The Republican journal., 1892-07-21

I'll see they gets as much If t as there is in
the schools.
From the Editors Drawer. III Harpers
MAGAZINE for July.
Kate Douglas Wiygin says of free kin
dereatens I'VE need the free or public
kindergarten educatonally as the vesti-
bule to our school work. we need it as a
l,hilantlropic agent, leading the child
gently into right habits of thought speech
and deed from the beginning. We need
it to help in the absorption and amalga-
nation of our foreign element: for the
social training. the opportunity for CO.
operation and the purely republican form
of Government in the Kindergarten make
it Of great value in the development of
the citizen virtues, as well as those of the
individual
cannot help thinking that if this side
OF Froebel's educational ideas We're more
insisted on throughout our common school
system, we should be making better citi
zens and no worse scholars.
But the heaviest Of the work falls upon
the undergraduates That is why | am
convinced that We should do everything
that sympathy and honor and money can
do to exalt that office, so that women of
GOOD birth. breeding, culture and genius
should gravitate to it. She it is. who.
living with the children, can make the
Kindergarten an integral part of the neigh
borhood, the center of its best life. She
it is. often. who must hold husband to
wife and parent to child; She it is, after
all. who must interpret the aims of the
ociatiQn-translate its noble theories
into practice GAY, and there's the rub j
She it is who must harmonic Great ideal
principles with real and sometimes sorry
conditions. A kindergarten association
stands for certain things before the com
munity 1t is she alone who can prove
the tr1ltl-who can substantiate the argu-
1nent-who can show the facts There is
no more difficult vocation in the universe
and no more honorable OF sacred one. If
kindergartener is looked upon, or paid
or treated as a nursery maid, her ranks
will gradually be recruited from that
source.
The ideal teacher of little children is
not yet born; we have to struggle on as
best we can without her. She needs the
strength of Vulcan. and the delicacy of
an Ariel; she needs childs heart, wo-
mans heart, mother heart in one. She
needs clear judgment and ready sympa-
thy, strength of will, equal elasticity,
keen insight, the buoyancy of hope, the
serenity of faith, the tenderness of pa
tience The hope of the world lies in the
children. When we are better mothers,
when men are better fathers, there will be
better children and better world
The sooner We see the value of begin
nings that We can put bunglers and
butchers anywhere else better than in
nursery. kindergarten and primary school
There are no three places in the universe
so big with fateD the sooner we shall az
rive DIT Dclltl ltSullS. dlll dlIdlu IL IS
chiefly woman's work. The male genius
of humanity begets the ideas of which
each century has need (at least so it is
said, and have never had the courage to
denv it or the time to look it up) But
the female genius, | am sure, has to help
to work out the ideas and to help is also
to do the work of the world.
| cannot see why Max OReil should
have exclaimed with such JUNCTION few
nights ago that if he were to be born over
again, he should choose to be an Ameri-
can woman. He never has tried being
one. He doesn't realize that she has in
hand the emancipation not only of the
American woman, but the reformation of
the American man, and the education of
the American child as WELL If that tri-
angular mission does not keep her out of
mischief and make her the angel of the
goth century, she is hopeless CASE