Social Quarantine means throwing a perfect cordon of care around tender souls coming into a nation or community so that none shall escape contact with the wholesome suggestions and adequate nourishment that are essential to growth and habit-forming according to the best intelligence of the Science of Child-Life.
Social Quarantine requires the extension of the crèche and kindergarten systems and the provision of parental farms and manual-training schools to meet all needs, and it promises in return a crop of material for good citizenship whose character and efficiency shall save at least one-fourth of all taxation and add a proportionate percentage to the productive equipment of society.
Until the time of Froebel, society had depended on family quarantine to protect it against the evils that beset childhood, without furnishing models by which families might learn to know the best methods of care. In seaport quarantine the use of independent, State or municipal systems is securely supplemented by a national system, with the effect that there is a double cordon of protection, so that there is the least danger of a weak point to menace a whole country by its neglect. Perfect Social Quarantine, such as here recommended, would have the quality of a national, State or community quarantine to supplement the hallowed family institution, always ready to render service wherever needed.
If you cannot force a horse to drink, it is none the less criminal not to supply him with water. If society does not wish to coerce the family institution into complying with scientific methods of child-care, it is none the less criminal not to supply facilities so that none shall escape care who need and seek it.
The experience of kindergartners has taught that incompetent parents do not need coercion, or even coaxing, to submit their children to care, and that the greater the strenuousness of the need the easier the compliance following it.
Nowhere did Christ say, "Let childhood follow any course until it has formed habits of evil and ruined its digestion, and then send it to me for right teaching." "Suffer little children to come unto me (for what they may need to start them aright) and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," is a burning protest against the possibility of child neglect such as prevails.
Christ's protests were misunderstood by his followers, who tried to reconcile them with the old traditions, until Saint Froebel suggested a practical application of Christ's injunctions, but out of that method wonderful results have already been obtained and marvelous possibilities have been uncovered.
Children cannot say, "Get thee behind me, Satan," with the authority of quarantine, because they do not know what "satan" is, but "satan" or evil constantly lurks about them and they cannot help but absorb it unless they are carefully protected. If the family is incompetent to protect, society should stand ready to do so until no child can escape care, and the responsibility of one neglected soul should hang heavily on the conscience of every member of a community until there is no more neglect.
Not one word must be said to the detriment of that sacred institution, the family. It is the basis of society and of our civilization. Nothing can replace the family as a means of good influence, but it is imperative that it should be supplemented with models of the best kind known to the best intelligence in order to raise the average efficiency to the highest possible point.
Parental Love itself, unless guarded by the restraint of superior intelligence, may become a bad teacher through over-indulgence or through carelessness or neglect resulting from a form of blindness especially peculiar to young parents. To these, bad temper is an evidence of "spirit," and waywardness is proof of qualities of leadership. To young parents the "spirit" of their "own flesh and blood" cannot be bad spirit and "leadership" cannot contemplate a wrong direction; and yet these tendencies generally become perverse with indulgence.