THE KINDERGARTEN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17287, 30 September 1916, Page 6

THE KINDERGARTEN.

lIS FUNCTION. TO THB BDITOB. Sir,-v-In many of the'cities of the United States the kiiidergarton lias be 4 come an integral part of‘ tlio pubiio school system, and each city school has ns the basis of its organisation a kindergarten department. Some leading educators in the States express the opinion that a child without a kindergarten training has missed the true foundation of education. Business houses endorse this opinion when .they refuse to omploy boys and girls who have never had the advantage of this self-active principle, which leads to individual thought and independence of action. The National Cash Register Company were the first to put this belief into practice, and other firms quickly followed in their lead. Such action proves that the kindergarten in the United States has passed its experimental period, and has entered upon the stage of seeking to know the ideal, which will secure complete organisation with tlie public school, and hence lead tl> more intensive and effective work throughout the school. The efforts of educationists along these lines has necessitated tho publication of literature which will in time form .a background of knowledge concerning kin.dergarten theory and practice. Furthermore, it will reveal to pubiio generally the truth that tho Froobellian method is based upon principles which lead to the effective development of hand, heart and brain, and is not a system of handwork only. One of these publications, entitled “ The Function of the Kindergarten in the Public School,” has been issued by the Education Department of Washington, D.C., and is worthy of consideration because it reveals the need for the thorough understanding of child nature.before it is-possible te.carry, out kindergarten and methods with any degree of efficiency. The importance of this matter-is my excuse for bringing before your readers some idea of the growth of the kindergarten in America, and at the" same time asking you to reprint a portion of the article mentioned above. —I am, etc., DORA W. ENSOMClifton, Sumner, September 26. (Enclosure.) My theme suggests first, of all this question,- to - which • I shall endeavr/ur to give a brief answer. If the ideal of complete'organic unity of "tho kindergarten with tho public school were realised, by what method should wa determine and. define its characteristic .function? * The answer to the question is simple. If organic union of the kindergarten and the public school ‘ were complete, we should define its function.by precisely the same method as that employed to mark the function of, say. the primary grades or the grammar grades. We should look to the genetic science of the child to fix for us the impulses, instincts and activities which appear of mature -in each period, and to make us acquainted with the functions and laws of these activities for each successive period. Upon this foundation we should build tho correlated method and select the characteristic material necessary to make this period .yield its proper contribution to the ultimate, ideal. _ .'. , . ' Let ■us merely as illustrating the method, select certain mental functions which characterise these periods as- imagination for the first period, association for the second and ‘understanding or reason for the third. By imagination we mean that in the kindergarten stage the child is in what professor Baldwin calls the \‘ semolant mod©' of : experience,” tliat the makebelieve world is more attractive than tho real world, that simple , sensory stimuli no longer call out the highest energies of the organism, but the experience acquired earlier, now functions in the making of a complex world of imagination, which elicits the nignest and most absorbing activities of which the child is capable. Sense perception, the exercise of intelligence, and the motor activities, all are subordinate to imagination in this penod in the sense that they are most powerfully stimulated in tho Bemblant worm, which it creates rather than by the obiects themselves in then- prosaic realitv. In short, if" we ask hovv wo can enlist the interest and activity ol the kindergarten child, how wo can bring all its powers into action so as to get tho maximum of development, and in the direction of the idea we are seeking to realise, we must answei through the scmblant world which kindles the most delightful and vigorous response of which the organism is capable, which brings into play all the powers of sense-perception, intelligence, motor co-ordination, and .social .cooperation. Thus we get motor and moral training through the stimulus of imagination. _ , . As the “ sembling ” or imaginative process declines, so the sense-percep-tion and associative gradually takes its place at tho. focus and becomes the dominant instrument o.f education as the child passes through the primary grades. Tho child’s first knowledge oi a fixed order of reality is through sense perception and association or senseperceptional experience. It is tins function of arbitrary or non-relational association which weaves the web of experience : which is to bo the basis of all the higher activities, for it is only through this function that the control of experience, which we call memory, 1S then,' is the golden opportunity to'form those systems of arbitrary association which condition the child a inheritance ot civilisation. .Speakmg, writing,-reading and calculation, v, men ' condition the development of civilisation and its inheritance, are themselves conditioned by the mastery and association of systems of arbitrary symbols, and it is when the associative function is at its maximum of efficiency that through it, in turn, tlio whole educational process can be. focalised. T 1 s makes the. symbolising of veahtj through language and number the central and differentiating process in the primary grade. Education takes on a more formal character, during this_ period, but in this in an adcouate way, i.e., so as to associate the symbols with the reality Lor which they stand and fill them with meaning nil the powers of the child spnse-peicep-tion, imagination, understanding and motor expression are called into activity. With dawning adolescepco the intelligence, the understanding, becomes the most powerful means of. appeal to the developing youth. The interest in arbitrary association wanes, and the interest in rational relation waxes and tends to be focal. Hero wc use science (geography), history, and the structure and functions of language as tho chief materials for stimulation. Through this channel, too, all the activities of tho organism may ho enlisted, sense perception, association, imagination, motor expression. The rational nature is awake, and the presentations of the relations which satisfy it arouses an eager response'in the normal mind. I have thus barely suggested a method through which a functional subdivision of the educational, process is possible, which would take the kindergarten completely out of its position as an institution sui generis, take it out of its disconnection and place it m organic relation to the whole, as its founder intended. The application of this method from various points of view, physical, social and moral, would serve to complete the characterisation of each period. It would fix tho _characteristic problelns which the kindergarten has to study and solve, and by the very - narrowing and defining or these make tho study ‘of. the kimlergartner mote intensive and fruitful.