The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1901-10-26

with the birds and flowers, riding and
| sailing, playing golf and tennis, climb
| ing the mountains or roaming the
woods, or bathing in the surf? In
word, are you as good to yourself as
you would be, 1 will not say to your
best friend, for none of us ever come
up to that standard, but as you would
be to valuable horse or machine
which you wished to keep in the best
possible working order? And are you
consequently perfectly healthy, happy,
free, and efficient in your work; pour
ing into it every day and every term
floods of energy stored up by varied
enjoyment, and saved from every
conflicting expenditure and waste?
Then you have gained the end of educa-
tion and your pupils are likely to
catch the contagion from you.
Each stage of education should be
complete in itself. Elementary edu-
cation should be directed exclusively
or chiefly to the needs of children who
will leave school forever at the age OF
10 or a. The great majority of chill
dren cannot remain in school beyond
| that age. The problem of elementary
education, therefore, is to prepare
these children who are to be working
men and workingwomen, to know the
best in the world and get their share
of it; and to give their best through
their work in exchange. Now what
| is to be the nature of their work? 1t
| is chiefly the production of material
things. Hence. since so much OF
their lives will deal with material OBJ
l1ects; the properties of such objects;
form and color; by hand and eye, are
the first elements of training which
these children who are to e.-workers
should receive.
"In the simple agricultural life of our
! fathers, every boy and girl got this
training on the farm, where there were
plenty of chores to do; animals and
plants to tend, tools to make and
mend and use. Next to the farm in
/ educating power comes the seashore,
with its perpetual battle with nckle
and treacherous elements. The IN
( creasing concentration Of population in
/ cities is raising up a generation OF
, children who have in their home life
no means of acquiring this rough as
/ cipline with plough and hoe against
! stubborn soil, or with oar and sail ana
/ rudder against a threatening sea. Inc
/ city, cut off from field, forest, stream
! and sea, tends to breed race OF men
] tai dwarfs and moral cripples. LIVING
4 in a ready-made world, in which there
| is little or nothing left for them to
/ do, they come to school, with 1aboy
minds as we'll as fabby muscles; with
undeveloped wills as a counterpart OIL
unused hands. The city has its COM
pensations. In many respects the city
boy gets the start of his country cous-
in. But in the fundamental quality Oh
/ getting the most out of life, and giving
his best back to it, the country boy IS
at great advantage. l suppose that is
one reason why the most successful
men in the business and professional
life of the cities themselves are almost
invariably country born and bred.
1.-THE problem of the city school is
now to stem this tide; how to put its
| children on level with their country
! cousins, and save them from the deg
radiation that threatens them Now
the old curriculum, well enough in its
way as supplement to the real train
ing which the farmers children got in
| the field and the barn and the shed
and the shop, is utterly inadequate to
do the work required to make the city
boy get the best there is in the world,
and give the best there is in him. For
with its reading of detached sentences
from the printed page, Its writing in
imitation of the copy; its rules of
grammar committed to memory; its
monotonous reviewing of arithmetic,
and its mechanical memorizing of the
| fixed boundaries of geography, and its
history recited by rote from single
and ultimate text DOCK, as II was arIl-
fetal, mechanical, readymade an af-
fair as the uniform tenements and
paved streets from which the mass of
the city children come.
1.-The kindergarten has come as the
first great gospel of salvation for the
city child. With its appeal to the ac-
tivity and originality of the child;
with it's materials for the will to form
according to patterns of its own; with
| its revelation of the world of order,
harmony. beauty and utility; with its
introduction to social activities in
which the child may merge his indi-
vidual self in happy and helpful con-
tributions to the joy and happiness OF
the whole. the kindergarten teaches
the child as nothing else at that stage
can the great lesson of how to get the
best 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 childs whole stock in
trade. BY the time a child is six or
seven at the latest. he should be well
started on the road to voluntary at
tention to unwelcome tasks.
The true continuation OF the Kim
dergarten is not found in devices for
making history and geography and
science amusing, but in manual train