THE KINDERGARTEN. 209 



gressive development of children in different parts of the world. 

 The new era has begun. 



In the kindergarten the child's spontaneity is respected. He 

 is not guided too much. He is allowed to work out, with the ma- 

 terial given him, the plans, the designs, the problems, that arise 

 in his own mind. The kindergarten dictates plans, designs, or 

 problems to him only so far as may be necessary to help his mind 

 to recognize new conceptions. He never has a lesson in which he 

 is a follower or an imitator all the time. The idea that he should 

 produce a result similar to his neighbor's is never presented to 

 him. He is trained to depend on his own mind for the plan or 

 design, and for its execution. Nature's plan before the child goes 

 to school is to let him find his own problems. His greatest men- 

 tal power is the ability to recognize in the material world by 

 which he is surrounded the new things he has not seen before 

 and the new problems he does not understand. If he has the 

 privilege of growing up among the beauties of natural life, if the 

 trees and flowers, and birds and butterflies, and bees and crickets, 

 are his companions, if he has sand and stones and sticks for his 

 playthings, there are few of the problems of science and material 

 philosophy that do not present themselves to his mind. He solves 

 thousands of them unaided, and brings those that are too deep for 

 him to his mother or father, or most sympathetic older friend. 

 These problems are not forced upon his mind by any external 

 agency, they lie all around his path awaiting recognition by his 

 mind. The recognition comes under such conditions exactly at 

 the right moment, when the mind is ready to deal with the prob- 

 lem. No wonder that, under such conditions, knowledge is ac- 

 quired and mental power defined and developed so rapidly. But 

 when the child goes to school all these conditions are absolutely 

 reversed. The teacher finds the problems and brings them to the 

 child. Worse than this, the problems are those that suggest 

 themselves to the teacher's mind and not the child's. Such prob- 

 lems can not be appropriate for the child. The problems suitable 

 for one child can not be the best for other children at the same 

 time. No mind but the child's own can decide the character 

 of the problems suited to its present condition of development. 

 Mind-growth can be dwarfed in no other way so completely as 

 by the presentation of unsuitable problems. Loss of interest and 

 loss of power, negation instead of positivity, indifference in place 

 of aggressive wonderment, must follow when the child is forced 

 to deal with problems that are not in harmony with his mental 

 development. 



One of the greatest improvements in school-teaching will be 

 the placing of the children in such conditions that they may find 

 their own problems. In the kindergarten this is the foundation 



VOL. XLV. 16 



