e., deliberate co-ordination of self in the service of duty.

The traditional school deals almost exclusively with the functions of the intellect, the Kindergarted sees in head, heart and hand an inseparable trinity and is convinced that every attempt to divorce them is punished with loss of life efficiency and life joy. The traditional school seeks to repress the spontaneity and self activity which the Kindergarten would develop and mature through careful adjustment of surroundings.

The traditional school bases its program on remote principles involved in the material of information, the Kindergarten bases it on the living of interests of the child and humanity. The traditional school faces the child persistently backward rendering him curious to know what was or is, the Kindergarten faces him forward towards a future that will be or ought to be, and renders him eager to strive for this in the joyous performance of clearly apprehended duty.

The truly Froebelian Kindergarten-and it is gratifying to notice that, in spite of much schoolishness in them, the majority of Kindergartens lean unmistakably that way-the truly Frobelian Kindergarten is by no means an institution that would consent to cultivate but one side of the child or any one of its life phases within narrow, sharply defined limits. It keeps ever in view the whole child and the whole life of the child. Nor does it do this in a narrow way considering only the present child but

in a broad fashion with constant reference to its hereditary ballast and to the historic development of mankind, as well as with constant anticipation of its proximate life possibilities and to the ultimate destiny of mankind.

Abrupt changes are always pernicious, but it seems difficult to conceive one more pernicious than this sudden change at the age of seven from a "Kindergarten symbolism" to a "primary school conventionalism."

At any rate, the Kindergarten never recognizes caprice; to its earliest plays it adds germs of work, of deliberate self-subordination to distinct purpose.

Insensibly from almost purposeless play, it leads the child to earnest, purposeful work without loss of spontaneity and with steady increase of that divine joy which attends whatever creativeness lines in the work.

Obedience to external authority which compels us to toil in the service of its ideals without permitting us to share them is in no way ethical, and is never to be dignified by the name duty. Duty abides only with freedom, it implies obedience to insight, to the inner authority of reason, to recognized law.

It is admitted that "the Kindergarten method encourages spontaneity and thus. protects the fountains (the child's) originality." In truth the Kindergarten does by far more; it opens the fountains of originality and directs the child's spontaneity into channels of duty.

In short, in all educational work schoolishness, the blind following of authority, should yield more and more completely to the Kindergarten spirit, which is the spirit of duty and love, and this method of the school which is one of repression should be displaced at all educational stages by the method of the Kindergarten, which is the method of development.

17

In studying the symbolism seen and felt by the child, we shall always find it true in spirit, for there will be at least one point or characteristic common to the real object and the imaginary one, and it is that point which stands for the whole.

For instance, the stick is a horse to the child, not because it has legs, head, mane and tail, for it lacks all these, but because by communicating to it his energy he makes it move.

To him the motion makes a horse of the stick, for motion is the quality which to him stands for a real horse. It is, therefore, motion, the chief characteristic in the horse, which he embodies in the stick.

He is not telling an untruth, he is giving the spirit, not the letter, of the fact. All normal children feel not see the spiritual resemblance of things, and their sense is usually much truer, more discriminating than that of grown people.

Hence the attempt of the grown person to symbolize for the child is usually clumsy and often a failure. We are apt to destroy the idea altogether by referring to literal points not included in the symbol.

For instance: the First Gift may be used to represent birds, and that is right and true, because curves of thought and curves of motion are common to both. It is this which the ball symbolizes, so the children enjoy the balls hopping, flying east, west, north, south, in straight lines and in curves, but soon the Kindergartner's limited resources in motion are exhausted and she attempts to prolong the play by reference to feathers; she has the birds eat, tips them over to drink, goes through all the literal details of a bird's life, till the broad idea she started with is lost in the

Extracts from a paper read by Annie E. Bryan, at the National Educational Association, at St. Paul,

attempt to make the balls literally represent the birds. It began in truth, and ended in untruth. It was the spirit, the life of the bird shown in the motion, a spiritual idea alone, to be dealt with.

The Kindergartner's safety lies in keeping to the broad qualities, and truth in her symbols. If the children feel more, let them express it, so long as it is true to them, but let not the suggestion come from her. They will grow into the deeper sense and forget their mistake of confusing letter and spirit sooner than if the mistake is her's.

The only escape from the danger of confusing truth and fact, is in a clear and definite understanding of the idea to be given the child, and so avoiding too literal interpretation.

There must be at least one quality, if not more, in common between the material and the thing symbolized. The cube can never represent anything but objects at rest, and the ball objects capable of motion.

In a recent paper there was an article headed, "Kindergarten Ideas Applied to Sunday School Lessons."

The following is an extract from it: "To Love, to Trust, to Obey," are given as the conditions upon which one may become a member of God's family. As a closing exercise the three blocks of the Second Giftthe cube, the cylinder and the sphere-are set up. The cube, the foundation, is named Love; the cylinder, Trust; the sphere, Obey."

Had this been headed "Kindergarten Material Used in the Sunday School Lessons" the title would have been a more fitting

one.

If this be a right use of material then the ball, cube and cylinder may symbolize any idea; it is purely arbitrary and misleading.

There is no reason why a block should be used to represent these truths any more than a box, bottle or marble.

Do the objects make clearer to the child's mind the particular ideas? Do they not add difficulty rather than clearness? Is it not a blind, almost superstitious, use of Froebel's aids? It can only lead to materializing spiritual things instead of spiritualizing material things.

Froebel's idea is to see through physical relations their corresponding spiritual relations, not to put spiritual meanings hap-hazard and arbitrarily into some little blocks.

The little blocks do typify a great truth, but do not typify all the details of truth in the universe.

Is it to be wondered at, that strangers to the real principles should consider Kindergarten empty and trifling?

Only effort and failure repeated again and again can possibly enable us to reconcile practically the extremes found in developing a human being. The student must learn that at every instant she must be twosided. As Froebel expresses it, "Giving and taking, uniting and separating, dictating

and following, fixed and immovable, setting free."

Prof. Hailman thus discriminates, "The child is not to study Froebel but to unfold the divinity within himself." With equal truth this may be said of the training teacher.

To tell the subtle principles to the grown person is as useless as to tell them to the child. Said a student, "Truly Kindergarten could be learned in a short time if we were properly prepared before we begun the study."

What is needed for our Normal students to save them from Kindergarten cant and pharisaism, is not glib quoting of Froebel's phrases, but free development of faculties, balancing of powers and incarnation of truth, until they are trained to independence of Froebel's material so as to be able, if necessary, to use in the development of a child anything at hand, instead of depending on certain forms.

We shall not have done our whole duty by them until they are able to develop thought, some feeling and call forth creative power.

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No one can live in a large city without having thoughts severely exercised by the condition of the poor. What can be done to alleviate their condition? What especially can be done for the little child who is early sent out to beg or to earn a pittance the street waif? During the last century there arose one who was able to offer a solution to this problem. His keen insight discovered the secret that the elevation of humanity is dependent on education. That this education must begin with the first dawnings of life. He devoted long years to the to the study of child-life, and finally came to the conclusion that the most important period in human education

is before the child attains his seventh year. He realized the influence, on the whole of the after life, of the tone and bent given to these early years. Having himself experienced the weary longing of an unsatisfied, neglected childhood, he was not content to let the pain of this experience vanish without at least trying to find in some way a means to satisfy and develop the craving and instincts of child.

nature.

It was no easy task to which he devoted himself, but with this object in view, he was not content to pass through life, quietly, safely and creditably, as might have been consistent with mere reputation,