THE FREE KINDERGARTENS.

Evening Star, Issue 22066, 27 June 1935, Page 8

THE FREE KINDERGARTENS.

One of tlie best movements ever started in Dunedin to spread to other centres was the Free Kindergarten movement, which began with one school and fourteen children forty-six years ago. Town planning on the material side, which is a matter for Governments and councils, lags mournfully behindhand even in this enlightened generation. Town planning on the spiritual side, which is more important, though it might be helped much by the other, is the special work of the Kindergarten Association, with unofficial altruism for its incentive and public generosity for its sustaining power, and it has never looked back. To-day there are five kindergartens serving over three hundred children where one school was opened in the beginning. A child from a crude, for-tune-afflicted home, taught by the kindergartens, has a chance of growing up better than its environment. To a considerable extent, and the more so as its influence is exerted unconsciously, it can be a missionary of refinement to that environment. The character building that is performed for successive relays of children has its part in community building. In the Kindergarten movement lies almost the chief hope that the depressed lives that are lived by too many even of Dunedin’s population will not be repeated in the same proportion by succeeding generations.

Self-reliance has been a keynote of the movement. It was sixteen years doing its work at the outset before if received a Government grant. By stages, as the association proved its usefulness, the State assistance was increased until it stood at £4 a year for each child, and then, three years ago, as an outcome *of that depression which made the greatest need for it, without any warning it was withdrawn. The association has struggled gallantly with its difficulties. The small wages of its teachers were cut down. One kindergarten, at Northeast Valley, had to be closed.- A new need has been thrust on it in catering for those older children to whom', until they reach the age of six, the public schools have been closed. Still the association does not look back; it looks forward, and it has reason to do so. The first thought of any impartial observer who looks into this work must be that there should be at least ten free kindergartens in Dunedin instead of five. That provision will have to wait, and it may be too soon yet even to consider the reopening of the Northeast Valley institution or the building of another sorely needed school for which a site now stands idle at St. Kilda. Funds are needed, in the first place, to continue even on the present restricted lines, leaving long lists of children who cannot be received. The public has stood well by the association hitherto, and wo have no doubt that it will-do so to-morrow, when a street collection will be held, the results of which should not only defray present minimum needs, but bring nearer the day of expansion.