"'Do the materialistic tendencies of the times weaken your church in America?' I asked a noble Paulist father whom I met once on a railroad train.
"'Oh, no,' said he, 'we Catholics catch our people young and they never get away from us. We hold that if we can have the care and guidance of a child under seven years of age it will always come back to the church in after years, in every important crisis of grief or joy in life. That is why our great church is unaffected by the godlessness that alarms others. We make Catholics of little children and they never cease to grow as the twig was bent.'"—Julian Ralph.
SARAH B. COOPER
THE KINDERGARTEN IN ITS BEARINGS UPON CRIME, PAUPERISM, AND INSANITY
By Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, of San Francisco.
My theme is one in which bright-eyed Hope must clasp the hand of blind Despair, and lead the way to better things.
I am to talk about what can be done for little waifs after they are born. By what process of education and development are they to be made valuable members of society? The doctrine that the hereditary defectiveness of the masses can be corrected by education and hereditary culture is the true doctrine. Any system of education that does not contemplate these results does not deserve the name of education. What the world most needs to-day is character—genuine character. In order to secure this, we must get hold of the little waifs that now grow up to form the criminal element just as early in life as possible. Hunt up the children of poverty, of crime, and of brutality, just as soon as they can be reached—the children that flock in the tenement houses, on the narrow, dirty streets; the children that have no one to call them by dear names; children that are buffeted hither and thither,—"flotsam and jetsam on the wild, mad sea of life." This is the element out of which criminals are made.
It was Juvenal who said, "The man's character is made at seven: what he is then he will always be." This seems a sweeping assertion; but Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Lycurgus, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham, all emphasize the same idea. Leading educators of a modern day are all united upon this point. The pliable period of early childhood is the time most favorable to the eradication of vicious tendencies, and to the development of the latent possibilities for good. The foundations for national prosperity and perpetuity are to be laid deep down in our infant schools. And the infant school, to be most successful, must be organized and carried forward on the kindergarten plan. The kindergarten has rightfully been termed the "paradise of childhood." It is the gate through which many a little outcast has re-entered Eden.
Froebel, that great and beloved apostle of childhood, founded a system that is destined to revolutionize all former methods of developing little children. His battle-cry was, "Come! let us live with our children!"
The simple, salient fact is, we do not get hold of the little children of vice and of crime soon enough. An unfortunate childhood is the sure prophecy of an unfortunate life. "Implant lessons of virtue and well-doing in earliest childhood," says Plato. "Give me the child," says Lord Bacon, "and the State shall have the man." "Let the very playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and work of the coming man," says Aristotle. "It is early training that makes the master," says the great German poet. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and, when he is old, he will not depart from it," says the Revealed Word. Let us take heed to these entreaties, and work with the children. Work with little children will always pay handsome dividends to the family, to the community, to the State, and to the world.
It is Ruskin who says, "The true history of a nation is not of its wars, but of its households;" and he holds it to be the duty of a State to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated, till it attain years of discretion. But he admits that, in order to accomplish this, the government must have an authority over the welfare of children of which we do not now so much as dream.
Whether such a view be practical or not, one thing is certain: nothing but virtue and intelligence can save a republic from ending in despotism, corruption, and anarchy. There must be genuine character.
And, since virtue is secured by early training and habit, the children of a republic must be trained in ways of honesty, industry and self-control. It matters not who they are nor where they are, the State cannot afford to allow them to grow up in ignorance and crime. The great conspirator, when he aimed to overthrow Rome, corrupted the young men. When our fathers would conserve liberty for their children and for mankind, they "fed the lambs": they looked to the proper training of the young. We have a vast number of humane institutions for the reclamation and recovery of the wayward and the erring. We have reformatory institutions, asylums, prisons, jails, and houses of correction; but all these are only repair shops. Their work is secondary, not primal. It is vastly more economical to build new structures than to overhaul and remodel old ones.
The prevention of crime is the duty of society. But society has little right to punish crime at one end, if it does nothing to prevent it at the other end. Society's chief concern should be to remove the causes from which crime springs. It is much more a duty to prevent crime than it is to punish crime.
Parents should try to be what they would have their children to be. Parents and society are very clumsy in their management of children. We have our duties to one another; and we may be sure of one thing: that any one, however flippant or however scornful, who asks, like Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" like Cain, has somehow lost his brother; like Cain, has somehow slain him. It seems to me that two great ministrant forces engird this universe—love and law. We need them both in the education and development of human beings—of little children. The mother love should bind the child to home and duty: the father power should construct order and administer government. Society should have both these elements in its government.
As factors in society, what are we doing to prevent crime? We may be very eloquent in pleading that punishments may be quick, sharp, and decisive, that the gallows may have every victim that it claims by law, and that eternal vigilance may be kept on evil-doers. But all this will not avail. As has truly been said: "Crime cannot be prevented by punishment. Crime can only be hindered by letting no child grow up a criminal. Crime can only be stayed by education—not education of the intellect only, but education of the heart, which is alike good and necessary for all." We want that sort of education which has in it more of the aim of character-building.
The end of all culture must be character, and its outcome in 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.
I repeat it, the doctrine that the hereditary defectiveness of the masses can be corrected, both by culture and by education, is the true doctrine. Virtue, integrity, and well-doing are not sufficiently aimed at in earliest childhood. The head, and not the heart, comes in for the maximum of training. And yet right action is far more important than rare scholarship. The foundations of national prosperity and perpetuity are laid deep down in the bed-rock of individual character. Let the plodding, the thriftless, and the unaspiring of any country have the monopoly of peopling that country, and the race will gradually deteriorate, until finally the whole social fabric gives way, and the nation reverts back to barbarism or is blotted from the earth. When a nation exceeds more in quantity than in quality, it is in a bad plight. Ignorance and lack of character in the masses will never breed wisdom so long as ignorance and lack of character in the individual breed folly. The intelligent tradesman, the thrifty mechanic, and the sturdy yeomanry constitute the foundation of a nation—the proud assurance of her perpetuity, her prosperity, and her strength.
I tell you, friends, we do not half comprehend the importance of looking after the unfortunate children of our streets. What said the great and good Teacher on this subject? "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father who is in heaven." And when I see the neglected, sad-faced, prematurely old, weary-eyed little ones, in the purlieus of vice and crime, there is just one thought, that comes like a ray of sunlight through the rifts of cloud, and it is this: There is not one of these uncombed, unwashed, untaught little pensioners of care that has not some kind angel heart that is pitying it in the heavens above. Parents may be harsh and brutal, communities may be cold and neglectful; but the angels must ever regard them with eyes luminous with tender pity.
What shall we do with these children? Good people everywhere should combine to care for them and teach them. Churches should make it an important part of their work to look after them. The law of self-preservation, if no higher law, demands that they should be looked after. How shall they be looked after? By establishing free kindergartens in every destitute part of large cities.
Said a wealthy tax-payer to me recently, as he paid me his monthly kindergarten subscription: "Mrs. Cooper, this work among the children is the best work that can be done. I give you this aid most gladly. I consider it an investment for my children. I would rather give five dollars a month to educate these children than to have my own taxed ten times that amount by and by to sustain prisons and penitentiaries." This was the practical view of a practical business man—a man of wise forethought and of generous, genial impulses. Many needy children have been turned back into the street, to learn all its vice and crime, who could not find accommodation in the different charity kindergartens. I tell you this is a fact of momentous import to any community. Remember that from a single neglected child in a wealthy county in the State of New York there has come a notorious stock of criminals, vagabonds and paupers, imperilling every dollar's worth of property and every individual in the community. Not less than twelve hundred persons have been traced as the lineage of six children who were born of this one perverted and depraved woman, who was once a pure, sweet, dimpled little child, and who, with proper influences thrown about her at a tender age, might have given to the world twelve hundred progeny who would have blest their day and generation. Look at the tremendous fact involved! In neglecting to train this one child to ways of virtue and well-doing, the descendants of the respectable neighbors of that child have been compelled to endure the depredations, and support in almshouses and prisons, scores of her descendants for six generations! If the people of this country would protect the virtue of their children, their persons from murder, their property from theft, or their wealth from a heavy tax to support paupers and criminals, they must provide a scheme of education that will not allow a single youth to escape its influence. And, to effect the surest and best results, these children must be reached just as early in life as possible. The design of the kindergarten system is to prevent criminals. And what estimate shall be placed upon an instrumentality which saves the child from becoming a criminal, and thus not only saves the State from the care and expense incident to such reform, but also secures to the State all that which the life of a good citizen brings to it? Think of the vast difference in results, had there been twelve hundred useful, well-equipped men and women at work in that county in New York, building it up in productive industries, instead of twelve hundred paupers and criminals tearing down and defiling the fair heritage! We have but to look at this significant fact to estimate the value of a single child to the commonwealth.
The true kindergartner proceeds upon the principle asserted by Froebel, that every child is a child of nature, a child of man, and a child of God, and that education can fulfil its mission only when it views the human being in this threefold relation, and takes each into account. In other words, the true kindergartner regards with scrupulous care the physical, the intellectual, and the moral. "You cannot," says Froebel, "do heroic deeds in words, or by talking about them; but you can educate a child to self-activity and to well-doing, and through these to a faith which will not be dead." The child in the kindergarten is not only told to be good, but inspired by help and sympathy to be good. The kindergarten child is taught to manifest his love in deeds rather than in words; and a child thus taught never knows lip-service, but is led forward to that higher form of service where their good works glorify the Father, thus proving Froebel's assertion to be true, where he says, "I have based my education on religion, and it must lead to religion." The little child, after all, is the important factor in this universe.
When the old king demanded of the Spartans fifty of their children as hostages, they replied, "We would prefer to give you a hundred of our most distinguished men." This was but a fair testimony to the everlasting value of the child to any commonwealth and to any age. The hope of the world lies in the children. The hope of this nation lies in the little children that throng the streets to-day. Is it no small question, then, "What shall we do with our children?" It seems to me that the very best work that can be done for the world is work with the children. We talk a vast deal about the work of reclamation and restoration, reformatory institutions and the like; and all this is well, but far better is it to begin at the beginning. The best physicians are not those who only follow disease, but those who, as far as possible, go ahead and prevent it. They seek to teach the community the laws of health,—how not to get sick.
We too often start out on the principle that actuated the medical tyro who was working, might and main, over a patient burning up with fever. When gently entreated to know what he was doing, he snappishly replied: "Doing? Why, I'm trying to throw this man into a fit. I don't know much about curing fevers, but I'm death on fits. Just let me get him into a fit, and I'll fetch him!" It seems to me we often go on the same principle: we work harder in laying plans to redeem those who have fallen than to save others from falling. We seem to take it for granted that a certain condition of declension must be reached before we can work to advantage. I repeat again what I have said before—we do not begin soon enough with the children. It seems to me that both Church and State have yet to learn the vast import of those matchless words of the great Teacher Himself, where He said, pointing to a little child, "He that receiveth him in My name receiveth Me." He said it because, with omniscient vision, He saw the wondrous, folded-away possibilities imprisoned within the little child.
Now, I do not propose to go into the rationale of the kindergarten system at all on this occasion; but I do wish to emphasize a few salient points; and, first, that the kindergarten aims at the cultivation of the heart. As its great founder himself declared, its regnant aim is to guide the heart and soul in the right direction, and lead them to the Creator of all life, and to personal union with Him. As I before said, the kindergarten is the paradise of childhood, the gate through which the little children may re-enter Eden. The law of duty is recognized by the little ones as the law of love. Froebel recognized the Divine Spirit as the true developing power. His theory was that the human heart can only be satisfied with the consciousness of the love of a personal God and Father, to whom we can pray and speak. He said religious education was more than religious instruction. It was his aim to lead the little ones to their heavenly Friend. He taught them to love one another, to help one another, to be kind to one another, to care for one another. No one can love God who does not love his fellows. Froebel grieved over the criminal classes. We say again, the design of the kindergarten is to Prevent criminals. And what estimate shall be placed upon an instrumentality which saves the child from becoming a criminal, and so saves the State from the care and expense incident to such reform, and secures to the State all that which the life of a good citizen brings to it?
The State begins too late when it permits the child to enter the public school at six years of age. It is locking the stable door after the horse is stolen.
One of the most distinguished writers on the law of heredity, Doctor Maudsley, says: "It is certain that lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as are steam-engines and calico printing machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so complex that we are not able to follow them. They are neither accidents nor anomalies in the universe, but come by law and testify to causality; and it is the business of science to find out what the causes are, and by what laws they work." A republic that expects to survive, and to increase in power and greatness, must see to it that she does not carry within her the seeds of her own dissolution. It remains forever true of nations, as of individuals, that ignorance and crime breed dissolution and death.
I want to say that the men and women who indorse, sustain, and advocate kindergarten work in San Francisco are among its most thoughtful, philanthropic, and far-seeing citizens—men who seek to crown with ceaseless blessing the destinies of this western world, men and women whose better nature is always within call, and who, with a rich and mellow spirit of humanity, determine to leave the world better than they found it, happier and nobler for the legacy of their fruitful lives; men and women who are always devising generous things, and who go through life like a band of music; men and women who live to develop the resources of a great State—citizens of the world made by the time to make a new time. Such are the men and women who, by their generous gifts and pleading earnestness, help on this great work in San Francisco. Noble, far-seeing men and women! I love and honor them, every one.
Dear friends, I believe with all my soul that the shortest cut to permanent victory in the great and glorious cause of temperance is through the training of very little children in ways of virtue, self-government, and self-control, by the proper cultivation of the heart, as well as the head and hand, in the kindergarten. Only such schools as these, moulding and shaping character by careful habit and training, will ever build up a vigorous, healthful, virtuous national life. Only such schools as these will make poorhouses, insane asylums, penitentiaries, and like institutions unnecessary. Do they cost too much? Think of it! $50,000,000 invested for asylums, poorhouses, hospitals, blind, deaf-mute, and insane asylums in the State of New York alone, with an annual outlay of $10,000,000; and this does not include houses of correction, penitentiaries, prisons, jails, and the like. Even a portion of this money expended in kindergarten schools would make these penal and corrective institutions unnecessary in a few years.
If the civil authorities cannot and do not attend to the needy, neglected children that go to swell the great lists of crime, pauperism, and insanity, then Christian philanthropy should do it. Christianity, thank God, is coming to be more and more practical in its aspect and work. We are coming to feel more and more that a religion that has everything for a future world, and nothing for this world, has nothing for either. A religion that neglects this present life is a mother who neglects her infant, with the expectation that manhood will make everything right. There is a class of persons who spend their lives in trying to be good. There is another class who spend their lives in trying to do good. Genuine goodness is something more than a mere self-seeking for eternity. It is something more than that sort of pious living which means little else than a safe and sagacious investment in the skies. It is a working together with God in this world for the uplifting and advancement of the human race. It is a seeking to lessen the pains and burdens of life among the toilers and the strugglers. It is a reaching out after the little children of poverty and want—the hapless little ones who have been hurled prematurely against the life-wrecking problems of existence. Help that can run to help the helpless, and comfort the comfortless, always keeps closest by the side of God. Intensity of life is intensity of helpfulness. The great waiting world understands good actions far more readily than abstract doctrines.
Perhaps we shall find at last, in the day of final disclosure, that the deepest and most far-reaching influence that we ever exerted was the influence that we exerted over the helpless and neglected little children of the streets. Perhaps we shall find it to be the best work we ever accomplished. At all events, it is well to live well. And he lives the longest who lives the best. He is great who confers most of blessing on mankind.
