KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19470, 28 October 1926, Page 10

KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM

CRITICISMS OF A DOCTOR. PLAY TIME OF THE CHILD. VALUE OF HOME INFLUENCE. Is the kindergarten system beneficial to children ? Dr. G. Bruton Sweet thinks that in many respects it is not, and in an address to the Child Welfare Conference yesterday ho attacked the system as it is often practised. Some of the points ho raised were dealt with later by Miss A. Kennedy, of the Auckland Training College, in a paper on kindergarten work. Any opinion for or against the kindergarten, said Dr. Sweet, must depend on circumstances. It was true that children who unfortunately had to live in tenements, flats, boarding houses, and crowded neighbourhoods, "where there was no proper provision for play, did benefit by being sent to a kindergarten. There were, however, a number of disadvantages. The carefully brought-up child nearly always contracted one or other of the more common infections diseases, such as measles, whooping-cough, or chicken-pox, and sometimes diphtheria or infantile paralysis. The. morning sleep, which was so important for children up to five or six years of age, had to be abandoned. Many kindergartens departed from the manual occupations of the original system, and taught the children the beginnings of the three R's or encouraged them to recite. This was bad for both nerves and brain. He was of opinion that children of preschool age should be dealt with by Montessori methods only, and that :ao child should be sent to school before it was six. Somo New Zealand kindergartens fostered the pernicious habit of eating between meals by encouraging children to bring fruit and other things to cat in the middle of the morning. Ho had ordered the removal of several children for this reason. With an ideal home there was no need for a kindergarten. The .vise mother who gave up time to supervising her children's play would reap a rich reward. Sir Truby King, in some comments on Dr. Sweet's address, said he did not agree with the condemnation of the kindergarten. Ho considered that a combination of Montessori and kindergarten methods was a very good compromise. Miss Kennedy, whose paper had, of course, been prepared without any expectation of Dr. Sweet's criticisms, said she had never pretended that the kindergarten was to be preferred to the best homo surroundings. However, a child, as it grew older, needed companions for its play. It needed social intercourse and people who would listen to what it had to say and would answer its questions. Too often the home life was hurried, and no one had time to give the child full attention. What was more, the child found at the kindergarten all the things it liked most to play with, which were often not to be had at home—large blackboards and chalk to draw with, plasticene for modelling. There were beautiful things to see—the right of every child—music and stories. It was a sad thing that hundreds of children of fivo from poor homes had never learned the classical stories which for centuries had delighted little ones.