FREE KINDERGARTEN AND WORKINGMAN'S SCHOOL.

WORK-EDUCATION FOR THE WORKINGMAN.

Supported by the United Relief Works of the Society for Ethical Culture,

INTRODUCTION.

The Institution-of which the Free Kindergarten located (1881) at 1521 Broadway (corner of 45th street) is the first grade-was founded in 1878 by the New York Society for Ethical Culture, under the lead of Prof. Felix Adler, Ph. D., as a model of the instruction which can be and should be given to the children of the people-to enable them, when grown up to be men and women, to help themselves, and at the same time to give the dignity of intellectuality to labor, and to workingmen as a class. Prof. Adler, in a Discourse before the Society, in October 1880, and in a report as Director of the Institution, sets forth with great clearness the aims and methods of its founders, and from these documents (a wellprinted pamphlet of fifty-eight pages,) we give the following statement.

THE INSTITUTION.

The workingman's School and Free Kindergarten form one institution. The children are admitted at the age of three to the Kindergarten. They are graduated from it at six, and enter the Workingman's School. They remain in the School till they are thirteen or fourteen years of age. Thereafter those who show decided ability receive higher technical instruction. For the others who leave the School proper and are sent to work, a series of evening classes will be opened, in which their industrial and general education will be continued in various directions. This graduate course of the Workingman's School is intended to extend up to the eighteenth or twenty-first year.

THE FREE KINDERGARTEN.

The characteristics of our Free Kindergarten may be briefly summarized as follows:

It is a Kindergarten. It has the merits which belong to the Kindergarten system generally. It is a Free Kindergarten for the poor, that is, it brings Kindergarten education to the poorest class, who are not able to pay for it themselves. It has the negative advantage of taking little children from the streets, where they would otherwise be exposed to bad companionship and pernicious influences of every kind. If it accomplished nothing more than this, our Kindergarten would be rendering no little service. But it has also the positive merit of placing the poor children under the best educational influence which modern times have devised. It is moreover the first step in a rational system of education. Kindergartens exist in great number. But a very large part of their benefits is lost because the rational method which they begin is not fol lowed up in the later education of the child. That our Kindergarten is

connected with and followed by a Workingman's School, is one of its characteristics upon which I lay especial stress. Of other features of the Kindergarten, I mention the following:

It has a Normal Class attached to it. This was founded by and is in charge of the Principal. The lady pupils of the Normal Class receive instruction gratis in the theory and art of Kindergartning. In return, they devote their service for a year to the Kindergarten, and assist in its practical management. We have thus every year a corps of eight or nine Assistant-Kindergartners supplied to us by the Normal Class.

The Kindergarten has a Ladies' Committee directly concerned in the care of it. The ladies are members of the general Executive Committee, but they exercise especial watchfulness over the pupils of the Kindergarten. It is their duty to visit the home of every applicant for admis sion, in order that we may be sure that only the really poor are taken into our Institution, and we may thus be protected against imposture. The ladies also undertake at least one annual visitation of all the families connected with the Kindergarten, in order to foster healthful relations between the home and School.

Warm Luncheons are provided for the children daily in the Kindergarten. The little children often came to us hungry. We found it difficult to give them instruction on an empty stomach. A Free Kindergarten for the poor must look to the bodily wants of its pupils as well as to their minds. Garments and shoes are also distributed among the children by the Ladies' Committee, whenever cases of great destitution, such as often occur, are reported.

The results already achieved by our Kindergarten work are satisfactory. Children came to us who could not smile; some of them remained for weeks in the Kindergarten before they were seen to smile. In the Kindergarten these sad little faces were gradually changed. The children were taught how to play; they learned how to be joyous. The children came to us unclean in every way; in the Kindergarten they are made clean, and a neat appearance and habits of tidiness are insisted upon. The children's minds were awakened; their faculties-physical and intellectual-were developed. And here, of course, the degree of success achieved in each individual case varied with the natural ability of the pupils. Best of all, a powerful moral influence has been brought to bear on the children of the Kindergarten. Even the fact that they live in a little children's community, and are compelled to submit to the laws of that community, is important. Then, too, direct moral suasion is brought to bear upon the children by their teachers. The faults of each child are studied; obstinacy is checked, selfishness is put to the blush, and, by a firm, yet mild treatment, the character is improved.

THE WORKINGMAN'S SCHOOL.

The school, in which work will constitute an essential feature, not for its future productive value, but for its current educative infiuence, was opened in February, 1880, under the direction of G. Bamberger, a native of Hesse, and trained in the best methods, of which it is the aim of the founders to make this institution a model-"in which the entire system

of rational and liberal education for the children of the poorer class might be exhibited from beginning to end." The example, "having once been set, would not be without effect upon the common school system at large," which is thought by the projectors (in the light of an article in Harpers' Magazine for November, 1880), not to be altogether satisfactory, at least for those who are to get their living by the labor of their hands, or to discharge the duties of men and women in American society. Assisted by the munificent gift of $10,000 from Mr. Joseph Seligman, the "United Relief Work" of the Society for Ethical Culture added to the Free Kindergarten, which had already attained to seven classes, the two lower classes of the Workingman's School-composed of twenty-five graduates of the Kindergarten. The Principal (Mr. Bamberger), in his first report at the Class of 1880, makes a statement, of which the following are paragraphs:

Our School is to consist of eight classes, of which two are now in operation. The scheme of studies will be found appended at the close of the report. It embraces four hours' instruction weekly in the use of tools, and to this I beg leave to call especial attention.

This,

First, we begin industrial instruction at the very earliest age possible. Already in our Kindergarten, we lay the foundation for the system of work instruction that is to follow. In the School proper, then, we seek to bridge over the interval lying between the preparatory Kindergarten training and the specialized instruction of the technical school, utilizing the school age itself for the development of industrial ability. however, is only one characteristic feature of our institution. The other, and the capital one, is, that we seek to combine industrial instruction organically with the ordinary branches of instruction, thus using it, not only for the material purpose of creating skill, but also ideally as a factor of mind-education. To our knowledge, such an application of workinstruction has nowhere, as yet, been attempted, either abroad or in this country.

The softest wood is too hard for the delicate fingers of children seven years old, and, moreover, requires the use of heavy and sharp tools, such as are not willingly entrusted to little ones at so tender an age. We finally decided to use clay. Clay, after it has been prepared in a special way for this purpose, is easy to cut and to manipulate, does not stick to the tool, and is not brittle enough to break and crumble. This proved entirely successful.

A complete series of patterns had to be invented which might be worked by young pupils out of this material. Thirty such patterns have been produced, and in them we have the system of elementary industrial exercises, with which we begin.

[Not having the use of the illustrations we must omit in this place the description of the exercises.]

By means of a simple arrangement the school desks are converted into work-tables. Every child is supplied with a set of cheap and suitable tools. The work lessons occur in the afternoon on two days of the week, and last two hours each time. The pupils are obliged to behave as quietly during work as in the other school hours; only just so much whispering is permitted as is necessary for the requesting and rendering of necessary assistance. We endeavor to give the school-room the air of a well conducted workshop. Each pupil-workman has his own place and tools, for which he is held responsible so far as possible. All begin work simultaneously, and stop at the same moment.

These exercises possess educational value in many different ways, and may be shown, as we have said in the beginning, to be in close connection with many branches of instruction, and with the collective education of the pupils. Instruction in drawing must of necessity go hand in hand with the modelling. What is drawn here is manufactured there, and vice versa.

Further, the rudiments of geometry are taught by means of this work far better than with the aid of mere diagrams. And a large number of definitions and propositions, which are commonly remembered by routine, are, by our method, demonstrated to the eye, and thus remain stamped on the mind forever.

Knowledge of arithmetic is also incidentally acquired. The children learn to cipher practically, to add and subtract, to read the figures on the scale, to divide and multiply them in the most various combinations.

Even certain of the facts of natural history may be taught in connection with the work. The children learn to know the material which they are handling; they study various kinds of wood, their properties, marks of recognition and adaptation. The teacher goes back to the tree out of which the wood has come, and explains the formation of the annual rings so easily perceptible to the children. They are taught from these how to determine the age, quality, and value of the wood. Forms of nature, also, are actually copied in wood, clay, and plaster, whenever such imitation is possible; and when it is not, recourse is had to drawing.

In this way we endeavor to make work-instruction contribute towards the general development of the child. The hand is educated by the mind, the mind by the hand.

What further advantages does the introduction of this species of workinstruction offer? A great moral advantage, besides the purely intellectual ones. The habit of working together, of living, as it were, together, exercises the best moral influence. At an age when they are most susceptible to educational influences, the children learn to live harmoniously in social groups, and become accustomed to mutual aid and support. No individual can place himself above another; all have similar duties, equal rights, equivalent claims. But, on the other hand, there is no false, artificial equality. The children are taught from the beginning the necessity of subordinating themselves to the more able and skillful, while, warned by their own failures, they learn to sympathize with the weak and helpless.

We endeavor to teach thoroughly, whatever branches are taught in our School at all. We teach reading according to the synthetic analytical method. The child does not spell, it reads phonetically, and what it has read in this manner, it writes; and what it has written it reads again, and understands. The reading of print is reserved for the second school year. Why should we begin by placing two difficulties, two alphabets, in the child's way? Why should children be taught to write, or rather draw, printed letters-characters which they never use, and which only serve to render the hand stiff and ungraceful?

In the study of geography we pursue the method that has proved successful in some of the best schools abroad. A very great number of men and women live in astonishing ignorance of their immediate vicinity. They may have learnt by rote to repeat the names of distant countries, the capital cities of those countries, the size of the population, the staple products, etc., but of real geographical knowledge they are destitute.

Our pupils are taught, in the first instance, how to make diagrams and maps of their own school-room, of the streets leading to their several houses, then of the city and its adjacent territory, etc. They are thus led, in the study of geography, step by step, to practical acquaintance with what is unfamiliar to them by comparison with what is familiar. The progress is logical-from the near to the remote, from the known to the unknown.

In the teaching of history to these young children, we hold it essential that the teacher should be entirely independent of any text-book, and able to freely handle the vast material at his disposal, and to draw from it, as from an endless storehouse, with fixed and definite purpose. We attach even greater importance to the moral than to the intellectual significance of history. The benefits which the understanding, the memory, and the imagination derive from the study of history, are not small. But history, considered as a realm of actions, can be made especially fruitful of sound influence upon the active, moral side of human nature. The moral judgment is strengthened by a knowledge of the evolution of mankind in good and evil. The moral feelings are purified by the abhorrence of the vices of the past, and by the admiration of examples of greatness and virtue.

Instruction in the system of duties is a necessary element of all education, is, indeed, the keystone of the whole arch of education, without which any plan of studies must remain essentially incomplete. We propose to offer such instruction to our pupils, and thus, to the best of our ability, to round off the scheme of their education.

Prof. Adler, in the Discourse referred to in the opening paragraph, thus speaks of the design of the Workingman's School to diffuse sounder views than now prevail on the subject of equality and right.

A pauper class is beginning to grow up among us, incapable of permanently lifting themselves to better conditions by their own exertions, incapable of obtaining the satisfaction of their most natural desires, and only rendered the more dangerous and furious by the sense of equality with all others, with which our political institutions have inspired them. If the evil has not yet become so aggravated as it is in the Old World, let us utilize the time of respite which is given us by undertaking carnest and vigorous measures to check the evil's growth. And, of all these possible measures of prevention, a suitable, a sensible system of education is assuredly the most promising. Let us use what influence we have to correct the false idea of equality which is everywhere current around us. Let us teach the people the true meaning of the great principle of equality -namely, that all men are created equal in respect to certain fundamental rights, such as liberty, the protection of the person, and a right to the pursuit of happiness, but that there is by no means equality of natural fitness and endowment, and that the offices of life must always therefore be unequally divided. Let us impress upon the minds of the children that the business of life will always be carried on in a hierarchy of services, and that there is no shame in doing a lesser service in this hierarchy; that all honor accrues to us only in doing that function well to which we are committed, and taking pride and finding dignity in its performance. And to enable the working people of the future to take pride and find dignity in the work of their hands, is the object of the work education which we are seeking to introduce into our school.

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