ORGANIC UNION OF KINDERGARTEN AND PRIMARY SCHOOL. 341 
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organic part of the public school system. Get hold of the children that 
20 to make up our criminals at the earliest possible moment. (Out of 
nine thousand trained in our free kindergartens in San Francisco, we 
found only one arrest.) Read the testimony of one of our oldest and most 
experienced primary teachers in San Francisco. Superintendent Swett, 
‘n his last annual report, says: 
“The training received in the free kindergarten schools is having a marked effect on 
she children that enter the receiving classes of the public schools. I asked Miss Agnes 
Manning, principal of the Webster School, one of the largest primary schools in the 
2ity, to give me a written opinion on this point, and received the following statement * 
SUPERINTENDENT SWETT. 
Dear Sir: 1 wish to tell you why I am so strongly in favor of kindergartens. 
My school is in a crowded neighborhood. 1 have many children from tenement- 
arouses, and from the narrow streets south of Market Street. 
Before the days of the kindergarten these children, as soon as they could crawl, spent 
sheir waking lives on the sidewalks. From the age of two to six years they pursued 
she education of the street. The consequences were that at six they came to us with a 
fund of information of the worst description. and a vocabulary that might excite the 
anvy of the Barbary coast. 
At the commencement of each new year they tumbled over each other in their rude 
aaste to take up the unexplored life of a school. They were in tens, fifties, hundreds, 
mn our yards. The novelty being past, the hard struggle commenced of keeping them 
from joining the army of truants, and leading them into habits of work and cleanliness. 
When I made my appearance it was the signal for such asides as, ‘Cheese it!’ ‘Lie 
low!’ ¢Here’s the boss, kids !’ 
A freckle-faced, blue-eyed, innocent-looking boy would shock and astound us by 
swearing as roundly as a Nevada mule-driver. Ile had four years of street training, 
and it was uphill work to uproot the ill weeds so rankly sown, and a slow task cultivat- 
ng a different and better crop. 
The kindergartens have changed all this. They have taken the babies that used to 
oe consigned to the curbstone, trained and guided them along a path of development. 
They have wisely attempted no cramming of the infant brain with premature scholar- 
ship. They have surrounded the young lives with a fresh atmosphere. They have 
passed the hours in pleasant games, taught a purer language, and led the little feet 
into a new civilization. 
The children of tenement-houses and narrow streets still come in tens, fifties, and 
hundreds to begin life in a new school at the beginning of each school year. I hear 
no more, however, the wild phrases of the Barbary coast, or the mule-drivers’ oaths. 
The little ones are clean, self-respecting, eager for knowledge. They have opinions of 
their own on many things, and are quite anxious to express them. They neither know 
how to read nor to write. They have been taught to see, to observe, to tell about what 
they see and hear. They have been taught to respect older people, to be honest, to tell 
the truth. 
1t is a rare thing now to find a child that does not know it is wrong to steal. 1f you 
meet one you may be sure he has never been in a kindergarten. It used to be a common 
thing to find blasé villains of six, who would steal anything on which they could lay 
sheir hands. They were always ‘finding’ their neighbors’ pencils, sponges, strings, 
pictures, books, or stray toys. When caught in the act, they would grin in vour face 
and tell you, ‘ Them as finds, keeps.’ 
[ think you will now understand why I am so strongly in favor of kindergartens. 
AGNES M. MANNING.” 
Dear friends, I have tried to show why the kindergarten should be an 
organic part of our public school system. I have tried fo outline the plan. 
Let me briefly summarize. Take the very little child into the kinder- 
carten, and there begin the work of physical, mental, and moral training. 
Put the child in the possession of his powers, develop his faculties, unfold