"The beginning and end of all culture must be character, and its outcome is conduct. 'Conduct,' says Matthew Arnold, 'is three-fourths of life.' The state's concern in education is to rear virtuous, law-abiding, self-governing citizens."—Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction.
QUARANTINE AGAINST MISUNDERSTANDING
CHARACTER-BUILDING AND HABIT-FORMING SCHOOLS
The selection of a name is very important, especially to an organization or institution that aims to exert a wide influence among classes of citizens who are absorbed with the affairs of every-day life to the exclusion of new ideas.
A name should, as far as possible, indicate its object without further explanation. The names, "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," and "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children," accomplish their aim by means of rather cumbrous titles but the object justifies the handicap.
We have adopted the name "Quarantine" for our purpose for the reason that it has only one meaning and that meaning is understood by everyone to relate to the keeping out of germs of imported disorder at every gate of possible entry.
The origin of the name "Quarantine" is traced to republican Venice at the time when she was mistress of the Adriatic and of the outside world of commerce as well. It referred to the period of forty days prescribed as a term of probation during which vessels, men or merchandise coming from infected ports should not enter the harbor.
Names of institutions often stimulate the efforts of those employed under the title in the direction of the aims of the institution, and names given to children sometimes seem to determine their occupation or in other ways to influence their character or career.
Students of Child-Life find in the lives of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and many others who have achieved military glory, a steady inclination to be worthy of the heroic names they bore, and some go so far as to associate the patriarchal qualities of President Lincoln with the subtle suggestion insisted on by the name of Abraham.
It is reasonable to suppose that names in constant use carry strong suggestion with them and for that reason we have adopted the names "Character-Building and Habit-Forming" by which to designate the several schools that are intended to fit children for the independent individual employments of mature life.
For the same reason we have adopted—invented, if you like—the name "Quarantinist," to apply to such as share our sympathy for health and harmony in all branches of social and individual economy, and the name "Neglectist" to apply to all others, not by imposition, but by inference.
Who is there that would like to be known as a neglectist, and who is there, having joined the ranks of the quarantinists, that would not constantly be reminded to apply the suggestion to matters of individual care?
"Kindergarten" is a beautiful name, with fine poetic significance, but unfortunately is not quite sufficiently descriptive of its high purpose. In common acceptance it means a something intended principally to "amuse children and keep them out of mischief until they are old enough to learn something useful."
The method of analysis and training that has ripened out of the wise suggestions of Saint Froebel is the most important acquisition to pedagogy that has ever been discovered and is applicable to any branch of education and also to the use of industrial institutions in improving the condition and status of employees as well as establishing cordial relations between employers and their employees.
A splendid example of the latter application has been carried to success by the National Cash Register Company, of Dayton, Ohio, whose happy and enthusiastic employees number nearly two thousand persons of all ages and both sexes, scattered in every part of the world where commerce reaches, but the subject of this institution and its methods is worthy of a special treatise. It is an "object lesson" which should be known to everyone within the whole range of contact between directors and directed in industrial pursuits.
The first aim of all education should be Character-Building and Habit-Forming in order to prepare a fertile and weedless soil in which to nurture seeds of intellectual attainment, manual skill, and religious intuition, all of which are the certain product of character cultivation. These insure industry and growth which never fail to produce blossoms of religious yearnings.
Intellectual and manual training are themselves most useful instruments in establishing character and habit, but their first and best mission is sometimes overlooked, and intellect and skill are frequently taught to children without reference to poise, honor, order and harmony, in which case the instruction is like building upon sand, without adequate foundation.
Character is really the chief object and recognized mission of the kindergarten and no disrespect is intended by suggesting the names "Character-Building" and "Habit-Forming" to include it in a wider scope of application.
All great world-movements in the evolution of civilization are modestly started. Froebel was undoubtedly unconscious of the tremendous impetus toward reform that his "Mutter Werk" had put in motion. Like all great movements it started in the warmth of a simple and spontaneous love impulse, but has spread a wave of true charity that more nearly satisfies the Christ ideal than any that has before covered the world. In the simplicity of its inception it received the blessed name of "Kindergarten," unconscious of its wide mission in the cause of general reform and harmony.
That the mission of the kindergarten is a very broad one is proven by the fact that more victims of hopeless and hardened criminal mania have been touched and reclaimed through kindness to the children of these unfortunates in kindergartens, as related elsewhere, than by direct effort.
Until the time of Froebel educational methods left character and habit forming to parents and religion. These are not sought to be replaced by the Froebel method, but they are powerfully supplemented by it; and, when character and habit schools for young children, followed by an adequate number of manual-training and parental farm schools to test older children for preference of occupation, have come to be appreciated as the most important functions of government, as well as of education, as they must do to keep up with the present acceleration of progress, the Science of Government will rest on the Science of Child-Care, and will have been simplified to the position of greatest effectiveness.
Herein will woman find the sphere of her greatest usefulness and of her natural inclination.
Wherever a great light appears to enrich literature, or art, or science, or philanthropy, or invention, or discovery, or whatever branch of usefulness it may bless with its potential energy, it is easy to trace much of the excellence acquired to the teachings of a mother. To the mother impulses and instincts we owe much that is good in our treasury of thought, but opportunity for the best mother influence has been, and still is, a matter of chance, with few good models available for the parents of those poor and oppressed innocents, "The Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per Cent" of ignorant and cruel tradition.
The "Mutter Werk" of the kindergarten, pursued anywhere, upon the common, by the wayside, in a wood-shed, or in a shabby but tidy room in the midst of a city slum, carries the opportunity of profitable lessons in life to all, and fulfills the mandate of the Christ in the spirit, as well as in the letter, of His command.
