A NEW KINDERGARTEN

Evening Star, Issue 12624, 2 October 1905, Page 6

A NEW KINDERGARTEN

The work of the Free Kindergarten Association in this City is too well known to need comment or introduction. It has been uphill work; and the hardest struggle, perhaps. 1 has been to create a current of interest in the great sea of unconcern. Bat that current Sows now. It has so grown in strength that the difficulty has Inin to keep pace with it. There has been lack of funds, and consequent inability to enlarge. Thanks, however, to those who have led in the movement, State assistance has been won, and as a result a new school has been started in the Helping Hand Mission Hall, Hanover street. Tills school was ojiened this morning before an interested gathering, mostly ladies. There were almost a score of children in attendance, and it was remarkable to see how amenable and happy they were in their teacher’s bauds after so recent an introduction to the system. In tho unavoidable absence of Mr M. Ooben, Mr W. Burnett formally opened the school. He congratulated the City of Dunedin on having in it such a woman as Mrs W. H. Reynolds, who had made kindergarten work a labor of love. The most thoughtless man understood that to make a tree grow straight one must tend it when it is young. while offering his congratulations, however, he must say that he would like to see the school in a better budding. True, the room was only the setting, the jewels were the children, but he would like to see those jewels in a better setting. •fThen he saw the fine buildings round about, such as Knox Church Schoolroom, he thought that the clergymen in whose charge they were might let. tho Kindergarten Association have the use of one room at leant. He was sure they would do so if they were approached. The teaching at the "kindergarten was not sectarian. He was strongly sectarian himself, and he did not think much of the man who was not prepared to nail his colors to the mast ; but for all that, he realised that, for these children it was beet to simply Implant the simple truths of the Christian religion without touching that rock of denommationalism on which so many of ns shipwrecked. He wished the school every success, and again offered tlianks to Mrs Reynolds and her committee for their efforts to rescue llmse little ones from what might be lives of misery. Mr R. Giflrison said that the occasion really marked a peculiar event in the history of the kindergarten, because it was now for the first time that they began to draw the benefit of a Government, subsidy. They had for some time asked for assistance, and 1 various promises had been made until last vear, when money was pot on the Estimates. Ho was now happy to say that thev had received £l4O odd, and the rrenlt had been the opening of this new school. The benefit of the kindergarten had been proved long ago, and it only re-, mained to make this otte a. success like tlie others. He endorsed what Mr Burnett had said about the need of a better building. It was a great pity that the children could not- get the best, and be was sure that those in charge of the other boil dings referred to needed only to be approached. He trueted that by the end of the session they would find these children housed in a very much more palatial residence than that which they were in then. The school is in charge of Miss I. Finlay and an assistant.