is a good thing, it is good for all; if it is
truth, we want it everywhere; but if this new department of education
and training is to gain ground, or accomplish the successful fruition
of its wishes, there must be perfect unity among teachers concerning
it. If they all understood the thing itself, and understood each
other, there could be no lack of sympathy; yet there has been
misunderstanding, conflict occasionally, and some otherwise worthy
teachers have used the kindergarten as a sort of intellectual
cuttle-fish to sharpen their conversational bills upon.

Of course I am not blind to the fact that after we have determined
that we ought to have the kindergarten, there are many questions of
expediency: suitable rooms, expense of material, salaries, assistants,
age of children at entrance, system of government, number of children
in one kindergarten; and greatest of all, but least thought of,
strangely, the linking together of kindergarten and school, so that
the development shall be continuous, and the chain of impressions
perfect and unbroken.

Suffice it to say that it has been done, and can be done again; but it
needs discretion, forethought, tact, earnestness, and unimpeachable
honesty of administration, for unless we can depend upon our school
boards and kindergartners _implicitly_, counting upon them for wise
cooeperation, brooding care, and great wisdom in selection of teachers,
the experiment will be a failure. We have risks enough to run as it
is; let us not permit our little ones, more susceptible by reason of
age than any we have to deal with now,--let us not permit them to
become victims of politics, rings, or machine teaching.

The kindergarten is more liable to abuse than any other department of
teaching. There is no ground in the universe so sacred as this.
But the difference between primary schools is just as great, only,
unfortunately, we have become used to it; and the kindergarten being
under fire, so to speak, must be absolutely ideal in its perfection,
or it is ruthlessly held up to scorn.

There is a tremendous awakening all over the country with regard to
kindergarten and primary work, and this is well, since the greatest
and most fatal mistakes of the public school system have been made
_just here_; and the time is surely coming when more knowledge,
wisdom, tact, ingenuity, forethought, yes, and money, will be expended
in order to meet the demands of the case. The time is coming when the