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Otago Daily Times, Issue 12989, 2 June 1904, Page 8

THE KINDERGARTEN MOVEMENT. The relationship of the environment of the child-life of the State to the population question has been thrust before the .public eye oftfate with so much persistence, that none save the most hopelessly indifferent or ignorant; ran have failed to realise its significance. In these days of a declining population every child which is allowed by neglect to die in infancy, or by careless and irresponsible parents to grow up with a distaste for work and a penchant for crime, is a dead loss to the State, and, in a wider seiiS3, to the race. Authorities on crime are becoming more and more unanimous in the conclusion that its extirpation is utterly hopeless unless the State begins much farther back than it doos at present, and endeavours to check the criminal instinct in the child rather than by trying to sweat it out of adult criminals by long terms of hard labour. Undoubtedly tho State is destined in the near future to pay much moro attention to tho environment in which its child-life is growing 'up, and by purifying nfld brightening its atmosphere it may set counteractive influences at work which will alter the course of many little Jires For the public good. Any attempt on the part of the State to step in botween children and their lawful parents is necessarily attended with difficulties of a most intricate nature, but present indications point to the Government of the future exercising much closer supervision jover its child-life than has been given to it in the past. While politicians are exercising their minds over the problem of tho child, tho time is opportu.no for a reminder that a voluntary effort in the direction of giving a large number of

children access to better influences than their homes afford .has been going on in Duriedin for the past 10 years. Citizens are fortunate indeed in having an institution in their midst like the i'ree Kindergarten Association, but wo think that if it had been, appreciated at its proper worth some effective means would have been taken ere now to extend its scope. .Voluntary effort, concentrated for 10 years upon training infant minds to habits of order and industry, can hardly have teen spent in vain, although the value of such a work is not a thing ito be measured in coin of the realm. It is rather humiliating to reflect that a valuable educative agency such as this should bo literally living from hand to mouth, scarcely knowing whence the means are coming to enable it to carry on its praiseworthy operations. The Government, which has hitherto confined itself to the most inexpensive form of sympathy with kindergarten work, will doubtless be compelled to recognise it sooner or later as ah integral portion of the national systen). of" education. But while it id reaching that point it is not too much to expect that it should accede to the request of the Association, and put it in such a position financially that there would no longer he any danger of its having to stop work for want of funds. The Association is an institution holding an open door to all sorts antl conditions of children) and it particularly welcomes the class most in need of its help—those whose parents are in circumstances which prevent their having much time to devote to the care of their children, even if they had the capacity to bring them up propevly. It is undoubtedly this class of people who benefit most by the establishment of Mndergartehs, and for fivd hours a day their children nre not only kept out of mischief, but are helped to' acquire traits of character that cannot fail to servo them in good stead in after years. The kindergarten is not a nursery, as many people, unfamiliar With its aims, plight be disposed to believe. It may fulfil some of the'functions of a nursery, but it aims at influencing for good the child-mind when it is at its most plastic stage, inculcating by means adapted to the immature intelligence those principles -which make for /a larger and fuller life, as the individual passes from childhood and youth into manhood and womanhood. ' The Government might well look into the oneratioii of kindergarten methods, with a view to their wider application, for the system has passed the experimental stage, and now lias the approval of many of the leading educational authorities of the day.