it of the best
part of its education for that which is only of secondary importance,
and to weaken the foundations of its whole mental fabric."[33]

If, then, during this period the child is left wholly to gather his
experiences as he may, he no doubt acquires by his own self-activity a
world of new ideas, but the result of this unregulated process will be
that the knowledge gained will be largely unsystematised, and much of
the experience acquired may be of a nature which may give a false
direction to his whole after-development. Hence arise three needs. In
the first place, we must endeavour to see that new experiences are
presented to the child in some systematic manner, in order that the
knowledge may be so organised that it may serve as means to the
attainment of ends, and so render future activity more accurate and more
efficient. In the second place, we must endeavour to prevent the
acquisition of experiences which if allowed to be organised would give
an immoral direction to conduct; and in the third place, we must
endeavour to establish early in the mind of the child organised systems
of means which may hereafter result in the prevalence of activities
socially useful to the community.

Now, these three aims are or should be the aims of the Kindergarten
School, and we shall now inquire into the ends which the Kindergarten
School sets before it, and for this purpose we shall state the
fundamental principles which Froebel himself laid down as the guiding
principles of this stage of education.

On its intellectual side the Kindergarten as conceived by Froebel has
four distinct aims in view. The first aim is by means of comparing and
contrasting a series of objects presented in some regular and systematic
manner to lead the child to note the likenesses and differences between
the things, and so through and by means of his own self-activity to
build up coherent and connected systems of ideas. By this method the
teacher builds up in the mind of the young child systems of ideas
regarding the colours, forms, and other sense qualities of the more
common objects of his environment. The second aim is by means of some
form of concrete construction to give expression to the knowledge so
gained, to make this knowledge more accurate and definite, and thus by a
dialectical return to make the experiences of the child definite and
accurate, so as to render future action more efficient, and thus pave
the way for further progress