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MODIFICATIONS IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. 343 
formity to nature is more and more recognized every day to be the path of wisdom and 
of right. 
If the kindergarten practice conforms to the method of nature, it should be continued 
so long as this conformity continues. As the child grows his needs and abilities grow ; 
but all growth is by degrees and not by leaps, so the transition from the kindergarten 
;0 the school should be gradual. 
The child in the kindergarten learns and grows as he plays. He grows physically, 
mentally, and morally, while he plays spontaneously. His play is at the same time seri- 
sus work, but it is not labor. It is good for him. It is healthful. 
After the child leaves the school his development does not stop. If he has a fondness 
for business, for medicine, for art, for science, he pursues those avocations or studies 
diligently, and, as those who do not sympathize with his tastes might say, laboriously ; 
out he pursues them for pleasure. His work is play. 
The art of pedagogy should be that which will adapt the supply of the needs of the 
-hild to the natural desires and disposition of the child. This necessitates the adapta- 
jon of the method to the individual, and the competency of the teacher to her task, and 
she liberty of action of the teacher in the execution of her task. 
The fault of all schooling has been and still is, for the most part, that the schooling 
has not been carried on for its own sake. Secondary motives have been substituted for 
srimary ones as inducements to continue in school. The children of a well-conducted 
tindergarten are impatient to be in the kindergarten. They plead with their mothers 
10t to let sickness or bad weather keep them from attendance, and they are sorry when 
shey have to go home, and say they “wish the kindergarten could keep all the time.” 
[s it so usually with the school ? There may be teachers who so keep school, but such 
is not the rule. It is not always, if generally, the fault of the teachers that such schools 
are not more numerous. It is in most cases because the teachers are driven to force 
1pon their scholars tasks for which the scholars are not ready. 
The occupations of the kindergarten should be continued into the school until by 
gradual development the transition has been made from kindergarten work to school 
work. 
"The essential modification needed in primary teaching is not the addition of oue or 
the elimination of another subject of study. It is not the change, in any general way, 
of the methods of teaching, although these, especially in teaching to read, are capable 
of great improvement in most schools. It is the awaiting until the child is ready to 
-ake hold of specific kinds of work before giving him this work to do. Meanwhile his 
education should be conducted upon the lines and according to the methods already 
found suited to his nature, so that he may enjoy going to school, and shall develop in 
the needed directions while feeling that he is but playing. 
What are the daily and nightly labors of the physician who loves his profession, but 
play ? What is the reformer doing when he buffets against the waves of popular oppo- 
sition, and mayhap suffers obloquy or death in behalf of his beloved cause, but playing ? 
Play is but the gratification of desire to accomplish certain work, and all human activity 
will become play and a delight when it is adjusted to nature. 
The faults of our schools are largely the faults of our national life. There is too much 
hurry. Because children can be made to learn to read at five or six years of age they 
are driven to learn to read at that age, when they do not naturally develop to the 
stage at which learning to read is their need until they are seven or eight years old. 
When they should be filling their minds with observation of nature, they are driven to 
she acquisition of second-hand knowledge, which they are not competent to digest. 
When Agassiz had his first class of students at his museum in Cambridge, he set 
oefore each student a pile of shells or a collection of fishes or some other subject of 
study, and told them to find out what they could about them by observation. He did