ABSTRACT
Ifindergarten work, though as yet not nearly enough practised and apPleciated in England, has begun to occupy some of tlie most thou~htful and practical among the great body of teachers m this country. We have still to hope for the day when every town wii.l possess its Kindergarten, whence children may be passed on to the larger schools we see growing up even for girls in town after town. But that so pleasant a hope may be indulged in without fear of ultimate disappointment, a pamphlet like the one before us abundantly proves. People will not write and work for a subject in which they have no real and growing interest, nor will newadherents be found on all sides for a faith destined to be labelled" fancy" at last. In spite of the ridicule too often heaped on Frobel and his work we boldly confess our~ selves believers in tha truths he taught. The results he promised may seem to some of us a little out of proportion to the means he used and would have us use too, but we believe that to a worker as patient and observant as he those results were real and attainable and that close imitators of the work will find them after all no mere ·vision. Little children have, at lea.st, as much to teach us as we have to teach them. Oue of the things they have to teach us is the intense reality to themselves of their actions, even of those which to us have seemed involuntary or mechanical. For example, the pamphlet before us draws attention to the insignificant baby action of kicking and crying. 'Ve ref~r our readers to Miss Lord's remarks on these matters, but we must especially point out what she has said of the mother's instinct, which is oft-eu (so ignorantly) to our thinking, supposed to be more thaD eq oal in prt!l:Icienoe and divination to anything that thoughtful men and women may tell us of a young ohild's world. It is always worth while, as Miss Lord says, to learn from other people's thoughts as well as from our own
KatII8b"omao', Rnte ... ] Event, o~ the AprU lSlb .... ,., :J
160 Review •• rEugU,bwoman" Rniew, Aprl115tb, 1876. observation, even about baby-deeds. We hope that in these days of "Science Primers," "Practical Physiology," and "Health in the House," there is an ever-decreasing number of mothers who think that the mere fact of being a mother puts them far above the necessity of thinking and learning in order to be able to govern a household well and to bring up healthy, vigorous children, and that the number of those who take a delight in learning what may add to the wellbeing of their children is increasing. As Miss LOl'd writes-" Better days are coming; we are setting to work to learn little children." It would be a long task to discuss in detail all that Miss LOl·d has written, and the best thing our readers can do is to go to the pamphlet itself for her views on influencing little chilaren. Vve are grateful to her for having so forcibly put before us the fact that children can be influenced even in babyhood, as the too generally received opinion is, that they are only capable of being fed or amused at so earJy a stage. •
The h logical" style in baby development is also insisted on. "Whatever happens once will, we think, happen again." This is true, not merely of babyhood but of the later stage when, in listening to an oft-told tale, a child refuses to hear the slightest variation of it, often to the tale-teller's discomfiture. A child always loves togo over sensations again and again, and hence finds endless amusement in what appears to older folk to be monotonous repetition.
