The time will come when matters of trade in the large shall be conducted nationally and municipally. The business of man is to produce something. The man who produces nothing, but who sits in the midst of other men's goods, offering them for sale at a price greater than he paid, such a man moves in the midst of a badly-lit district of many pitfalls. It is the same with a man at a desk, before whom pass many papers representing transactions of merchandise and whose business it is to take a proprietary bite out of each. He develops a perverted look at life, and a bad bill of moral health. There is no exception to this, though he conduct a weekly bible lesson for the young, even move his chair to a church every seventh day.
The drama of the trade mind is yet to be written. It is a sordid story; the figure at the last is in no way heroic. It would not be a popular story if done well.
The time is not far off, except to those whose eyes are dim, when countries will be Fatherlands in the true sense—in the sense of realising that the real estate is not bounded land, vaulted gold, not even electrified matter, but the youth of the land. Such is the treasure of the Fatherland. The development of youth is the first work of man; the highest ideal may be answered first hand. Also through the development of the young, the father best puts on his own wisdom and rectitude.
The ideal of education has already been reversed at the bottom. There is pandemonium yet; there is colossal stupidity yet, but Order is coming in. It would be well for all men meditatively to regard a kindergarten in action. Here are children free in the midst of objects designed to supply a great variety of attractions. There is that hum in the room. It is not dissonance. The child is encouraged to be himself and express himself; never to impinge upon his neighbour's rights, but to lose himself in the objects that draw him most deeply.
I have mentioned the man who caught the spiritual dream of all this, who worked it out in life and books. One of his books was published nearly a hundred years ago. It wasn't a book on kindergarten, but on the education of man. I have not read this of Fröbel's work. I wanted to do these studies my own way, but I know from what I have seen of kindergartens, and what teachers of kindergartens have told me, that the work is true—that "The Education of Man" is a true book. Nor would it have lived a hundred years otherwise.
The child is now sent to kindergarten and for a year is truly taught. The process is not a filling of brain, but an encouragement of the deeper powers, their organisation and direction. At the end of the year, the child is sent into the first grade, where the barbaric process of competitive education and brain-cramming is carried on as sincerely as it was in Fröbel's time.... A kindergarten teacher told me in that low intense way, which speaks of many tears exhausted:
"I dare not look into the first-grade rooms. We have done so differently by them through the first year. When the little ones leave us, they are wide open and helpless. They are taken from a warm bath to a cold blast. Their little faces change in a few days. Do you know the ones that stand the change best? The commoner children, the clever and hard-headed children. The little dreamers—the sensitive ones—are hurt and altered for the worse. Their manner changes to me, when I see them outside. You do not know how we have suffered."
Some of the greatest teachers in America to-day are the kindergarten teachers; not that they are especially chosen for quality, but because they have touched reality in teaching. They have seen, even in the very little ones, that response which is deeper than brain. If the great ideal that is carried out through their first year were continued through seven years, the generation thus directed would meet life with serenity and without greed. They would make over the world into a finer place to be.
I wonder if I may dare to say it once more?... It came this way in Chapel just a few days ago. There was a pencil in my hand, and something of man's ideal performance here below appeared more than ever clearly. I am putting down the picture, much as it came then, for the straightest way to write anything is as you would tell it: