Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/225

Rh of the child. All growth of human power is based on the self-activity of the individual to be developed. No thought is ever definite until it has been consciously lived out or wrought out. The kindergarten makes use of self-expression in the child to define the thought already in its mind, and to reveal new thought. There is no other way by which thought can be clearly revealed and defined. Self-activity on the part of the child secures four very important results: it enables the teacher to be sure that the child is paying attention to its work, it reveals the nature of the child's own conceptions, it is an accurate test of the clearness of the thought received from the instruction of the teacher, and it is the most productive incentive to originality.

In the kindergarten, knowledge is applied as it is gained. The old plan of learning definitions or tables, or the names or powers of letters, or the theoretical principles of any science as a preparation for practical work to be done in geometry, algebra, arithmetic, reading, or science, was not in harmony with natural laws of growth. It is unnatural to value knowledge of any kind for itself alone. Knowledge has no value except as it is used; and an assumed value based on any other foundation must be fictitious and misleading. The child should not be interested in knowledge that it is not required to use in some way. When it becomes conscious of a lack of knowledge that is essential to the accomplishment of any definite purpose in its mind, it needs no artificial stimulus to make it give active and persistent attention. The consciousness of necessity should precede the effort to acquire. The kindergarten leads the child to define knowledge by using it, and uses knowledge as soon as it is acquired.

The kindergarten trains the executive powers of children. Formerly only their receptive powers were cultivated. They were made receptacles for knowledge communicated by the teacher, and their powers of receiving knowledge independently were developed. When teachers had accomplished the two purposes of storing the minds of their pupils and training their powers of observation, so as to qualify them for gaining knowledge readily and accurately themselves, they were satisfied. Better teachers were soon convinced that the accumulation of knowledge by even the most perfect methods was not the true aim of education, and gradually the reflective power received attention as well as the receptive powers. The lesson that the kindergarten has for us is that the best training of the receptive and reflective powers is practically valueless unless the executive powers are trained too. It will not do to leave the training of the executive powers to the circumstances of life outside of school. The receptive powers receive a great deal of good training outside of school; so do the reflective powers; so, too, do the executive powers. There is