122 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gditor's %Mit. 



KINDERGARTENIZED CHILDREN. 



' \ \ TE do not know whether the verb 

 '» "to kindergartenize" has yet 

 crept into the language, but, after 

 reading the article of Miss Marion 

 Hamilton Carter in the March At- 

 lantic on The Kindergarten Child 

 — after the kindergarten, one is 

 disposed to think that such a verb 

 is a present necessity. The question 

 as to whether the kindergarten on 

 the whole is a good institution is too 

 wide for discussion within the re- 

 stricted limits of the Table; but no 

 one can read Miss Carter's article 

 without being forced to the conclu- 

 sion that, in some of its aspects, 

 kindergarten work is of very doubt- 

 ful utility. That lady found by 

 actual experience with two or three 

 successive levies of kindergarten 

 children that they seemed to have 

 an impaired rather than an im- 

 proved faculty of acquiring knowl- 

 edge, that their infancy seemed to 

 have been artificially prolonged, that 

 they had become accustomed to a 

 nauseating amount of endearment 

 in the language addressed to them 

 by their instructors, that they 

 seemed to expect to be continually 

 amused, and that a certain drill 

 through which they had been put for 

 the alleged purpose of developing 

 their powers of imagination had gone 

 a long way toward making them 

 incapable of speaking of things sim- 

 ply as they foimd them. All this is 

 set forth in Miss Carter's article in 

 a manner which leaves little doubt 

 that she has described things sub- 

 stantially as they fell under her ob- 

 servation. 



There is one important principle 

 in education which it seems to us 

 the kindergarten system too much 

 ignores, if it does not completely set 

 it at defiance, and that is that very 



young children require a great deal 

 of letting alone. The spontaneous 

 activity of the little ones — and they 

 are sure to be active if they get the 

 chance — is worth more for their edu- 

 cation than any amount of directed 

 activity. Their imaginations, too, 

 will take care of themselves much 

 better than we can take care of 

 them. Nothing is less favorable to 

 the development of imagination in 

 a child than constant intercourse 

 with grown people who have passed 

 the imaginative stage, and whose 

 daily duty it is to lay out ordered 

 knowledge for assimilation by these 

 babes. It is no wonder that part of 

 the system should consist of special 

 exercises for the cultivation of the 

 very faculty which the system as a 

 whole is so adapted to dull and to 

 weaken. Anything much more silly, 

 however, than the method described 

 by Miss Carter it would be difficult 

 to imagine. 



The great popularity of the kin- 

 dergarten is due in large measure to 

 the fact that it relieves mothers dur- 

 ing part of the day of the care of 

 their small children. That it does 

 this in very many cases at the ex- 

 pense of weakening the tie between 

 mother and child there is too much 

 reason to fear. The State has been 

 stepping in more and more between 

 parents and children, until now it 

 lays its hand almost upon the cradle. 

 The mothers of the republic are giv- 

 ing way, so far as influence over the 

 rising generation is concerned, to 

 the schoolmarms; but it is idle to 

 expect that the latter can take the 

 place of the mothers we used to 

 know. The kindergarten consti- 

 tutes a vast extension of the edu- 

 cational machinery previously in 

 operation, and machinery is always 

 impressive, especially to those who 



