88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A STUDY OF CHILDKEN'S IDEALS. 



Bt estelle m. dareah. 



A GREAT Herbartian wave sweeping across the schools during 

 the last few years has carried away much of the lifeless me- 

 chanical drill which characterized the old education. In its place 

 has been left the vitalizing influence of the study of humanity. 

 Believing that the contemplation of the world's greatest thoughts 

 and noblest deeds must result in arousing kindred enthusiasms, litera- 

 ture and history have been introduced to our youngest children. 

 We have given this teaching a sufficient time to prove its efficacy. 

 Is it giving our children lofty ideals? Is it exalting goodness, wis- 

 dom, strength, truth, patriotism? It is enkindling generous desires 

 to perform noble deeds? 



As a working basis for the solution of these problems, papers 

 were collected from fourteen hundred and forty school children in 

 answer to the following questions: 



" What person of whom you have ever heard or read would you 

 most like to resemble? Why? " 



Being written as a regular composition exercise, these answers 

 with one exception show every evidence of sincerity. Out of the 

 total number only seven children fail to return a ready response, and 

 their hesitation seems due to a premature development of fatalism. 

 '' JSTobody," writes a boy of fifteen, " because it will do me no good 

 to want to resemble any one." A girl of twelve reaches the same 

 conclusion from a feminine reliance upon authority. " I would not 

 like to envy of the people. Because they say it is not right. They 

 say that God made you to be so." 



To believers in the culture-epoch theory our results are most 

 satisfactory, implying no accidental selection of ideals. Half the 

 papers came from San Mateo County, California, and half from St. 

 Paul, Minnesota; but, widely apart as are the sources, the results 

 are so nearly identical that they have been collated together. The 

 only pronounced difference, it may be stated, consists in the fact that 

 while seventy-three St. Paul children find their ideal in the Divine 

 Being, he is referred to by only four Californians.* 



Sources of Childkein^'s Ideals. — The ideals of the children 

 naturally fall into three groups: 



* See in the Pedagogical Seminary, vol. ii, No. 3, an article by Prof. Earl Barnes, en- 

 titled Theological Life of a California Child. Professor Barnes says, "Many California 

 children seem to be ignorant of the most common and most generally accepted theological 

 concepts of Christian people." 



