The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-10-25

the great lesson of how to get the bes'
the world has for him, and to give his
own best in return.
The kindergarten stage, however
must not be unduly prolonged Its
value lies in its appeal to involuntary
attention at a time when involuntary
attention Is the child's whole stock in
trade BY the time a child is six OF
seven at the latest he should be well
started on the road to voluntary atten-
ton to unWelcome tasks. To prolong
the exclusive kindergarten idea much
beyond that age is to weaken and debil-
itate the will; and to leave the last
state of the kindergarten product worse
than the first. This is a mistake to
which our public school system is not
addicted; but it is the cardinal defect
of a certain class of private schools
which cater to the children of the rich.
When pampered prodigies produced by
these elongated kindergartens enter the
secondary school, their flabby wills and
atrophied mental muscles make sorry
showing in comparison with the stur-
der youth who have a dozen years or
more of discipline in doing hard and
even disagreeable intellectual work.
The best friends of the kindergarten are
those who limit it strictly to it's proper
sphere, within which it is Incompatible
The true continuation of the kinder
garten is not found in devices for max
ing history and geography and science
amusing, but in manual training which
trains hand and eye to delight in doing
hard physical work well, and making
material objects useful and beautiful.
Manual training brings out the great
moral virtues, on which the excellence
of mental work depends. To make
thing with hands and tools, many acts
through many hours must be bent to
single end; many a refractory member
must be brought into subsection; many
an error must be repented and rectl-
fed; many botch ruthlessly rejected
and many a fresh beginning bravely
made. This brings out Steadlness, per-
sistence, patience, precision, thorough
ness; virtues which mere book-learning
seldom imparts, but on which its evcel-
lence depends, The great majority of
school and college graduates who have
had neither industrial nor artistic
training manifest an Impotence in the
presence of petty obstacles, and irrita-
bility at delay and discouragement,
Discrimination to the drudgery of which
every useful life must be full. Manual
training with its severe standards of
neatness, accuracy, form and finish,
with its progress to more and more OBJ
stinate material. should follow the kin
dergarten, and give to the city youth
such equivalent as it can for chores and
jobs, the tasks and risks of the young
farmer, hunter, forester and fisherman
1t gives dignity to the work which the
great majority of these children must
do in after life. Sewing and cooking
and the household arts for the girls are
equally essential if they are to grow up
into anything better than anaemic, IN
competent superfluous competitors for |
a bare subsistence III half dozen over
crowded lines of genteel employment.
If manual training is essential to help |
our boys and girls who are to be work
ingmen and workingwomen to give |
their best to the world physical train |
ing and attention to the conditions of |
physical health are equally essential for |
everybody who expects to get the best |
out Of life. When the struggle for ex-
istence was chiefly physical the weak
lings were weeded out by the process of
natural selection. Now that the strug
gle for existence in our city life, and
complex industrial system, is chiefly
nervous and mental, the physically
weak and nervousiy unstable get
chance to survive and propagate their
kind The premium which city life
puts on nervous tension and mental
tends to a corresponding low
ering of the physical vigor. Every
where we so to-day we find washed up
on the shores of our tempestuous bust
MSS and professional life the stranded
wrecks of insomnia, dyspepsia, heart
failure, nervous prostration, and the
countless kindred forms in which out
ragged nature wreaks her righteous
wrath.
BY simple gymnastic exercises in the
school room, and where 1t is possible by
a gymnasium in connection with the
school building, by ample Fairgrounds,
and encouragement to play active out
work of bad heredty on the one hand,
1oor games, the school must undo the
and forestall as far as possible the
strain of competition and complexity
which business and society will soon
impose upon them. For without a
sound, strong, healthy body, one can
get but little pleasure out of life, and
IAN contribute but little valuable SER
ice to the world
We now come to the main substance
# the curriculum during the elemental
y school years from six to fourteen.
This curriculum should be required
ather than elective; for while children
liffer, the world is one; and the great
venues of approach to the world are
he same for ALL ;
These subjects are six; English,
geography, history, nat
raj history and art {
First: English, including reading, '
'riting, grammar and composition.
This begins with hearing and telling {
tories, and descriptions of pictures
nd natural objects The problem is to |
cqure the use of the written and
rinted symbols, without losing the re-
lily and naturalness of direct oral !
Reading must be con-
-antly challenged and judged, and cor
scted by reference to the storytelling y
.andard of directness and naturalness
he moment child gets off into me- !
lanical tone or on to a high or mono i.
nous key, he must be brought down =
ct, ct