sued here. The school is open two hours in the afternoon. Here, as throughout the whole establishment, the natural needs are first attended to. An advanced school has also been opened, based on natural princi ples, finding science and art and their uses in the needs of the moment. The varied world of enjoyment arising out of this movement fills the life here with a continual charm that is at first surprising, but when one sees it with heart as well as eyes, the wonder is that any kindergarten should be kept on any other basis. I have not mentioned that the children are invited to come back in the afternoons if they wish to do so, to carry on any work in which they may be interested. The children, who have left the kindergartens and gone into other schools, are also invited, and they come regularly on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. They go into the work rooms, or play with the young ladies who are being trained for kindergartners, who preside over these meetings without any superintendence by Miss Scheffel. This is the mode in which these young ladies become acquainted with the children.

The tables in Mrs. Schrader's kindergarten are not lined. She thinks the lines draw the attention from the true artistic work, which needs training of the eyes, according to the opinion of the most successful German teacher of drawing, Peter Schmidt. The result in Mrs. Schrader's kindergarten is very fine.

To this account of Mrs. Aldrich we add a few extracts from a very attractive and instructive volume by Miss Lyschinska, entitled “THE KINDERGARTEN PRINCIPLE-its Educational Value and Chief Applications." Miss Lyschinska is superintendent of Method in Infant Schools under the School Board of London, and she credits to her association with one of Fröbel's family, Henrietta Schrader (née Breyman) of Berlin, and her tuition, her knowledge of the Kindergarten Principles as developed in this volume. The opening chapter is devoted to "A German Kindergarten," the institution established by Mrs. Schrader, and in which Mrs. Aldrich sees so much to admire.

*Published by W. Isbister, 56 Ludgate Hill, 1880. 180 pages with numerous illustrations.

CRITICISMS ON FROEBEL'S SYSTEM AND ITS EXTENSION.

BY MADAME A. DE PORTUGALL.*

Inspectress of Infant Schools in the Canton of Geneva

L CRITICISMS CONSIDERED.

The views of Froebel, a man of original mercurial genius, working independently of all traditions, were sure to provok● criticism and opposition. The objections to their practical application may be grouped as follows: 1, Expense; 2, social disturbance; and 3, violations of pedagogic canons.

1. Objections on account of Expense.

That the new education, covering several years of the child's life not before utilized for purposes of development, and requiring space, constructions, equipment, and skilled personal attention, calls for expenditure of money, cannot be denied; but the results should, and we believe do, justify this expenditure.

Spacious and well-ventilated premises, halls for work and for play, a yard and a garden, are indispensable. If we add the expenses of the management and the material, numerous and capable teachers, it will be seen that to establish and support Kindergartens imposes great sacrifices, and that the municipalities and governments must be entirely convinced of the excellence of these institutions before they can be expected to swell their budgets for the purpose of founding them. We shall not insist upon the very imperative reasons which make us think that the expenses of construction and management will tend to increase rather than diminish. The quite practical solution which some Belgian cities, Liege, for example, and the Canton of Geneva, in Switzerland, have given to this question is the best answer to these criticisms. The Kindergartens of Liege are communal establishments, for which that city makes great sacrifices. The large number of children on their list (3,200 children in 1876) proves that they are in high favor, and that the Froebelian institutions are highly appreciated by the population.

In Geneva the Kindergartens still bear the name of Infant Schools, but the method of Froebel is applied in them. The law of October 19, 1872, while leaving the initiative to the communes, placed the schools under the surveillance of the Cantonal authorities. The law is as follows:

ART. 17. One infant school at least is established by the Commune. The Department of public instruction approves the regulations of these schools and watches their progress. The Council of State grants a subsidy for the creation and maintenance of the infant schools.

ART. 18. The infant schools are optional and gratuitous; they receive children until they are six years of age, and are directed by mistresses and sub-mistresses.

ART. 19. The salaries of the mistresses and sub-mistresses are fixed by the State. The premises are furnished by the commune.

Paper in Proceedings of International Congress, 1880. Translated by Mrs. Mann.

This law has taken full effect. There are scarcely five or six communes in the Canton of Geneva that are not already provided with Kindergartens. Every child who attends them costs the Commune and the Canton on an average twenty-four francs per year, or two francs per month. These grants are established by the budget of the Canton of Geneva for the years 1879 and 1880. In this moderate sum are comprised all the expenses of the Froebel material, the salaries of the mistresses, the courses of instruction for the teachers, etc., etc.

The construction of the buildings and the furniture are not included. These figures prove that the cost of the Kindergartens is not great. Whoever compares these expenses with those incurred by the old Salles d'Asyle, for which the maximum expense rose to fifty centimes per child per month, will feel that the establishment of the Kindergartens is an onerous charge. But if the governments and the contributors think that the system created by Froebel is the basis of a good public instruction and constitutes a progress in school institutions, we think they will not recoil from sacrifices which we have by no means exaggerated.

2. Kindergartens do not meet the wants of the Poor.

1. M. R. de Guimps, in his Philosophy and Practice of Education, remarks: "The Kindergarten could not receive the great mass of the children of the poor;" and others go still further, and assert that the very excellences of the Kindergarten,-its regularity, order, neatness, and happiness, are incompatible with the harsh necessities of not a few families in all cities and villages. This is not a full statement of the case. The poor child in these institutions does enjoy comfort and happiness, but that is precisely what Froebel intended. The child is indeed happy there; as its gaiety and contentment, its whole expression, prove it. Placed there under a motherly direction, surrounded by little companions, it enjoys a true family life, which the paternal home can rarely furnish. The father, and often the mother, obliged to work for the maintenance of their children, abandon their domestic hearth every day, leaving their children in the care of an aged or infirm grandmother, or perhaps of a neighbor who often has something else to do than to watch them. What dangers do not the poor little ones run! And these are the little deserted waifs whom the Kindergarten collects, to whom it offers a happy and busy life. But the taste for neatness and order which the Kindergarten inculcates on its little pupils, and which the latter carry home, is an inappreciable gain to them instead of a cruelty. The child does not like to go to school improperly clothed, badly washed and badly combed. He knows that he will be spoken to by the teacher, and we shall find that he insists upon his mother's giving him the most indispensable physical care. Thanks to his constant importunities and improved habits, order, and with order economy, penetrate many dwellings, and insensibly raise the moral code of the family.

2. It is further objected that the Kindergarten interferes with the rights of the family. This criticism, if well founded, would be an absolute condemnation of the system of the great Thuringian pedagogue. But let us open his works; let us open the Education of Man; we find on every page the solicitude, the respect, which the sacred institution of the family

inspired in Froebel, an institution in which he saw the first elements of society. We are certain that those who make this reproach, have never read or known either his thought or his system. Is not that which people attack most violently often that which they know least about? Froebel was so preoccupied with the future of the family that all his aspirations tended to reform it, to re-edify it, to elevate it. And he confided this reform to the mother. How great and noble is the part which Froebel assigns to her, and how far we still are from realizing it. How many mothers are even the centers of the family life, or acquit themselves of their manifold duties, and without assistance? Uncultivated, ignorant governesses, these are the assistants they procured up to the day when Froebel offered them his Kindergarten. There parents can safely send their children every day, and know that they will find in it what their home cannot give them, a little world where, under enlightened direction, they will learn to live. And the return home! How many things to recount after an absence of some hours! The Kindergarten is necessary to the child and to the family, to the rich and to the poor, to the well-to do citizen and to the workman, for it is a humanitarian and a social work. It is necessary for the wife, for the mother; it assists her and forms her for her educational mission.

"In order to establish my work," said Froebel, at the inauguration of his Kindergarten at Blankenburg, in Thuringia, in 1840, "I need the coöperation of every one, especially of women. Yes, what is necessary for my success, is the concurrence of mothers, wives, sisters. I therefore make a serious appeal, not only to the female population of my country, of Germany, but to all the civilized world. I place my new institution in the hands of women; it is to their zeal and their tenderness that I confide this garden, that they may cultivate it and make it prosper by the care that they alone can and know how to give."

3. Pedagogical Objections.

Some pedagogical critics, who value the school only for certain traditional habits and acquisitions-keeping still, and the ability to read, write, and cipher, complain that pupils who pass into the school from the Kindergarten have little or no knowledge, and are often even turbulent and impatient of discipline. The mission of the Kindergarten is not to impart book knowledge, but its plays and occupations should give intelligence, and the power of adaptation. But even the friendly critics complain that this intelligence is often accompanied with a want of concentration. But whenever we have met with it and sought out the cause, we have been sure that it proceeded from a defective application of the system. How many young teachers are not up to their task! how many go astray in the method, and take the means for the end, the letter for the spirit! Yet we do find some well-directed Kindergartens, although they are still too rare, and these furnish excellent pupils to the schools. We have verified the fact that the influence of a first rational education continues through years of study, and that this influence makes itself felt especially when the instruction appeals to reason, logic, and good sense.

Finally, we believe that the main criticisms made upon Froebel's system proceed from incomplete knowledge of it, from the imperfect appli

cation of it, as well as from a too literal interpretation of it. It is to the exaggerated zeal of certain disciples of Froebel, that many criticisms of his system are due. Those disciples admit of no changes or modifications in the application, and give a stereotyped form to the method; many even go so far as to pretend that it cannot be touched without injury. This leads us to the second division of our subject.

II. FURTHER DEVELOPMENT AND ADAPTATIONS.

The method produced by an original mind can be neither mechanically applied, nor servilely imitated. It is to be modified by the influence of circumstances, personalities, and national character. The character, the tendencies, even the aptitudes, vary in different countries; the system can be modified in its form, while the spirit of it remains the same.

And how many changes, not foreseen by the founder, have gradually been introduced, without ceasing to be faithful to this spirit. With Froebel, the Kindergarten was only the family enlarged, and was to contain but a comparatively small number of children. Now that the Salles d'Asyle and the infant schools have adopted Froebel's method, we have been forced to multiply the plays and occupations, especially for the little children who are received at the age of two and one-half years. It has been necessary to introduce a whole series of innovations too long to be enumerated. In the countries peopled by the Latin races, where the children are by temperament more lively and precocious, we must not think of imposing the method in all its rigor. It is necessary, besides, to admit a period of transition, to concede to the upper class in Kindergartens some of the branches of instruction of the primary school, particularly reading and writing. As M. Buisson said in his report upon the Vienna Exposition, "What should be absolutely condemned and proscribed, is not the teaching of reading and writing in the Kindergartens, but the preponderant rôle and abstract character given to these lessons." The details of the programme naturally depend upon the usages of each country, and even of each city. But it must not be concluded from certain concessions and variations needed by the conditions of things, that a Salle d'Asyle becomes a Kindergarten as soon as a little weaving and pricking are introduced into it. These superficial adaptations are neither desirable nor useful; something more is necessary than the material and the manual application of it; the thought that presided over the organization of the method, the spirit of Froebel, these are what are necessary to animate and vivify the whole.

As to new industrial adaptations, these are possible, but not before a certain age; they must not be thought of for little children. The braiding of straw, an easy transition from the weaving of paper, might be introduced in an upper class of the Kindergarten, together with many systematic occupations; folding and cutting may be transformed into box-making; and we should recommend to pupils from eight to ten years of age rattan basket-making, which we have seen more than once well executed by children who had been in Kindergartens. But we must not presume too far on the strength of the little pupils.

As to the influence exercised by the embroidery work of Froebel upou needle-work, it is no longer contested.