KINDERGARTEN REVIEW VOL. XV. SPRINGFIELD, MASS., SEPTEMBER, 1904. No. 1. THE The Individual Child* By Bertha Payne, Chicago, Ill. HE watchwords of the kindergarten have been flung from every stronghold and outpost during its militant career until they have become current in all camps. But, as in all fields of thought, they need from time to time a new animation, which is demanded as the world moves and new vantage grounds give material and scope for new interpretations. To Self-activity, unfolding freedom, spontaneity-there was a time when these ideas were peculiar to advocates of kindergarten theories. day the same terms, or other words for the same concepts, are the shibboleth of the advance wing of educational thought. We recognize the same contentions under the terms, "impulsive attitudes," "initiative,” and "original effort." The more recent terminology is significant of a broad and deep current of thought bearing in the direction indicated by Address delivered before the Kindergarten Section N. E. A., July 1, 1904. the founder of the kindergarten more than half a century ago. The new terminology is also significant of a thought which has not been simply a vamping up of the former statements of former leaders. This terminology indicates a real building process in which these fundamental truths of the nature of man and his destiny, the laws of his attainment and fulfillment, have been put to the test of new scientific knowledge. New light has been thrown upon them by the acquisition of facts of physical and psychical growth, and they have acquired a new meaning as more than one clear mind has sought to give them expression in a daring application in the actual process of educating. Here and there over the country are public and private schools that are as truly Froebelian in the motive which lies underneath their activities as is his own ideal school pictured in his chapter on the Boyhood of Man. They are not faddish schools nor loose conglomerations of imitative patchwork, but schools whose curricula and methods are most carefully worked out on the basis of selfactivity (original effort), spontaneity, and community life. Each shows the stamp of individuality but all unite in these common aims. What is the meaning of this new stress upon the development of the individual? What is its process? Again, the land is dotted with laboratories in which means are being found for the preservation of individual life, and psychological laboratories in which both individual differences and universal process are being studied and these are yielding bit by bit their offering to the sum total of our knowledge of human growth. All defend the necessity and meaning of individual experience. But is this development of the individual to be brought about by individualism? Is freedom merely the removal of outer restrictions or the buying of greater privileges for every individual? The kindergarten has been accused both of encouraging caprice and of teaching its students the pernicious doctrine that individual caprice is a necessity for develop ment, and that the freedom of the individual for which Froebel plead meant that the individual child should be allowed to frisk in the academic pasture like a young colt with bars down, and with no restraints between him and any private domain on which he might choose in his colthood to trample. Froebel emphasizes the necessity for passivity and for following the impulsive and instruc tive activities of childhood, but this is only a half truth, and in justice to his teachings it must be understood that he saw and taught the whole truth, namely, that not only is the educator to prescribe, deny, and even punish when need exists, but also this passive attitude of permitting a child's instincts to have free play is to be supplemented by training. The young creature is not merely frisking and browsing that figure ends at this point for while not actually being taught to go docilely in harness, the young child is to be so managed by question, suggestion, or direction that he does what the colt cannot do he reflects upon what he has done, thus getting out of his initial act not merely an outlet for surplus energy but a means of seeing some principle in what he has done. Whether by failure or by success his acts are to reveal to him possibilities not definitely seen at first trial. This is the true freedom hard won and never lost. Out of such liberty to play must come impetus to achieve something more, and a clearer perception of what is to be done with a stronger grasp on the how or method of its achievement. To put it in another way, a child is gaining freedom when he is allowed to initiate activity if, as a result of it, he is taking some steps on the way toward seeing a principle. He does something impulsively for pure pleasure of the doing he gains a result more or less expected. He focuses on the unexpected part of his result and tries to produce it again. To do this he studies his manner of producing, and |