THE PUBLIC KINDERGARTEN IN CIVIC

GROWTHS

CONSTANCE MACKENZIE DURHAM

We are agreed that education is a preparation for contacts. We live by contacts and we learn by them. But in speaking to-day of education, I limit myself to the technical significance of the term. And of the various stages of education, I select that stage which is represented by the kindergarten.

The fullest exemplification of the kindergarten idea I find in the really representative public kindergaten. The public kindergarten, rather than the free or private kindergarten, holds closest parallel to the life of a city. The public kindergarten, at its best, is cosmopolitan. In it all sorts and conditions of children meet one another on equal footing. No matter what his father may be or have, a child in the kindergarten is just a child. He stands and falls on what he is and does. My experience is, that neither private kindergarten nor the free kindergarten affords this important educational opportunity of mixed companionship to the same degree as does the public kindergarten. And I regard it as a most valuable equipment toward future good citizenship. The price necessarily attached to the private kindergarten makes admission prohibitive to the very poor, while the element of charity inherent in the free kindergarten deters the wealthy and the wellto-do from lending it their patronage in the interest of their own children. The taxpayers in every citizen's family, be it high or humble, support the public kindergarten. Therefore, it excludes none, either by reason of price or of pride.

The experiences of the kindergarten, in common with all subsequent right educational steps, are systematically organized experiences, distributed and concentrated in such a way as to give a child a practical experience of the reciprocity between himself, as one, and all others, as many.

The farthest reaching principle of the kindergarten idea is precisely this of what Froebel calls the member-wholeglied-ganzes. The Spaniards have a proverb, "No hay hombre sin hombre," and this well expresses the kindergarten idea of the reaction of the individual and the community upon each other. All other ideas grow out of it and are subservient to it. This is the idea at the base of all good government. It is the kindergarten idea par excellence—the idea which, if carried out with all the children from kindergarten to the university, will prove the successful rival of every unpatriotic and self-seeking organization of citizens, and the more than adequate substitute for every movement for municipal reform.

I want, then, to demonstrate the following propositions: First. The nature of the method of the kindergarten in dealing with childish experiences. Second. The bearing of the experience of the kindergarten upon civic growths.

And, as introductory to the main matter of my paper, it may be well to ask, What are some of the problems of city life?

"Bossism," politics, pure water, light, transit, popular education, the opening of breathing places to the people, free parks, art galleries, museums, city architecture. These are a few of many issues which confront the public-spirited citizens. The years are rung in and the years are rung out. Over and over, we witness the lamentable failure of the reform element to reach the needs of the voters. A recent newspaper reports a representative committee gathering at a political club; and, although this was not a "reform" gathering, what was then said by the political leaders contains, to my mind, the key to the failure of present reform methods to reform. In speaking of a statement to the effect that one-third of the precincts of his city are without a minority representation, owing to the machinations of the majority, he continued: "The chief trouble seems to be that those who are known as 'the better class of citizens' are afraid to rub elbows with the common people on election day." The significance of this assertion, which, as

we all know, has only too much truth in it, is so profound and far-reaching that in seeking its cause we are led back step by step to the beginning of its development in early childhood.

A child who has had early, natural and free contacts with all sorts of people, regardless of that un-American thing called "class," is going to have no fear of "touching elbows" with any class of his fellow citizens when he shall have grown to manhood. Such ideas, unlike Topsy, do not "just grow." They are inculcated by adult precept and example and by the exclusion of a various association. "I don't like that little girl," remarked a daintily-dressed five year old, pointing to the picture of another child which the children were examining. "Why not?" "Because she hasn't any shoes on." That child had missed the advantage of an inspiring contact with all sorts of children, just as children. In later years her son would probably go to swell that element of the unfortunate "better class of citizens" who fear to "rub elbows" with the common people.

To say that the experiences of the kindergarten are drawn from the institutions of civilized society and from nature is to say nothing at all. There is nowhere else from which a child of the present civilization can draw them. But it does mean something to say that contacts supplied by the kindergarten are in their nature universal, not particular and accidental. When a possible experience is so far-reaching that it comes home directly or indirectly to every child as a personal interest, then, says the kindergarten, let every one share in it. The fact that it is of universal interest makes it a legitimate rally-point for educational suggestion. With this thought in mind the kindergartner plans the children's excursions; all sorts of excursions; excursions to things, to places, to people. And, after the child's little being has been filled to overflowing with the joy of going, and seeing, and hearing, and handling; after he has looked upon the ways and the lives of other people and of things, then he, of his own accord and with joyous spontaneity, gives them all out again in the form of games and plays. He reproduces them through

the use of the much-misunderstood kindergarten material, making men and nature live for him as he has seen them live for themselves; digging, planting, watering; cherishing the life of the animal from egg, cocoon or tender youth; transforming material like the workingman; in short, expressing himself through the protean forms of institutional and natural life. All that abounding life other than his own becomes his birthright by reason of his imitation of it. By every dramatic reproduction of an alien life he transmutes the element of strangeness and remoteness into familiarity and closeness. Contact with life, together with his childish reproduction of contact, does exactly what it says it does; it puts him in sympathetic touch with forms. of life other than his own.

Every experience which the kindergarten makes possible to the children is selected with a view to the largeness of its relation. What naturally develops through the child's kindergarten experience must be ideas which introduce him to process, to productiveness, as in the industries; to co-operative service, as in the state; to the necessary and reciprocal reaction of great and small, as in the family; to personal responsibility, as in tendance on plant and animal life. These and other comprehensive thoughts dictate the choice of kindergarten experiences. There is nothing arbitrary about it. Other kinds of contacts will come uninvited to the children outside of the life of the kindergarten. The kindergarten must reckon with them in the effect they have upon the character, but it must make better use of its limited time than to make them its choice. The children see the scissors grinder in the street outside, but it is not to the scissors grinder that the excursions of the kindergarten lead them. It is to the larger labor of the farmer, the miller, the baker, the mother in the home, in order that the ideas of unbroken process, of productiveness and relativity may stand out in strong re

lief.

"The point of contact," to use a phrase made famous by Mr. Dubois, is the child's little cake or bit of bread which he eats at his breakfast table or his kindergarten

lunch. The visits he makes to the farm, and mill, and shop form the overflow material for his sympathetic reproduction through work or play. First, the accumulation of material, then the use of it. then the expression concerning the the child's own way of doing it. kindergarten or it would be moving up stream.

First the excursion, excursion. That is That is the way of the

There is another kind of experience which the kindergarten provides right within its walls. That other experience is the joint individual and co-operative nature of the children's life among themselves. Here no excursions are needed and no reproductions: The children are the points of contact and their own experiences. Here they are not only in touch with life, they are life in very earnest. A child goes to work and the result becomes his own property. He sews and weaves and paints, and models, and the product of his industry is his to do with as he may choose. Again, he' goes to work for the sake of the kindergarten in joint action with the other children. His work, perhaps, forms part of a decorative design for the common room, or of a gift in common for a chosen friend. He has his own garden to tend. He is responsible for its appearance. The other children protect him in his ownership in it. Again, he turns in with many children for the care of the common bit of garden plot, the property of all. He takes his turn at placing chairs, serving lunches, distributing materials. When his turn is over, he gives way to others who, in their turn, serve him. The individual has his place and his right, but the community-right is larger and comes first. He may not like this order of things; but if his dislike of it becomes so marked as to disturb the community, it joins against them to set him aside until he shall have learned the hard lesson of the relation of the one to the whole.

This, then, is the much-discussed, often-criticised "artificial" method of the kindergarten-this of providing conditions which the children would not necessarily chance upon by themselves, and of organizing them for educational ends. If it be artificial to select the better,