“classical grind” to that pitch, and, in fact, they carry no part of the education to that pitch. There is no deliberate and professed training at all in logical thought—except for the use of Euclid’s Elements to that end—nor in expression in any language at all, in the great mass of modern schools. This is a very notable point about the schools of the present period.
But, on the other hand, the schools of the modern period have developed masses of instruction that were not to be found in the schools of the past. The school has reached downward and taken over, systematized, and on the whole, I think, improved that preliminary training of the senses and the observation that was once left to the spontaneous activity of the child among its playmates and at home. The kindergarten department of a school is a thing added to the old conception of schooling, a conversion of the all too ample school hours to complete and rectify the work of the home, to make sure of the foundation of sense impressions and elementary capabilities upon which the edifice of schooling is to rise. In America it has grown, as a wild flower transferred to the unaccustomed richness of garden soil will sometimes do, rankly and in relation to the more essential schooling, aggressively, and become a highly vigorous and picturesque weed. One must bear in mind that Froebel’s original thought was rather of the mother than of the schoolmistress, a fact the kindergarten invaders of the school find it convenient to forget. I believe we shall be carrying out his intentions as well as the manifest dictates of common sense if we do all in our power by means of simply and clearly written books for nurses and mothers to shift very much of the kindergarten back to home and playroom and out of the school altogether. Correlated with this development, there has been a very great growth in our schools of what is called manual training and of the teaching of drawing. Neither of these subjects entered into the school idea of any former period, so far as my not very extensive knowledge of educational history goes.