throughout the city, so that a kindergarten will be accessible to every child who wishes to attend. To bring this about at the present time would require the establishment of at least thirty-five kindergartens at a cost for annual maintenance of about one thousand dollars each. Estimated cost, $35,000. "Including six kindergartens that have been opened since the beginning of the current school year-through a plan that has involved but slight increase in the total expenditures-we now have 24 kindergartens, by no means concentrated in any locality, but quite unequally distributed throughout the city; for example, south of Lake Street there are eighteen elementary schools-one-fourth the total number in the city and only two kindergartens, or one-twelfth of the total number. gartens are worthy to be maintained in such districts as the Lincoln, Bremer, Madison, and Lake Harriet, should they not also be maintained in such districts as the Bryant, Lyndale, Rosedale, and Simmons?" Prize Essay If kinder THROUGH the generosity of a resident of California, and in connection with the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the National Education Association is able to offer a prize of one thousand dollars for the best essay on The Essential Place of Religion in Education, with an Outline of a Plan for Introducing Religious Teaching into the Public Schools. Religion is to be defined in a way not to run counter to the creeds of Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Jew. The essential points to be observed are "A Heavenly Father, who holds nature and man alike in the hollow of His hand;"' the commandment of Hillel and Jesus of Nazareth, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself"; the high ethical teachings and spirit of service and sacrifice indicated in the Sermon on the Mount. Notice of intention to file an essay must be given the secretary of the Association by April 1, 1915. Essays will be limited to ten thousand words and must be in the possession of the secretary by June 1, 1915. Six typewritten copies must be furnished in order that the preliminary reading may be done independently. The right is reserved by the Association to publish not only the prize essay, but any others which may be submitted in competition, copyright privileges to be vested in the Association for all such. National Education Association, By D. W. SPRINGER, Secretary, Ann Arbor, Mich. YOUR OWN druggist WILL TELL YOU Try Murine Eye Remedy for Red, Weak, Watery Eyes and Granulated Eyelids; No Smartingjust Eye Comfort. Write for Book of the Eye by mail Free. Murine Eye Remedy Co., Chicago PRESENT DAY CRITICISMS OF THE KINDERGARTEN [The following article was written by Miss Smith in March, 1909, and is now published because the editor feels that it will be of in terest to the kindergarten world to see how many of the criticisms here quoted have been met in the years that have passed, and how many are still in force.] Objections to the kindergarten games, that is to the traditional game based upon or growing out of typical experiences in the Mutter und Kose-Lieder, may always be heard wherever the subject of child play is discussed. According to one observer freedom and originality have no scope in kindergarten games. The Pedagogical Seminary says, "The plays are mechanical and forced; they exhibit little real spontaneity, little childlike unconsciousness, nothing of naïveté. The play is usually suggested in the first instance by the teacher, and each actor is rehearsed by constant dictation into his rôle while the majority of children remain as mere spectators, or as 'wooden posts,' or 'trees,' or some such objects which they would never dream of imitating, and all the while anxious to be chosen to play a part before the others that they may also have a chance to show off." If you do not care for this picture, which is English, turn your eyes on its opposite, as described in one of our American journals: "A mob of impudent, boisterous, and disobedient children, making themselves merry at the expense of a young childgraduate, harried, worried, and trampled under foot by the rebellious crowd she vainly attempts to steer." These two pictures of the kindergarten games are such caricatures that they need no serious comment save perhaps to say, in passing, that one who has visited many kindergartens may perhaps have seen, in some of them, certain plays or portions of plays that are faintly reminiscent of both the sketches presented to our attention. In the line of real criticism, however, we have the opinion, voiced before in connection with the gift work, that the Froebel game is imposed upon the child by the kindergartner, and is never one which he would have invented for himself; that the typical experiences upon which it is based are no longer typical or fundamental, and do not appeal to the modern child. Dr. Hall is "driven to the conclusion," he says, "that if the games based on the mother-plays are not positively unwholesome and harmful for the child, and productive of anti-scientific and unphilosophical intellectual habits in the teacher, they should nevertheless be superseded by the far better things now available." He conceives the Mother Play as a book, to be the "apotheosis of symbolism" and declares that the habit of seeing "everything as a sign to be interpreted" is a vicious one. There are numberless other criticisms of the games,-that those dealing with nature and natural objects are utterly foreign to the child; that the habit of singing while in action is a pernicious one and injurious to the voice: that gesture arbitrarily imposed from without is harmful to his power of expression; and that the traditional plays as Ringa-round-a-rosy, The Mulberry Bush, and Looby, looby, loo are much more suitable to his stage of development than songs about the Carpenter, the Wheelwright, or the Bird's Nest, which tend to produce arrest in his mental processes. That we have listened to these criticisms to some purpose no one who has visited the modern kindergarten can doubt. Indeed I begin to fear that those enemies of ours who have dwelt at such length on our imperviousness, as a body, to new ideas have exaggerated their statements. Wherever I visit kindergartens to-day I see play with ninepins and other toys, ball rolling and tossing, folk dancing, traditional games, such as Oats, Peas, Beans; Round and Round the Village, and Going to Jerusalem, pantomimic plays illustrating the interests of the day, rhythmic movement to music, but so seldom as to be marked with a white stone, a real Froebel game based on a typical human activity, a phase of the life of nature, or a relationship of mankind. The old circle game, in which all take hands and move about the ring singing, as in the Farmer, seems utterly to have taken flight, although it always appeared, or so we thought, in Our "artless Japanese way," to give the children great pleasure, and if the sanction of age and authority were |