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employment unless the)- reach a given |standardof instruction. Thereistoooftentruth—painful truth—in the objection,many a family can meet the expense ofeducation only by a reai sacrifice, butthe feeling that is now growing thatsuch sacrifice must be made if theworldly prospects of boys are not to bedestroyed, will receive altogether freshintensity whenever the spread ofFrobel’s principles shall have convincedparents that not instruction but educa-tion, training of the entire capabilitiesof the human creature, is the debt theyowe to each child. Then mothers willstudy education, and the fathers willfeel the importance of providing themeans for it.

Two of the greatest obstaclesthe Kinder-Garten has daily to en-counter are—1st, the late age atwhich the children are sent; 2nd, themonomania of parents with regardto reading and writing; both theseshow ignorance of the right principle ofeducation, and both would disappearif Frobel’s views of infant training wereaccepted. The expression, a late age,as applied to children of six years old,sounds perhaps rather strange, onemight imagine a good deal of laughingat it, but it is correct, nevertheless, asapplied to Kinder-Garten pupils. InFrobel’s system the instruction, occu-pations, and games are all addressed tominds that have not been previouslyinstructed in any other manner; theyaim at giving, in one sense, first im-pressions, the first that are purposelydirected to fix attention and provoke anexercise of reasoning, and they arecarefully graduated, each links on tothe other, leading the infant intelligencea little further at each step, but ever inthe same direction and with constantcare not to break the sequence or scatterthe attention. The whole intention ofthis infant training is to form habitsand associations—moral, intellectual,and physical—at a time when there isnothing to hinder the direction we wishto give. Now if children of six yearsold are sent in to a Kinder-Garten,they come with their own stock of pre-viously acquired notions and habits,

and we have to undo as well as to train,and run the great risk of mischief tothe younger children. Children ofsix know, or think they know, manyof the things that their youngercompanions are learning, but they havelearned them differently, without orderor system, without the links that inFrobel’s system connect the knowledgeand the skill acquired with the know-ledge that is to come next in orderlysequence. If then parents have kepttheir children in the ordinary way tillsix years old, they had better do theirbest with them still in the same way,and not send them to get confusednotions of a better system and help toconfuse others. In many cases childrenare sent because mothers think it verylikely in some way to be a good thingfor children who are getting beyondnursery management and are tooyoung for school; they will be kept inorder for some hours of the day, andperhaps they will learn something—atany rate they are safe, and the nursesor mothers have more time for otherwork. It is hardly necessary to re-mark that when F'rbbel’s system shallhave been studied widely, and thatparents know why the Kinder-Gartenoccupations and games may be ex-pected to produce a good result; allsuch capricious playing with them willbe at an end; the parents will haveeducated themselves into a comprehen-sion of the value of educational princi-ples in dealing with their children.

The other obstacle I have mentioned—the monomania about reading andwriting—has partly the same origin.There is the same desire to teach thethildren something that will keep themquiet, and lead to their amusing them-selves without trouble to their elders;and there is that same profound igno-rance of educational principles thatleads parents to believe that teachingto read is education. Doubtless, be-sides being the most important instru-ment for acquiring knowledge, it canalso be made an instrument of mentaltraining in the hands of an educator;but in how many homes can this besaid to be the case ? What more