People seem
willing to concede its moral value when applied to the lower classes,
but, when they are obliged to pay anything to procure this training
for their own children, or see any prospect of what they call an
already extravagant school system made more so by its addition, they
become prolific in doubts. In other words, they believe in it when you
call it _philanthropy_, but not when you call it _education_; and it
must be called the germ of the better education, toward which we are
all struggling, the nearest approach to the perfect beginning which we
have yet found.
We see in the excellence of Froebel's idea, educationally considered,
its only claim to peculiar power in dealing with incipient hoodlumism.
It is only because it has such unusual fitness to child-nature, such a
store of philosophy and ingenuity in its appliances, and such a wealth
of spiritual truth in its aims and methods, that it is so great a
power with neglected children and ignorant and vicious parents.
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