On the theory upon which the state undertakes the education of
its youth at all--the necessity of preparing them for intelligent
citizenship--a community might better economize, if economize it must,
anywhere else than on the beginning. An enormous immigrant population
is pressing upon us. The kindergarten reaches this class with great
power, and increases the insufficient education within the reach of
the children who must leave school for work at the age of thirteen or
fourteen. It increases it, too, by a kind of training which the child
gets from no other schooling, and brings him under influences which
are no small addition to the sum total of good in his life.
The entire pedagogical world watches with interest the educational
awakening of which the kindergarten has been the dawn. If people
really want to make the experiment, if parents and tax-payers are
anxious to have for their younger children what seems so beneficent a
training, then let them accept no compromises, but, after taking the
children at a proper age, see to it that they get pure kindergarten,
true kindergarten, and _nothing_ but kindergarten till they enter the
primary school.
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