336 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
I have hardly begun to plead the cause of the song in the kindergarten, 
but it needs no special pleader. Other things have their place, but the 
song belongs to all times and places ; and at every time and in every place 
it has its special hundred-sided value. It is the very breath of the kinder- 
garten. And it behooves us all to see to it that our children breathe in 
only the fresh, pure air of the best we have in song. 
THE ORGANIC UNION OF KINDERGARTEN AND 
PRIMARY SCHOOL. 
BY MRS. SARAH B. COOPER, OF SAN FRANCISCO. 
I MUST confine myself to twenty minutes, at the oufside. I desire to 
occupy but fifteen, leaving every possible moment for discussion ; for 
discussion stirs the soil around the roots of truth and gives it a Vigorous 
growth. Let us go straight to the heart of the matter. 
““ We learn through doing ”—#hat is the foundation principle on which 
‘he kindergarten rests. The highest type of humanity which education 
can produce is reached by the equal and simultaneous growth of every 
faculty. The kindergarten provides for the nourishment of every faculty 
n its earliest stage, on the ground that all are essential to a perfect growth. 
The epochs of educational growth follow the divinely ordained epochs of 
vegetable growth ; there is the root-life, the stem-life, and the blossom 
life. That the blossom will depend very largely upon the care and nurture 
given to the root, no one will deny. So, then, the germs of every faculty 
must have their appropriate nourishment at the earliest possible point of 
time, and there must be, also, simultaneous growth. True growth is the 
equal and constantly increasing development of every faculty. That is 
not genuine growth which is developed only on one side ; that is a bulg- 
ing and misshapen condition. In order to proper growth there must be 
ireedom, coupled with obedience to the innate laws of life and being— 
exactly as it is in the vegetable kingdom. The child must learn to use 
his mental powers as he has learned to use his bodily powers, by patient, 
persistent training and effort ; he must use his faculties as he does his 
limbs. He must learn to climb the stairs of mental and moral difficulty 
1s he learns to climb the household stairs. The art of training precedes 
the art of teaching. The pressing curriculum of daily school life leaves 
scanty time for this gradual development of all the faculties of a little 
child. I do not believe that we begin to understand what is included in 
shat expression, “all the faculties of a little child.” 
I believe, dear friends, there is a vast range of ““anmapped country ” 
within us awaiting discovery ; a vast domain of unexplored territory, as 
yet nnpreémpted and uncultivated, toward which the eve of Frederick