Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/222

208 grow forever, that they grow most rapidly in early years, and that true growth in childhood is the only basis for the highest development of maturity. Therefore it makes the child and his universal tendencies and activities the chief study of the educator. The highest function of the teacher is not to select the knowledge most appropriate for children, or to decide the best plans for fixing it in their minds; his greatest study is the child and the ways in which he educates himself in those most prolific years before he goes to school. Some teachers claim that the teacher's duty is to teach the child how to "go." The child was set going long before he went to school. He was kept going before he went to school more rapidly than he ever goes after that time. Others say, the teacher's duty is to start the child to grow. How he had been growing before he went to school! How he grew physically; how his mind unfolded and defined itself; how his spiritual nature recognized the Creator in the wondrous material creation, and reached out to the mysteries of the unknown! He was ever going before he went to school, and growing because he was going. The reason he stops growing rapidly as soon as he goes to school is that his teachers interfere with his going. They stop his going altogether during school hours, and the reason he does not stop growing altogether physically, intellectually, and spiritually is that he is fortunately not kept in school all the time. How full of gratitude we should be for the fact that the blighting processes of the schoolroom last but six hours of five days in each week! We should be even more grateful when we remember that the school hours may become the most productive of the day in real growth. This is a part of the revelation which the kindergarten bears to all teachers who study it with sympathetic spirit. There is no good reason why the child's development should be checked after it goes to school. It should continue to improve with accelerated speed throughout life. Teachers will do vastly better than they do now when they keep up, after the child goes to school, the rate of advancement attained before he goes to school. They can never hope to do this until they study and understand the fundamental principles that underlie the motives of children, and guide them in the infinitely varied activities of their childish work and play. All their activities are in harmony with a divine purpose in the accomplishment of their fullest development. Man can best learn how to teach from the greatest teacher. His power and the unequaled success of his plans can be learned by the careful and continuous study of childhood. The teaching profession has been learning this fact from the kindergarten. There are several organized agencies already in existence for recording and comparing the characteristics, the tendencies, the habits, the activities, the capabilities, and the