546 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The family is the original social group, the oldest school, and 

 should not transfer its legitimate functions to the kindergarten, 

 graded or high school. The kindergarten is unimpeachable in aims, 

 if not methods. Public schools, in general, are something to be 

 proud of. But the kindergarten is limited in its mission without 

 family co-operation, and " the public school accomplishes but little, 

 except when it supplements the intellectual life of the home." 

 Perhaps the latest assumption of family functions in the school line 

 is seen in the establishment of parental schools for incorrigibles, usu- 

 ally under the care of school boards. Not only are incorrigibles 

 provided for by public institutions, but the sick, the aged, the infants, 

 the imbeciles, and a legionary body of unfortunates. Benevolent 

 and reformatory institutions must needs be, in moderation, especially 

 for such classes as the blind, the deaf-mute, the insane, the orphan, 

 and the homeless. But, as propagation is the exclusive function of 

 the family, is not the family bound to do its best and its utmost for 

 its own progeny? Are not families becoming too willing to roll off 

 family burdens on to the state? 



Even the religious training of children is willingly turned over 

 to the church and Sunday school by families capable and responsi- 

 ble not only for laying foundations for the Sunday school to build 

 upon, but for co-operating with the Sunday-school teaching. The 

 Jewish church began in a family, and the Gentile church began in a 

 family. Does the family pew in the meeting house show that 

 the church is still in the family, or does it indicate family disintegra- 

 tion? If it does, there will be reintegration when fathers and 

 mothers no longer look lonesome in the " family pew " because their 

 children are scattered around in other pews, visiting with other peo- 

 ple's children, or in other assemblies, or off on the road bicycling, 

 and when children no longer look lonesome in the family pew be- 

 cause parents are " taking it easy " at home. 



The aim of social settlements, like the Hull House, Andover 

 House, Hiram House in this country, Oxford House, Mansfield 

 House, and the teetotums in London, is to supplement family life, 

 or, more correctly, to substitute something for nothing, or something 

 good for something bad in the numerous and prolific families that 

 barely exist in one room, two rooms, or three rooms in the rookeries 

 of all great cities. This fact, together with the facts we have been 

 considering, proves the family to be the social group first in im- 

 portance, as well as first in order of being. And so we conclude that 

 there is not only danger to society in the ill performance of family 

 functions in "Mulberry Bend," New York; Drury Lane, Bethnal 

 Green, and Spitalfields, London; in the two- and three-hundred- 



