that with which they stare in the face of him who sees in them only arbitrary nothings. They are things of life and for life; not vain erudition, but practical life-knowledge, meant for efficiency. Nor is it desirable that a method which tends to establish such a frame of mind should, when the child enters school, be abandoned for one that lacks this tendency; for with the abandonment of the method—more especially when this is done abruptly-its fruits, too, are doomed to death. Abrupt changes are always pernicious, but it seems difficult to conceive one more pernicious than this sudden change at the age of seven from a "kindergarten symbolism" to a "primary school conventionalism."

Similar considerations apply to the transition from play to work. In the first place, play is not to Frobel and the kindergarten the flimsy thing in which, as Mr. Harris puts it, "the child is exercising his caprice." In fact, it is doubtful that the impressibility and ready response to impulse which characterize play ever merit the name of caprice or whim, even in the physical gambols of the youngest children. At any rate, the kindergarten never recognizes caprice; to its earliest plays it adds germs of work, of deliberate selfsubordination to distinct purpose. Insensibly, from almost purposeless play it leads the child to earnest, purposeful work, without loss of spontaneity, and with steady increase of that divine joy which attends whatever creativeness lies in the work.

Labor in the service of another, and in which the child has no interest, is not work, but drudgery or slavery; there is nothing noble about it. Obedience to external authority which compels us to toil in the service of its ideals without permitting us to share them, is in no way ethical, and is never to be dignified by the name duty. Duty abides only with freedom; it implies obedience to insight, to the inner authority of reason, to recognized law.

Mr. Harris admits in his lucid fashion that "the kindergarten method encourages spontaneity, and thus protects the fountains of his (the child's) originality." In truth, the kindergarten does by far more; it opens the fountains. of originality and directs the child's spontaneity into channels of duty. Does it seem possible that this could be accomplished between the ages of four and six? And if it were possible, what benefit would it confer on the child and on humanity, if, after the child's seventh birthday, the fountains of originality are to be sealed up, and duty is to be strangled by schoolish authority?

Mr. Harris acknowledges that "it is very important not to force on the child, in the symbolic stage of his culture, say from four to six years of age, the ideals of others in the details of his work," because "that would produce arrested development." Is it probable that this danger will suddenly cease when the child enters school at the age of seven? Or do not observation and experience prove that this danger never vanishes even in the higher stages of college life?

To me it seems that educational development should follow a road very different from that indicated by Mr. Harris, if strong, full, efficient manhood

and womanhood, if clearest science, deepest philosophy, highest art, and holiest conduct are to be its outcome. To me it seems that at every successive step the appeal to the learner's spontaneity should be stronger; that at every successive step the child's interests and purposes should coincide more fully and more consciously with those of the school; that deliberate, open-eyed coordination should more and more completely displace even the last vestiges of the subordination which our ignorance and the child's immaturity force upon our earliest educational efforts; that free obedience to recognized duty should more and more fully take the place of servile obedience to authority or affectionate following. In short, in all educational work schoolishness, the blind following of authority, should yield more and more completely to the kindergarten spirit, which is the spirit of duty and love; and the method of the school, which is one of repression, should be displaced at all educational stages by the method of the kindergarten, which is the method of develop

ment.

It is not the purpose of this paper to review Dr. Harris's position with reference to the question under consideration. If I touched upon it, it was merely in order to show the great power of schoolishness over the minds even of our best men. Where such spokesmen espouse the cause of traditionalism, progress will have to carry many a hard-fought battle before it may hope to crow with some degree of grace. It is this great power of schoolishness that has enabled it to penetrate even into the kindergarten, and to plant the weeds of traditionalism in the very institution that was meant to displace it.

It seems as if schoolishness were in the very marrow of our bones, probably as a result of our own education. It permeates the maternal schools of France, the infant-schools of Belgium, the asylums of Italy, and to some extent even the kindergartens of Austria and Germany. One can scarcely enter a day nursery which is free from schoolishness. Surely it behooves us to ferret out the enemy in our own midst, so that we may meet him squarely wherever he seeks to hide his face.

Permit me then to enumerate a few of the symptoms of this disorder, such as I have seen in the kindergarten, to lift- as it were-a few of the masks under which it is prone to make its way in and to assume sway. We may be sure to find it wherever the kindergarten lays undue stress on the mere giving of information, wherever it makes a great show of authority over the child; wherever it isolates the child in his work.

Thus there is schoolishness in the learning of the new game when it is learned for its own sake without conscious reference on the part of the child to some purpose it is to serve, when its words are memorized in thoughtless, parroty fashion, and its gestures and evolutions acquired in a spiritless, simian fashion. I care not how enticingly the "kindergartner"-a sort of sample child-lisps the word to the children, nor how gracefully she pirouettes before and around them, nor how successfully she "exhausts her nervous energy" in other ways: unless the children know the meaning and application of it

and desire to learn it for the sake of these, unless it helps them to express more forcibly or fully a thought or to realize a purpose already formed within them, it is schoolishness, intellectual cramming, and not mind-development. Similar remarks apply to the study of the gift which not infrequently precedes the play with it, as well as to the inordinate use of the sequence. It is possible and advisable to devise occasional exercises in which the child is familiarized with the geometrical features of the gift, in a playful, natural manner, which avoids all appearance of formal teaching. To do more (or rather less) than this, to make of it a stiff, repressive exercise that crushes all spontaneity and interest in the gift, is schoolish and reprehensible. Again, it is desirable to have occasional games of sequence, in which kindergartner and children alternate in dictating changes in the arrangement of material for the sake of obtaining new suggestive forms; but to do this always whenever the gift is used, and always in the same wooden order, closes the "fountains of originality," reduces the child to an automaton, and constitutes one of the most reprehensible instances of schoolishness in the kindergarten.

Less common, but not less pernicious, are some other things that have come to my notice. I have seen plants, and even insects, "studied" by pulling them into fragments-aping the naturalist's mode of analysis, but substituting for his spirit of research a spirit of childish ruthlessness. I have been told that in some kindergartens the children went through for quite a period with the siege of Troy; and I should not be surprised to hear, at some not very remote day, that a similar fate had overtaken Dante's Inferno and Goethe's Faust. It would seem that the mere mention of such irreverent abuse of childhood, as well as of the high creations of genius, would be enough to prevent its repetition; but schoolishness is mighty, and does wondrous things.

In another direction, we still find in the kindergarten much of the pedantic authority routine, which compels children to do or not to do, without reason or necessity, inherent in the work in hand. I have seen a kindergartner fail in her object, after compelling the children, for ten minutes, to wait for every child "to stand perfectly still and toes on line," before beginning a certain game a physical impossibility and a pedagogie sin, at this tender age. It is not rare to hear the injunction, "You must do it this way," when another way would suit as well, or better. Ruts, in modes of flying or running, Delsartean and otherwise, are not uncommon. "Because Miss Jimkins says so," is not an unusual reason for immediate obedience. A little girl had to undo her entire weaving-mat and begin over, because she had put in one strip from the left instead of from the right, and had announced the fact with some degree of gratification. A little boy had to go to his seat at the table six times, because each time he showed a slight twitch of awkwardness in his manner of moving the chair, and then the torture was discontinued, not because he had succeeded, but because he wept tears of anger or anguish. Now and then we hear of a child brought into line by a sharp closet-talk, or a wearisome after-play lecture; and not rarely we come across most coaxing words,

wreathed in the most approved galvanized-iron smiles, but threatening in tone, and borrowing force from ominously flashing eyes. Occasionally, indeed, you may find a kindergartner reduced to the wretched occupation of watching constantly to see that the rules of decorum are kept.

More serious still are the sins of schoolishness by which the child is isolated artificially from his associates. If the kindergarten has any specific duty, it is to be found in the development and nurture of the child's social tendencies. What, then, shall we think of a kindergarten practice which assigns to each child a special seat before a small table on which just two distinct square feet of surface are ruled in square inches, one square foot for him and the other for the little fellow on the opposite side. The isolation is none the less complete because the little table is joined to others to give them the appearance of a real kindergarten table. This is nevertheless his own square foot. There must be no interference with him on the part of his neighbor, but also no union of effort, no working at a common task that needs united effort. He lays his blocks, his tablets, his sticks, weaves his mats; and all the tender germs of sympathy, and helpfulness, and love, are stifled by rank, weedy growths of selfish, schoolish egoism.

Here it is that our ears and our hearts are offended by such cries as, "This is my mat," "Teacher, he knocked my sticks on the floor," "Give me my blocks," "I want to take mine home," and the like. Under such conditions, even the social game loses its influence and fails to draw together the hearts of the little children. Stolidly, selfishly, as if intent upon a schoolish lesson, each one does his part, or goes through with his evolution, when his turn

comes.

The growth of the true kindergarten is in a very different direction. All artificial barriers that separate the children from each other are removed. The surroundings, the method, and character of the work, whatever things are said and done, tend to encourage mutual helpfulness, sympathy, and selfexpansive love. The group table, the social table, the central thoughts that organize the work in its several parts and phases, bring the efforts and achievements of each child into living, actual relation with the efforts and achievements of all the others; and when, later on, in school, the child is isolated for the sake of strengthening his individual powers, he enters into the exercises with a new zest, because of the hope and purpose that thereby he may lift himself into higher social efficiency.

Possibly, however, the greatest depth of schoolishness is reached in the construction of programs and time-tables. It is not rare to find programs built wholly on the schedule of the gifts and occupations. The fall term opens with the first gift and weaving, and the spring term closes with the sixth gift and embroidery, and next year they are ready to start in with the seventh gift and folding. The children seem to be there in order to study the gifts, just as they go to school to study the three R's, and other "conventionalities of learning."

Programs should take their keynotes from lines of natural interest, presenting for consideration the plants and animals, the trades and occupations of men, and all other matters at times and seasons when circumstances are most favorable to spontaneously eager contemplation and corresponding play and work on the part of the child.

Equally reprehensible are the time-tables, which cut up the work in strictly schoolish fashion, allotting a fixed number of minutes for each predetermined kind of happiness, guiding the work by external circumstance, instead of the inner need of the children. Of course the children need variety, and need it in a certain order; but in this as in other matters, the rigidity of the school is out of place, and renders impossible vigorous natural development and creative doing on the children's part.

From all these tendencies to schoolishness the kindergarten must free itself if it would do well its legitimate work of all-sided harmonious development of whatever lies in the child towards highest effectiveness. From all these tendencies it must rid itself if it would accomplish its mission with reference to the school, and which is nothing less than the regeneration of the school on the basis of a new education that would add to culture efficiency, to knowledge character, to representative skill creative fervor, to sight insight and foresight, to industry purpose, to talent genius, to freedom power, to individual thoroughness social intensity, to justice benevolence; a new education that ends not in the individual nor in the moment, but directs all its work towards widening spheres, and remoter ends which partake of the infinite and eternal; a new education, not of self-contraction but of self-expansion, by which, as our great master Fræbel teaches, man may realize his destiny, and become one with himself, with humanity, with God.

THE LETTER KILLETH.

ANNA E. BRYAN, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY.

It is characteristic of a great teacher to indicate-never to prescribe; he seeks disciples who love truth more than himself-to whom the ministry of truth is infinitely preferable to the establishment of a personal cult. Heroworshipers can never make the best disciples; they fail to distinguish between the idiosyncracies of the man and the universals he reflects. Taking his ideas as final, accepting them as finished, they remain but servile imitators - they, whose mission it should be to transmit the eternal verities.

When we realize the immense injury that may be done to any cause by an injudicious advocate, we may well pray to be delivered from our friends. The dread of being misunderstood and inadequately represented was the cause of