ably
never read a page that Froebel wrote. On the contrary, she shows her
entire ignorance of the real Kindergarten by calling it "pretty
employments devised by adults and imposed at set times by authority."

The description is taken from a very able address on "Child Nature and
Education" delivered some years ago by Miss Hoskyns Abrahall. It is
quoted here, because, for her conception of right surroundings for young
children, the speaker has gone to the very source from which Froebel
took his ideas--she has gone to what Froebel indeed called "the only
true source, life itself," and she writes from the point of view of the
biologist.

There exists at present, in certain quarters, a belief that the
Kindergarten is old-fashioned, out of date, more especially that it has
no scientific basis. It is partly on this account that the ideas of Dr.
Maria Montessori, who has approached the question of the education of
young children from the point of view of medical science, have been
warmly welcomed by so large a circle. But neither in England nor in
America does that circle include the Froebelians, and this for several
reasons. For one thing, much that the general public has accepted as
new--and in this general public must be included weighty names, men of
science, educational authorities, and others who have never troubled to
inquire into the meaning of the Kindergarten--are already matters of
everyday life to the Froebelian. Among these comes the idea of training
to service for the community, and the provision of suitable furniture,
little chairs and tables, which the children can move about, and low
cupboards for materials, all of which tend to independence and
self-control.

It is a more serious stumbling-block to the Froebelian that Dr.
Montessori, while advocating freedom in words, has really set strict
limits to the natural activities of children by laying so much stress on
her "didactic apparatus," the intention of which is formal training in
sense-discrimination. This material, which is an adaptation and
enlargement of that provided by Seguin for his mentally deficient
children, is certainly open to the reproach of having been "devised by
adults." It is formal, and the child is not permitted to use it for his
own purposes.

Before everything else, however, comes the fact that in no place has Dr.
Montessori shown that she has made any study of play, or that she
attaches special importance to the play activities, or