The Child under Eight | Page 6

allowed to give as well as to
receive service. In the National Kindergarten of 1873 no one of these
requirements is overlooked except the provision for sleep, and from old
photographs we know that this, too, was considered.
Nursery Schools are needed for children of all classes. It is not only the
children of the poor who require sympathy and guidance from those
specially qualified by real grasp of the facts of child-development.
Well-to-do mothers, too, often leave their children to ignorant and
untrained servants, or to the equally untrained and hardly less ignorant
nursery governess.
Mothers in small houses have much to do; making beds and washing
dishes, sweeping and dusting, baking and cooking, making and
mending, not to mention tending an infant or tending the sick, leave
little leisure for sympathy with the adventuring and investigating
propensities natural and desirable in a healthy child between three and
five. There are innumerable Kindergartens open only in the morning for
the children of those who can afford to pay, and these could well be
multiplied and assisted just as far as is necessary. In towns, at least,
mothers with but small incomes would gladly pay a moderate fee to
have their little ones, especially their sturdy little boys, guarded from
danger and trained to good habits, yet allowed freedom for happy
activity.
Kindergartens and Nursery Schools ought to be as much as possible
fresh-air schools. They should never be large or the home atmosphere
must disappear. They should always have grassy spaces and common
flowers, and they ought to be within easy reach of the children's homes.
There must for the present be certain differences between the Free
Kindergarten or Nursery School for the poor and for those whose
parents are fairly well-to-do. In both cases we must supply what the
children need. If the mother must go out to work, the child requires a
home for the day, and the Nursery School must make arrangements for

feeding the children. All little children are the better for rest and if
possible for sleep during the day; but for those who live in
overcrowded rooms, where quiet and restful sleep in good air is
impossible, the need for daily sleep is very great. All Free
Kindergartens arrange for this.
Most important also is the training to cleanliness. This is not invariably
the lot even of those who come from apparently comfortable homes to
attend fee-paying Kindergartens, and among the poor, differences in
respect of cleanliness are very great. But soap and hot water do cost
money and washing takes time, and the modern habit of brushing teeth
has not yet been acquired by all classes of the community. The Free
Kindergartens provide for necessary washing, each child is provided
with its own tooth-brush; and tooth-brush drill is a daily practice,
somewhat amusing to witness. The best baby rooms in our Infant
Schools carry out the same practices, and these are likely to be turned
into Nursery Schools.
It cannot yet be accepted as conclusively proved that a completely
open-air life is the best in our climate. We have not yet sufficient
statistics. No doubt children do improve enormously in open-air camps,
but so they do in ordinary Nursery Schools, where they are clean,
happy and well fed, and where they live a regular life with daily sleep.
Housing conditions complicate the problem, and all children must
suffer who sleep in crowded, noisy, unventilated rooms.
Up to the present time Nursery Schools have been provided by
voluntary effort entirely, and far too little encouragement has been
given to those enlightened headmistresses of Infant Schools who have
tried to give to their lowest classes Nursery School conditions. Since
the passing of Mr. Fisher's Education Bill, however, we are entitled to
hope that soon, for all children in the land, there may be the
opportunity of a fair start under the care of "a person with breadth of
outlook and imagination," the equivalent of Froebel's "skilled
intelligent gardener."
In the following chapter an attempt is made to explain how it is that so
many years ago Froebel reached his vision of what a child is, and of

what a child needs, and the considerations on which he based his
"Nursery School for Little Children" or "Self-Teaching Institution."
CHAPTER II
THE BIOLOGIST EDUCATOR
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beasts':
God is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.
"A large bright room, ... a sandheap in one corner, a low tub or bath of
water in another, a rope ladder, a swing, steps to run up and down and
such like, a line of black or green board low down round the wall, little
rough carts and trolleys, boxes which can be turned into houses, or
shops, or pretence