You will see for yourselves that this simple, natural, motherly
instruction of babyhood cannot be transplanted bodily into the primary
school, where the teacher has fifty or sixty children who are beyond
the two most fruitful years which the kindergarten demands. Besides,
the teachers of the lower grades cannot introduce more than an
infinitesimal number of kindergarten exercises, and at the same time
keep up their full routine of primary studies and exercises.
Any one who understands the double needs of the kindergarten and
primary school cannot fail to see this matter correctly, and as I
said before, we do not want a few kindergarten exercises, we want the
_kindergarten_. If teachers were all indoctrinated with the spirit of
Froebel's method, they would carry on its principles in dealing with
pupils of any age; but Froebel's kindergarten, pure and simple,
creates a place for children of four or five years, to begin their bit
of life-work; it is in no sense a school, nor must become so, or it
would lose its very essence and truest meaning.
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