No one before him so ably demonstrated the civic and spiritual wisdom of Christ’s teachings as did Froebel, in discovering—not devising—the ways and means of developing man into a self-governed being, obeying the inner voice of conscience in the face of every temptation to which flesh is heir, and becoming a voluntary, law-abiding citizen of both the individual and the national home.
Mothers’ Library
By Elizabeth Cherrill Birney
(First chairman of literature in the National Congress of Mothers. From “Parents and their Problems.”)
It seems a rather hard condition that though the years when a mother feels most deeply her need for more knowledge of children she should usually have least time for reading and study. This would not be so disastrous if school and college curricula were not framed to embrace even the slightest preparation for home life. That profession which demands a knowledge of sanitation, dietetics, and chemistry of cooking, careful and economic purchasing, artistic and hygienic furnishing, to say nothing of the care of children, is surely of sufficient dignity to deserve some preparation.... We can learn no science or art entirely from books, but when good trails have been blazed by those who have gone before us, it is foolish to attempt our own untried paths. Every mother can hang a little book-shelf in her busiest corner, and put on it from time to time a few books, which will be to her what his Blackstone is to a lawyer, his Baedeker to a traveler.
The Aim and End of Education
By Lola Ridge
(Former organiser of the Modern School in New York. In “Everyman.”)
What do we imagine to be the end and aim of education? Most people will say, the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge of what? Of oneself, of humanity, of life? If this was the ideal, as conceived by the builders of the present system, it has not been attained; or perhaps the system, like a Frankenstein creation, has grown beyond all intent of its sponsors, exhibiting a diabolic and independent will....
Let us examine the effect of public school education upon the psychology of the child; then we shall see if we are “wasting our energies.”