but if we are swung into action through the appeal of a need made evident by a child, our protective instinct gives us a power and a persistency which dominates all our efforts and goes true to the mark. The person who is on the firing line of action in the endeavor to help to solve our present day social problems is not held there by theoretical reasons but by the full force of human situations. Why are some of us in the cause for better housing? Because like the plant that withers for lack of sunlight and pure air we have seen children of promise weakened, enervated, by the same lack. Why do we feel the need of the most flexible and adaptable educational system? In one family I was introduced to the home circle by a boy of five. The family consists of mother, father, and four children. Mother and father are intelligent enough but wholly ignorant of what to demand for their children or for themselves from our institutions. Lack of the knowledge of our language and lack of understanding our customs are creating the gulf between parents and children so much to be deplored. The recently published report of our Massachusetts Immigration Commission points out the need of special study and of specially adapting our educational facilities to meet the needs of the immigrant and to safeguard our standards. In the light of this one family I shall support the As to hours of labor. "Sure I Again, in a restaurant while waiting for an order. Said one waitress to another, "Did you rest yesterday?" "Yes, I rested well enough. Do any of us wish to hear that Do you want any child you parent because the work of the vision of kindergartners can and world forces a separation? Do you mean to demand from your educational system that the child, the corner stone of whose future efficiency and happiness you have laid in the kindergarten, shall have his individuality set free and shall receive the training his dominant characteristics and circumstances make necessary? Of course you do. There is only one answer to the kindergartner's responsibility toward social problems. Leaders in the kindergarten world have the experience that should place them in the forefront of those who through community organization or through educational or legislative effort are endeavoring to remove the handicaps from the home that rest upon environmental conditions and which in the working sphere are sapping the vitality of our people. Moreover, who better than the kindergartner can stimulate the homes of a community toward co-operative action in support of the cause of childhood? I should not expect a community that has a kindergarten to be long without a playground or a children's reading room. I should not expect to have many gangs of older boys, brothers of the kindergarten children, and whose example is telling, in organized groups with nothing to do but loaf and get into mischief. What has been worked out in a section of Boston through the will as time goes on be worked out in many other communities. In the section mentioned, the entire neighborhood life has been colored by that organization whose manifold activities from the milk station to efforts on state commissions have sprung from understanding the necessity of working ahead of the developing life of the kindergarten child. With the child as the center of our attention we reason back to infancy and on to manhood and womanhood. The organization of the Elizabeth Peabody House can be worked out in varying degrees in any situation. where the kindergarten is expanded to meet the needs of older or younger brothers and sisters, of fathers and mothers, and of play mates. Now, starting with the kindergarten child, what are his needs? First, personal. He himself is the center of attention; he must be brought into harmony with himself, with others, with his surroundings; he has brothers and sisters. This little kindergarten child in whom we are interested is an imitative mite. Much of our effort will fail unless we can also influence those other members of the family group, and so we have classes for the age groups represented by those brothers and sisters, and we enroll in the membership the playmates of those brothers and sisters. As time goes on we have many aged groups and many different activities. In educational, recreational, and social clubs, moreover, no matter what their direct object, we are influencing manner, outlook on life, and instilling the highest ideals of manhood and womanhood. For mothers and for fathers we have English English and citizenship classes, lectures and concerts. A milk station for infants was opened twelve years ago because even at the age of four or five it was often found too late to eradicate the effects of the lack of proper care in infancy. We are assisting in the management of a model tenement block because the physical home is all important. We are playing our part in the working out of educational theories because of the struggles of our boys and girls which are registered in our experience, and could go on giving examples of the range of work which has developed, every step of which can be accounted for in terms of the need of a man, a woman, a boy, a girl. These illustrations go to show where one is led if one starts to encompass the life of a child and to meet it at every point of contact. Results? A section of a city has been interpreted to a city. Many a man has been helped to a better job. Many a woman has been encouraged by a sincere friend. Young people have been brought together under a roof which has stood for co-operation in working for the larger good for all. They have been trained to think and act for themselves and to bear the responsibilities of selfgovernment. The children have had many a romp within our walls and many a lesson, too. Young and old join in the spirit of community loyalty. Our "We" means the community we. The aim of any community work should be that of forming a network of personal forces that will permanently stand back of our children and their progress. What you or I can do alone is little. That form of social work which reaches out to children and home, a child and his playmates, a boy and his gang, the mother and her friends, the father and his companions, is sound through and through. If we can get the right spirit accepted by a group we have gained much. The science of influencing group action is not so well known to us as is work with an individual. individual. I have more and more swung over to the side of group action, and I am more and more applying this test to any form of social work. Is it organizing its constituency to the point of being able to withdraw its influence? In other words no form of social work should continue to be a prop. Whatever it has started by way of policy should be incorporated into the action of its following. In carrying out this policy we need the long look ahead and great patience, but nevertheless the aim in all forms of neighborhood work should be to start a movement and to have the neighborhood impossible to check it, and that, catch it up and carry it out. if we were to make a rule that no I remember the first campaign one should retain membership we started for clean markets. The privileges in our house who was lethargy of that first group of seen gambling, practically all the women I shall never forget. More boys would be put out. Not long and more graphic grew my exafter this talk the brother of one amples of the results that would of these young men was brought be inevitable if the market con- into the juvenile court. The ditions in our district were not group, loyal to their member in immediately changed. In spite of trouble, began to get at the all the energy I used and the force younger boys, and not long ago of my language, I gained slight our police officer told me that response. Those women had never gambling had diminished. Moreseen a clean market. They had no over, any boy seen gambling is basis of comparison. I was talking now suspended for one month on in purely visionary terms. We the first offense. Again, we could then had a model of a clean market have policed the streets but it made; renewed our efforts; and would not have been with the now after a three years' period we same result. have a group of neighborhood women who are of themselves carrying on the work and are directly influencing our local shops. the street life that it would be in Now it would have been easier many ways to have waged war on the recalcitrant market men ourselves, but this matter of standard is a neighborhood affair. In the case of street gambling. Some of our boys were seen gathered in suspicious groups. I called together a club of boys of about eighteen and said: "I am greatly troubled by this question of gambling. You could stop this if you would by setting a better example to the younger boys." The young men at that time seemed to feel that gambling had such a hold on Objectionable dances have been a problem and a difficulty rather hard to get at. The most influential clubs have now taken a stand and I expect practically no trouble. In dramatics. It is a long step from original plays in which person after person was shot or stabbed and which were entitled, The Bank Robbery, The Chief, Rescue from a Fire, to six years later, when Galsworthy's Strife, was given. It is a still longer step when this same group offers to help with the younger clubs in the selection and the putting on of plays. The difficulty would be, I fear, that they would not have the patience of the younger group to live through the period of heroics. Another point which I wish to make besides that of passing over responsibility to neighborhood groups is, that of supporting only those educational and legislative measures which are in the range of Our personal experience. Further, if one considers one's self a representative from a community, the point of view of the community should be sounded. One of the big things that the school centers are doing is to stimulate the discussion of public policies. These discussions train people to think for themselves, not blindly to follow a leader. Not so very long ago the question was put to a gathering of adults, "shall we support the bill to abolish basement dwellings?" the bill to do away with basement living rooms." Any movement which gets this kind of support will be a factor in any situation. Once having stimulated a community to thinking as a community and to definite action, as a result, successive needs will be quickly and wisely met. Think of what the agricultural instructors have done in rousing rural sections within the last few years. Many a town has been reawakened by the librarian, minister, teacher, with the social vision. We are all of us, whatever our calling, united in the larger social whole. Through our interest in a child here in the North, we are involved in the problem of childhood in the South. The needs of the child of the wealthy meet the needs of the child of the poor. The little immigrant of four who is introduced by us to real America should have preserved for him his heritage from foreign lands to enrich his contact with us. Every child is the prospective founder of a home. In the light of that fact the ideal of the home should be firmly implanted through mother A fourth: "But he can't pay and father and the lessons of life. car fare." Said one: "By all means. We can't have people living underground." Said another: "What can a man do if he is forced out of a basement where he is now paying eight dollars, when he can't get three rooms hereabouts for less than twelve?" A third spoke up: "He can go to the south end." Finally: "This bill is for the children. You can't rear children in basements. I move the vote." "Voted, That the ward support We must all of us work with children and for childhood, and in meeting these social problems which touch the home, the school, and the child, the kindergartner should lead. (Address given at I. K. U. Convention.) |