THE FREE KINDERGARTEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2206, 11 June 1896, Page 53

THE FREE KINDERGARTEN.

By Walter H. Peahsok. no in. "My Father, if the Prophet had bid thee do soma great thing, woul'lst thou nob have dove it ? Huw much ra^Ler, then, when he SAith to thee, Wash KDd hn clean?" The story of Naamanaud Eliaha contains the kernel of an ever-present chapter in the great bjtok of human nature. Everyone is Icokiag out for an Abana and Pharpar, and travels aorojß the wilderness of life with much pain, weariness, and heartache, in search of ths big rivers, neglecting the small Jordan lying at his feob. Yeb it is wesbing in the Utter that gives relief. NaMttan U the type of the universal fool called man. It is the little things -in life that are Ihe spawn from which happiness or misery evolute. There are a good in&ny tigers and snakes in India; there are also mosquitoes. For one man who is inconvenienced by the former, there arc thousands whose lives are made a burden to them by the latter. The man who shcots a dozvn tigers off the back of au elephant at little risk to himself is a hero. The same being, whose night's reat is destroyed by bis neglect in allowing a mosquito to get insids the bed curtains with himself, is laughed »t when he appears at breakfast with a swollen nose and a bad temper. This neglect of the soiiill possibilities of life and admiration for the mirage that pictures a dream in marble is peculiarly applicable to my subject. When a young man starts out from the home nest to forage in a new laud for material wherewith to build an abiding place for himself, what trouble ami anxiety is expeuded by his relations to qualify him for tho altered circumstances of his future endeavour! What fear lest his pbyaiqne might not bear the str*in of exertion in his trade, or mental training be found insufficient to cope with his compeers in the intellectual combat he is about to enter I Yet the education of the man is but the superstructure on the foundation of the instruction of the child. The former is the finished work that has evoluted from ths germ, and will for aye be impregnated by it. The child is the parent of the adult : give it judic'ous, healthy attention, the latter will accomplish its destiny with vigour ; neglect it, and the chords of time will be resonant with the wail of a demoralised people. ! Educating youth is a subject that has claimed tho attention of the wise, learned, and philanthropic from the earliest days to the present time; and the name of the various erudite treatises on the subject is legion. But to all these puadits youth began at six. ' Before that, instruction was a mistake. What could the callow mind absorb ? This knotty point was solved by the gr-nius of Frederick Froebel somß hundred years ago. During this century of time, what endeavour has been roMo by earnest, thoughtful men to map out tbe ro&d for youth, to the Abanne and Pharpars of high fiohoois and universities ! what pressure has beeu concentrated on Governments by public opinion to cultivate for good the soil prurient fdr evil! till at last the sou of intelligence, nsiDg above the horizon of ignorance and ap&lhv, has beaten on throne, hall, add homestead, and awakened the congealed brain to understand, warmed the frozen heart to fear, the possibilities foreshadowed by the first French Revolution, when the human tigers, wolves, and hyen»s swarmed iorth from the alleys and slums of Paris, and astonished the world by the savage brutality of theic orgies. The cry has gone forth "Lot us up aud cleanse ourselves of the scrofula of ignorance ! Behold Ab&ni and Fharptr, the rivers of learning ! " No thought of the leprosy of vine ; no mention of little Jordan, where the s;ul might " wash asd be clean" ere the pilgrimage of the youth began ! It was left for the great exemplar's best and most efficient apostle to-day, as iv the yesterday wheu he trod the earth,— woman ! — to appreciate Froeb.l's discovery of the Jordan of kinderg&ttsn. Her wise instinct sprang at its possibilities, grajped the position on which my lord man could not condescend to bend his superior intelligence. While the ministry of every denomination is striving to push the teaching of their particular dogma into the public schools— before they have determined amongst themselves which Lord is God, which Christ is Saviour — (Of a verity, seemingly, there ba not one Father, but many Fathers; not one Son, but many Sons.) — public feeling, ripening gradually since the Renaissance, ciies : " Away with them ! We j will have none of these things." It is evident, j however, that if in the tuture we are to vaunt ourselves as n " Christian " people, it will be necesiary to teach our successors something of the Instructor on whose individuality, life, and lessons we base ou? ethical claim to the superiority we arrogat? over those we — in many cases inipeitiueutly — /-tjlo Leathenf. "Brahma we know ; Buddha wa know ; Mahomet we | know ; Confucius we know ; but who is Chribt ? " will be the self-interrogation of the educated, i intelligent student of, say, 50 yearß henca. To ; do right for right's sake is good in theory. 1 When it becomes the rule in practice we may dispense with all human Irw, and wipe out the presently necessary human leech— the lawyer,— ! for the Divine law will shield and compass | mankind. Till then, unless we are prepared to call ouraelvss Iftohiupjtt&d&aii -fiJadtts, gg

Buddhists, or start a fresh nomenclature as, say, " Anytbingarians," it might be as well to iuculcate the doctrines of Christianity at some fcinpe of a child's life, and "give it a show" with the Chink or the Jap. The genius of Frsebel has fouud this opening for us in the free kindergarten. In Dunedin a band of noble women, at the head of whioh Mrs W. H. Reynolds t^kea honourable position, have for some years earnestly, disinterestedly, and with the concentration of purpose which commands success, been planting and cultivating in this garden the human saplings hitherto neglected and cast away. The time has arrived for &uch an extension of its usefulness as exceeds the possibilities of private effort to compasa. Public opinion should be brought to bear on the Government to induce it — or rather compel it, for the Government is the servant of the people — to include the kiudergarten in the curriculum of public instruction. And it is the duty, as ib should bo the inclination, of ministers of the Gnspsl of every denomination to make themselves acquainted with the system, ia order that they might urge its introduction as a portion of the State education scheme. What is kindergarten ? Ethically it means — using the simile of a tree— taking a sapling, planting it in a child's garden, where the ground is cletn and wholesome, free from the weeds of vice and cleansed of the moths of yonity destroying the beautiful bloom of innocence and depositing its larvte of bad example that eat away the heart of reverence, sympathy, and obedience. Digging I round it with Christ's spade ; watering it with j Christ's Gospel ; pruning it with Paul's knife; training it with sympathy, kindness, and firmness. Physically, it means teaching ; tho little child by practice the elements of > health ; in cleanliness, order, punctuality, judicious extrci3e. Intellectually the child obtains the best and most lasting iufer&mtion, for in its play ib teaches itself. Ib absorbs its [ intellectual food without exhaustion instead of I being crammed with ib. It observes, cteiles, i and holds the information, for it has exhaled its knowledge from its inner consciousness, and ! in the process awakened and exercised the constructive and imaginative qualities of its mind. Iv manner its gain is enormous, for it has learned love, sympathy, self-sacrifice, obedioi.ee, nelfrettraint, salf-respecb. And these qualities will have an abidiug place in its heart and mind, for ib has absorbed, them by observation and example, and realised the whole spirit of Christ's message — "Love ye one another "; " Bear ye one another's burdens." The most aged and perfect Christian cannot achieve more. Thu?, when the time arrives for it to be transplanted to the larger garden of the district school, there is every chance of its growing into a shapely tree, bearing good fruit in its season, for it has been properly trained ia its young and tender years, when the soft shoots are most pliable. After all, education past the age of seven is veneer ; the real block on whioh the coat is fitted ie cut aud fashioned before than. Nature, the great teacher if we would but study her book, tells us that if the crop ba good ia spring the yield in autamn may, as a rule, be assured. The storms of adversity may sweep over it and deface it ere the reaper inseits his sicile, yet if the early season be propitious it will weather the gales a& the last. Woe to it if the spring be hard and oold. With bur animalß, however, we are more reasonable. The young racehorse is trained with care, and every pains bestowed to fit it for its future career from its tenderest years. The greyhound, by example <md practice, is t&ugbt with no stint of trouble the trick of rucniag. Even tho bull pup has its caretaker. But a child — well, after all, it is or-ly a future man. Mr Funob, tho great satirist;, had a cartoon years ago of an instructive domestic episode, I think, in Laucashire : — Head of house (brickmaker), with empty milk jug in hand, looking savagely at wife ; bull pup at his feet, looking up hopefully at milk jug ; wifo with infant boy iv arms. Brickmaker (loquitur) : " Whoire is de milk?" Wife : " I geen it to de choiW." Brickmaker (wratbfully) : " Geen it to the choild I Ye shud hae kep it for de pup." Dunedin, Jane 3, 1896.