CHAPTER XIV.

KINDERGARTENS.

The usual form of tabulating statistics of kindergartens antiquated by their rapid absorbtion by city school systems-A statistical retrospect at five-year intervals presented in lieu of the customary table, preparatory to its reorganization.-The beginning in 1870--The growth during the first period 1570-75-During the second period 1875-1880-During the third period 183-85-Attained at the period 1887-88-Why the kindergarten should be a part of the public school system, report of the Boston committee-What, as a public school, it should be, report of the president of the Philadelphia Board of Education-Notes from reports by superintendents of other cities-The growth of the kindergarten fostered by associations— Philanthropy a leading characteristic of such bodies

The exhaustive fulness of the statistics of kindergarten instruction in the last report of this Office, going so far as to incorporate the lowest classes of institutions for special forms of instruction and requiring the full time of a clerk to make the inquiries and repeated inquiries, has rendered a second full tabulated statement at so short an interval unnecessary.

It is evident that a great change is being made in the character of this class of schools. To use the language of the Philadelphia Society they are becoming the subprimary department of public school systems. Although this tendency has been going on very slowly since the inauguration of a public and experimental kindergarten in the systems of Boston, Cleveland, and St. Louis in 1870 and 1873, the events of the last three or four years have greatly facilitated it.

Now, there are circumstances connected with the public recognition of the usefulness of kindergartens that bear upon the form which the tabulation of their statistics should take. Why should the lowest classes of a system of public schools, because called kindergartens, be isolated and treated as a system of themselves any more than the grammar grade or the intermediate? Or, if such classes are treated separately, because the instruction is sui generis, why should they be intercalated with kindergartens that, being private, have an individuality?

In several instances our forms have been returned with the information that the school having become a part of a public school system, we must apply to its executive officer. And why should the lumped statistics of a system, indeed how may they, be tabulated with those of single schools? Again, kindergarten methods are not confined to kindergarten schools, distinctively known as such; the primary school has "primary school work" which is not the same as the primary school work before the advent of the kindergarten system.

These considerations have induced us to attempt to give the present status of the kindergarten as compared with its condition twenty years ago, and at subsequent intervals of five years; omitting the table, but holding ourselves in readiness to give the statistics of any institution from which we have compiled our summary, on demand. In the meantime the subject of devising proper forms and of making proper distribution will receive our attention.

THE KINDERGARTEN IN 1870.

"The faulty training which too often precedes school work and the imperfections so prevalent in our primary instruction," says our Report for 1870, "have turned the attention of many American teachers to the excellencies of the early training, characteristic of the kindergarten. Neither children nor childhood are sufficiently un* The increasing concentration of our population in cities adds to the necessity of a thorough revision of the earliest work of the school-room throughout the country."

derstood or appreciated.

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In an article by Miss Elizabeth Peabody, of Boston, appearing in the same volume and on the same subject, the practical advantages of the study are thus stated:

"A lady who travelled in Europe to study Froebel's kindergartens brought home from Dresden the whole series of work done by a class of children who began at three years old and continued until seven; and no one has seen it without being convinced that it must have educated the children that did it, not only to an exquisite artistic manipulation, which it is very much harder to attain later, but to habits of attention that would make it a thing of a short time to learn to read, write, and cipher, and enable them to enter into scientific education, and use books with the greatest advantago as early as eight years old. The indispensable preliminary of this new pri

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mary discipline is competent teachers, who can be had only by special training. *** As yet there is but one kindergarten normal school in America, which is a private one in Boston kept by Mrs. Kriege and her daughters."

Miss Peabody thought the "immediate desideratum to be a free national school to supply kindergarten education to the schools of the District of Columbia, the Territories, and the South, located in the District or, perhaps, in Richmond, Va."

At that time an experimental school had been established at Boston in connection with the public schools and another, though this can hardly be called a part of the system, at Cleveland, the latter under a graduate of Mrs. Kriege's normal school. In California a German lady was maintaining a kindergarten under very adverse circumstances; Dr. Douai had established an institute at Newark, N. J., and Miss Louisa Frankenburg, a pupil and friend of Froebel, was instructing "some superior ladies" in the theory and art of the training at Germantown, a suburb of Philadelphia. The New York school authorities were considering the advisability of making one of three experimental schools a normal school, and "a gentleman," of Springfield, Mass., had established a manufactory of kindergarten material, "a truly public-spirited act," as the outlay would not be returned for years. At St. Louis the subject was receiving great attention, some kindergarten features having been introduced into a primary school.

Such was the condition approximately of kindergarten instruction in 1870. In 1872 W. N. Hailmann, then of Louisville, introduced the following resolution at the meeting of the National Educational Association at Boston:

"Resolved, That a committee of seven be appointed to inquire into the form in which Froebel's principles of education may be most efficiently applied to the educational wants of our country, and to report at our next annual meeting.

The committee was composed of seven-Messrs. Dickinson, Hailmann, Harris, Kraus, Hancock, Baker, and Douai. At the next meeting the committee reported that they recognized in the kindergarten a potent means for elevating primary education and for the development and promulgation of the principles of sound psychology. They recommended that kindergarten institutions, both public and private, be established or their establishment encouraged, and that experiments be initiated to determine the best methods of connecting the kindergarten "with our current educational system." The committee met with four objections: (1) That the training existed only in private and separate institutions; (2) that as the great majority of pupils only spend three years in school, the time should not be wasted in things of less importance than elementary instruction; (3) that as the great majority of teachers are scarcely equal to their present task, it could not be expected they could master "the greater difficulties of kindergarten education;" (4) that two or three years of mere kindergarten instruction would seem to be a mere waste of time to parents wishing their children to learn to read, write, and cipher as rapidly as possible. These objections were dismissed as prejudices.

IN 1875.

The first tabulated statistics published were those which appeared in our Report for 1873, when there were 42 institutions, 73 instructors, and 1,252 pupils. The following summary will show these facts for 1875, not only by States but by groups of States, the period being marked by the introduction of kindergarten training, as an experiment, into the system of St. Louis:

Statistical Exhibit at the close of First Five-Year Period.

Considering the above statistics it is at once evident that the training was sectionalized. Include the District of Columbia and Maryland with the North Atlantic Division and kindergarten training is confined to that and the North Central Division. Further consideration shows that Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Missouri, and the District of Columbia are centres of these centres. It is well known that what Paris is said to be to France, that Washington is to the District; but only five of the schools of Massachusetts are in Boston, only seven of those of New York in the city bearing that name, while the schools of New Jersey are distributed in the towns of the northern part of the State. The Missouri schools are all St. Louis schools. As we are only substituting one form of statistics for another, and not intending to write a history of the rise and progress of the kindergarten in America, we pass to the condition of the training

IN 1880.

Two features mark this period--the spread of the training into the Southern States and its growth as a part of the school system of St. Louis. The exclusion of Washington City and Maryland from the South Atlantic Division now would by no means leave the kindergarten unrepresented in the South, though it must be confessed the number of schools is small; something like the condition of affairs in the West at the 1-75 period. In St. Louis the kindergarten had in 1880 grown into a system of the system of public schools; "too much a wheel within a wheel," says the report for 1881-82 of that city.

Statistical Exhibit at Close of Second Five-Year Period.

We have noted above that a distinguishing feature of the period 1875-80 is the appearance of kindergartens in the Southern States; let us now briefly examine their rapid increase in the North and West.

In the North Atlantic Division the increase was 126 per cent. in schools (that is, for every four schools in 1875 there were nine in 1880, 150 per cent. (two to five) in teachers, and 160 per cent. (five to thirteen) in pupils. The increase occurs in Massachasetts, about half of it in Boston; in New York, more than half of it in New York City; and in Pennsylvania, about half of it in Philadelphia. Two of these cities have suburbs; Boston has Cambridge; Philadelphia, Germantown. These districts have not been included as a part of the city. To have included them would have required us to include Brooklyn, Jersey City, Hoboken, and perhaps even Newark with New York City; and, having got to Newark, why not take in the whole north of New Jersey?

In the West there is an increase of 168 per cent. in schools, of 138 per cent. in teachers, and of 300 per cent. in pupils. Of this extraordinary increase in pupils (3.319), about 65 per cent. occurred in St. Louis, where over a fourth of the schools were situated and over 40 per cent. of the teachers were employed. Outside of Missouri the increase in Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin are noticeable. Cincinnati and Cleveland have between them seven of the twelve schools in Ohio, Chicago eleven of the fifteen in Illinois, and Milwaukee six of the twelve in Wisconsin.

On the Pacific Slope the kindergarten seems to have found an uncongenial soil in the more northern town of Walla Walla, but increased with energy in the more peopled city of San Francisco.

We think that with the completion of this period the novitiate of the kindergarten was finished and that a new conception of its value began to be recognized during the period closing

IN 1885.

In 1870, or thereabout, we find the difficulty was to introduce the kindergarten exercises into the usual school curriculum; during 1880-85 it was another problem how to introduce manual training, exclusive of carpentry shop work, into the same curriculum. The later problem seems to have solved the other. "Construction work" is but the "occupations" of the kindergarten in their theory and practice and the occupations are but the continuation of the "gifts" of the kindergarten as we know it-as a school for very young children only.

In considering the condition of kindergarten affairs at this date, we find that when introduced into the South the kindergarten did not increase with the startling rapidity with which it grew in the North and West. Whether the absence of populous cities had anything to do with this we cannot say, and New Orleans will not favor the supposition. The other features are the rapid strides made in California, that is, in San Francisco, and again in St. Louis, where the schools, teachers, and pupils are once again as large as in 1880. What is said of St. Louis is true of Philadelphia, where, emulating the generosity of Mrs. Shaw in Boston, a free kindergarten was opened about 1879 in a public school building and was supported by six persons, each giving $100. Sometime after, a society was formed, and in 1882 an appropriation of $5,000 was obtained from the city councils as an experiment. In 1885 the schools, teachers, and pupils had been doubled.

In the North Atlantic Division we find an increase of 25 per cent. in schools, of 20per cent. in teachers, and of 32 per cent. in pupils; in the West an increase of 134 per cent. in schools, of 118 per cent. in teachers, and of 162 per cent. in pupils. Again, it is in Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin that the increase is greatest, and still it is in Chicago, Cincinnati (with Columbus and Cleveland), and Milwaukee that the most of the schools of these States are situated.

In the far West, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Oregon appear, not very decidedly however, for the first time.

Schools.

Teachers.

Pupils.