It asserts boldly
that doing right would not be such an enormously difficult matter if
we practiced it a little,--say a tenth as much as we practice the
piano,--and it intends to give children plenty of opportunity for
practice in this direction. It says insistently and eternally, "Do
noble things, not dream them all day long." For development, action is
the indispensable requisite. To develop moral feeling and the power
and habit of moral doing we must exercise them, excite, encourage, and
guide their action. To check, reprove, and punish wrong feeling and
doing, however necessary it be for the safety and harmony, nay, for
the very existence of any social state, does not develop right feeling
and good doing. It does not develop anything, for it stops action,
and without action there is no development. At best it stops wrong
development, that is all.
In the kindergarten, the physical, mental, and spiritual being
is consciously addressed at one and the same time. There is no
"piece-work" tolerated.
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