356 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
child’s subjective life emphasizes this. His images are so vague and indistinct that his 
fancy is wonderfully free. He can see a house in a picture of a fence, and he can hear 
singing birds when the frogs croak. This is not, I take it, because his soul is so won- 
derfully susceptible to singing birds, but because his ideas of singing birds and of croak- 
ing frogs are so vague and ill-defined that he cannot easily label the one or the other 
when it appears. 
Now a philosopher, or an imaginative and sympathetic teacher, can easily find in these 
imperfect subjective activities, due to the limitations of a child’s mind, evidence that 
the young child sees in each little thing about him, or may see, a microcosm ; and so we 
work out elaborate systems of symbols that shall realize to the child the infinitely great 
in the little. Ie shall play with the ball, that he may quickly realize the perfection of 
the sphere. 
This seems to me a field that would yield valuable results if approached from the 
standpoint of the simple investigator. 
Could we not make lists of all the visual and audible symbols that the child develops 
for himself, and thus determine along what lines his symbol-developing tendency moves ? 
Could we not test the readiness with which he accepts even the most grotesque and ill- 
related symbols if we impose them apon him ? And could we not devise tests to show 
che extent to which the child grasps, for instance, the symbolism of the sphere ? 
Is it not an over-devotion to symbols on the part of us kindergartners which makes 
it possible for us to come together in this international congress to seriously discuss 
whether the plays and games which Froebel developed out of a German environment 
some decades ago should be modified for a California child who has never seen snow, 
and to whom much of the concrete detail in the setting of the German life must remain 
fo him unexperienced for several vears ? 
I'0 WHAT EXTENT IS SYMBOLISM JUSTIFIABLE IN THE 
KINDERGARTEN? 
BY MRS. EUDORA I. HAILMANN. OF LA PORTE. INDIANA. 
BEAR in mind that the kindergarten proper is for children from three to six years of 
age. Let us therefore consider the condition of the child at this age—some character- 
stics that mark this period. 
For a really scientific presentation of the subject, it would be necessary to follow 
closely the process in the development of the child during the three years preceding the 
age under consideration. We shall, however, be obliged to pass rapidly over the first 
shree months of the babe’s awakening into this spiritual world of natural law ; over the 
irst year, during which he has been learning to adapt himself, in baby fashion, to the 
.mmutability of law ; over the first two years, when, a wee toddler at the beginning of 
a long journey, he longs with a passion worthy the scientist to investigate hot coffee 
urns, forks, scissors, and the like ; whence he has emerged serenely and undaunted, 
though perhaps battered and bruised, a wise and knowing baby ; on and on over the 
months of rapidly accumulating experiences and constant unfoldings of new and 
varied facts of individuality, to the period of first independent association with equals 
usually placed at about three or four years of age. 
This is the period to which my subject, ‘“ To what extent is symbolism justifiable in 
the kindergarten ?” refers. It gives me great pleasure, therefore, to introduce to you 
the child of three to six years of age ; the little child who is just emerging from uncon- 
scious, dependent babyhood, into conscious, independent self-assertion, in search of