496 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of concrete sentiment, bundles of desire. In the majority of our 

 schools we try to crush this all out. What we should do is to en- 

 courage it. If we are sympathetic, if we are responsive, if we are 

 wise, we will hesitate to check this flood of feeling. It is to be 

 disciplined, but not destroyed. It is the same with the multiform 

 desires of childhood. Many of them can not be gratified, but the 

 child-life will be fuller and more wholesome if they are allowed 

 as far as may be. And I so value this emotional life, this prodi- 

 gality of sentiment and desire, because it all leads to action, and 

 to the very sort of action that is educationally the most valuable 

 — to that which is self-prompted. Froebel hit upon this in the 

 kindergarten, and made self -activity the corner stone of his whole 

 system. He could not have built truer. It is a quality found in 

 all children. Those who are full-blooded and have not been con- 

 stantly thwarted by the cry of " Don't !" have an inexhaustible 

 supply of it, and this is precisely what we want. It is the source of 

 power, and jealously to be guarded. The particular merit of the 

 new education, represented by the kindergarten, sloyd and man- 

 ual training, lies in this, that they proceed psychologically. They 

 recognize the child's desire as the source of action and effort, and 

 build upon that. What we want to do is to turn these desires 

 into the most wholesome channels, and to have the activity spend 

 itself along the most helpful lines. So long as the desire is gen- 

 uine, is the child's very own, and the activity which follows, a 

 legitimate result of the desire, we may feel quite sure of the 

 resulting sensations and their assembly into thought. What I 

 dread most as a teacher is the child devoid of feeling and desire, 

 the quiet little mouse who under the old regime would be called 

 good and held up as a pattern. To keep quiet and vegetate is not 

 to be good. The troublesome child, full of action and desire, is 

 the far more promising bit of humanity. In the first there is 

 nothing to work upon, poor little anaemic creatures with no past, 

 no present, and no probable future. But the second is a store- 

 house of power. Education has something to work upon. It has 

 a more lively problem, it is true, and one of some difficulty, but 

 withal a problem of keen interest and large promise. Believing 

 this as strongly as I do, the systems of education which begin by 

 repression, by a process of subduing, quieting, deadening the ac- 

 tivities and desires of childhood, seem to me absolutely vicious — 

 more vicious by far than the conduct of nurses who feed trouble- 

 some babies with soothing sirups and other detestable drugs to 

 put them to sleep. 



The children themselves suggest the right method in educa- 

 tion. What they most want is to be employed, and with some- 

 thing that interests them, not something that interests mamma 

 or papa or the teacher. Consult any child of your acquaintance 



