Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-01-05
INDUSTRIAL VALUE OF THE KINDER
GARTEE

Attention is invited to paper in this
issue of the RECORD UNION by Mrs Sarah
B. Cooper, the well-knswn philanthropist,
upon the purposes OF the kindergarten
school. The value of all debates upon the
subject Just now is enhanced by the belief
that the proposition will come before the
Legislature about to convene, to permit
the kindergarten to become related to the
common school system wherever commune
ties may wish to introduce it.
The thought of the people is more than
ever before turning to consideration of
the best methods of education. 1t Isl,
as celebrated divine some years ago ex-
pressed it, becoming the conviction of men
that it is the solvent of the social problems
of the age, and that present systems are
lacking in several vital elements, as, true
physical culture, since health is the cap
ital of life; and manual training. This
journal has all along held against the
effort to introduce into the common school
course any attempt to make artisans out of
pupils, while it has just as warmly been
and is the friend of manual training and
technical education as supplements to the
system. Just as far, however, as the kim
dergarten goes in these directions it is
without any objection whatever The in
tellectual methods employed in the kin
dergarten we have heretofore fully con-
sidered, and the means used to improve
the rich occasion that the formative or
plastic stage of childhood offers. 1t is at
that period in life that nature is busiest in
tutoring the human being, and whatever
effort man may make in similar direction
cannot keep abreast with natural progress.
But we can aid nature by supplementing her
methods, and making easier the lessons
by which she trains the intelligence and
develops the being.
The kindergarten, so successful in cult
waiting the perceptive faculties, in con-
trolling the fancy, in quickening observa-
ton, in teaching the value of common
things, is almost as useful in its physical
benefits. 1t aids the infant in obtaining
mastery over its limbs and in right use of
the organs of sight, hearing and speech,
and in the dextrous service feet and hansd
must do the body. 1t proceeds upon the
theory that character is very closely re-
lated to the physical, and that at least the
development and training of the latter is
potential in fashioning the former. In
dustrial skill has its foundations laid very
early in life, and it is within the expert
ence of all men that by false systems of
development, attempts to cramp natural
tendencies into shapes for which they are
wholly unsuited, many a being has been
turned aside from industrial paths in which
he would have been successful, to plod
the highways of disappointment and dis
content. In Germany the kindergarten is
! recognized as substructural of industrial
education. 1t begins at the beginning in
teaching harmony of forms and symmetry
of design; the beauty, strength and useful
ness that may be developed out of
things alone neither attractive, strong, nor,
unimproved, useful. The kindergarten
trains the eye to quickness of perception,
the hand to delicacy and steadiness Of
touch, the Judgment to finish and com
pleteness, the intelligence in the constitu-
ents of harmony, the fitness and place of
things; it cultivates love for orderly ar
rangement, and if there is in the child the
slightest natural tendency to construction
it vitalizes and so develops it that the fu-
ture direction of that life need not be
, mistake. 1t is easily understood, there
fore, that the kindergarten bears directly
upon the labor problems of the age, and
the great and foremost interest involved
in education-the training that results in
the greatest self-helpfulness