Results of sending the children to kindergarten.
A teacher writes, “A little girl whose father and mother were Christians entered our school. At first a little nursemaid brought her, then her grandmother came with her. This grandmother was a devoted Buddhist. She would not even look at the foreign teacher, much less listen to anything being taught, but at last she began to listen, and eventually became convinced that she needed Christ for her Saviour. Today she is a truly converted woman.”...
The blessing asked at the noon lunch seemed to make a deep impression on some children, and doing it at home attracts the parents’ attention, so that a number of them have been known to come to the church services to hear more about the meaning of prayer and praise. (Mrs. A. D. Gordon.)
We are told that the songs, the games, the stories, and sometimes the prayers, are household exercises in many homes. On a recent morning, which we spent by invitation of the wife of the Governor in her garden, the little son of the family, not yet of kindergarten age, took an active part with the other children. His mother told me that the older sister comes home and “plays kindergarten” with her small brother, and that, when they have guests to entertain, the children are often called in to give some kindergarten exercise. I did not tell her how strongly I disapprove of “showing off” children before company. I only prayed that “a little child might lead them.” (Mrs. Genevieve F. Topping, of Morioka Kindergarten, Baptist.)
An amusing incident happened one day when the children were off on an observation trip. They had to stop to let a detachment of soldiers pass, and spontaneously burst out singing “Soldier Boy, Soldier Boy,” to the great amusement of the soldiers. Then they all saluted the officer in proper fashion, but he only smiled. “Sensei, we saluted politely, why didn’t he return the salute?”
Later as the soldiers were drawn up in circular formation on the parade ground, the children said, “Oh, now they are going to play just as we do in kindergarten, let’s watch!” So the expedition which started out to study insect life changed into a lesson on soldiers and their absolute obedience to orders. (Alice Fyock of Sendai Aoba Yochien, American Episcopal.)
The call for missionary kindergartners.
A similar Kindergarten Union is being formed in China, and from all missionary lands comes the urgent cry for trained kindergartners who can not only start schools, but, far more than this, can train native kindergartners to take up the work. It would be hard to overemphasize the importance of this particular service which missions are rendering.
Dr. Balliet on the early [years] of childhood.
Dr. Thomas M. Balliet of New York University voices the opinion of modern educators when he says, “All the more recent studies in child psychology emphasize the great plasticity of the early years of childhood. The habits which the child then forms, and the attitude both intellectual and emotional which is then given him, are more lasting and more determining for his adult life than was even suspected some years ago.”[60]
Why is the Christian kindergarten needed?
After a hasty mental review of what has been studied in earlier chapters regarding the home life and training of little children in non-Christian lands, it is surely a mild statement to make that the Christian kindergarten is an absolute necessity if these little ones, so cunning and capable and helpless, are to have any chance at all for proper development. The words “Christian kindergarten” are used advisedly, and agree with utterances of experts such as Elizabeth Harrison, who says,—
“The foundation of the kindergarten is based upon the psychological revelation that, if man is the child of God, he must possess infinite possibilities, and that these possibilities can only develop as he, man, makes use of them—that in other words, man is a self-making being, that his likeness to the Divine Father consists in this power within him to unfold and develop his divine nature.”[61]
Children of backward races respond to early training.