Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1959-06-04
A SUMMER
TO GROW ON
Continued from page II

ries to pck-there's your original kindergarten The
child learns to look to see to gauge to scan the sky
to adjust. to little judgment to begin forming
sense of values. Compared with these natural riches
Park Avenue apartment is a slum.
This is the best of education this suburban kinder
garen, for the student likes natural things and
armors himself against the lures of fake enjoymens
He becomes an individual, and his stream of con-
sciousness is as beautiful a woodland brook can
make it. The selfeffort for education is the edu
cation, whether it be learning to dress oneself or
course at Harvard And this is the education that
children love, crave, and can't be kept back from
if they see leading somewhere, to caring for pup
pies, to riding bike to cooking hamburgers with
out incinerating them A child, not yet smothered
by our conventional existence, goes straight to life,
If he is let have the interests that born with him
and the environment in which they flourish.
T Owe is already his ruling passion love for his
- stomach, love for his way, and pretty soon love
for his fellow animals Any animal is his interest, but
the dog soon noses the rest of them out. The dog
was mans first cleanup squad and is still the boys
best companion. A dog works for love, and gets it.
He is victim in the city, partner in the suburbs.
and an ethical example in the play day of his friend
A dog lures an individual out of his Ibound encrcle
ment which readily becomes societys i'll. Every
thing has beginning, and the beginning of the
practice of love is often fourfooted If boy thinks
of his dog he may to think of his parents and
so on until his careful imagination may encompass
the races
have saved the best reason for giving your child
a true childhood until last. The pragmatc may not
agree, and the prosaic certainly won't Yet fact and
our fiction both emphatic on this point-that we
don't love our neghbor ourself, and l think the
reason is because we lack imagination to see our
neghbor clearly The child reared at the frontier of
suburbcountry is acquainted with solitude at times.
He wanders of by himself and finds himself alone
yet is not lonely His imagination accompanies him
and peoples the solitude for him. True, may make
every bush BEAR and tougher him to risk. But also
it encourages that inner conversation which is vital
to live existence.
think that the place of the imagination in operat-
ing the Golden Rule has never been sufficiently
stressed To imagine oneself on the rack which we
subject another to is the first step in abolshng the
rack. The Golden Rule is the equilibrium of love.
Now boy sailing his boat, girl hunting mush-
rooms, boys camping, girls lying awake at night
talking to their best friends are all dreaming and
living the dream. They building up sense of
equilibrium between the great patience of being
alone and the OVERRIDING of current society. They
already forming healthy imagination, the great
tool of the spirit Abel persisted because Cain had
no imagination. no eiveand-take of the heart. This
generation of their descendants has hardened its heart