--WHAT IS IT?

What is a Kindergarten? I will reply by negatives. It is not
the old-fashioned infant-school. That was a narrow institution,
comparatively; the object being (I do not speak of Pestalozzi's own,
but that which we have had in this country and in England) to take
the children of poor laborers, and keep them out of the fire and the
streets, while their mothers went to their necessary labor. Very good
things, indeed, in their way. Their principle of discipline was to
circumvent the wills of children, in every way that would enable their
teachers to keep them within bounds, and quiet. It was certainly better
that they should learn to sing _by rote_ the Creed and the "definitions"
of scientific terms, and such like, than to learn the profanity and
obscenity of the streets, which was the alternative. But no mother who
wished for anything which might be called the _development_ of her child
would think of putting it into an infant-school, especially if she lived
in the country, amid

"the mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,"

where any "old grey stone" would altogether surpass, as a stand-point,
the bench of the highest class of an infant-school. In short, they
did not state the problem of infant culture with any breadth, and
accomplished nothing of general interest on the subject.

Neither is the primary public school a Kindergarten, though it is
but justice to the capabilities of that praiseworthy institution, so
important in default of a better, to say that in one of them, at the
North End of Boston, an enterprising and genial teacher has introduced
one feature of Froebel's plan. She has actually given to each of her
little children a box of playthings, wherewith to amuse itself
according to its own sweet will, at all times when not under direct
instruction,--necessarily, in her case, on condition of its being
perfectly quiet; and this one thing makes this primary school the best
one in Boston, both as respects the attainments of the scholars and
their good behavior.

_Kindergarten_ means a garden of children, and Froebel, the inventor of
it, or rather, as he would prefer to express it, _the discoverer of the
method of Nature_, meant to symbolize by the name the spirit and plan
of treatment. How does the gardener treat his plants? He studies their
individual natures, and puts them into such circumstances of soil and
atmosphere as enable them to grow, flower, and bring forth fruit,--also
to renew