Page 20 - 1914 February - To Dragma

TO PR A GMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 133

THE KINDERGARTEN

When I was a little girl, I remember of being asked what I was
going to be when I grew up. My answer was, " I am going to be
a wonderful artist, and i f I cannot be that, I want to be a kinder-
garter." An officious older one smiled at those present, and said,
"You mean a kindergart«tr." I was paralyzed at my blunder, and
if they had asked me what a "kindergarter" was—our little moun-
tain town offering no such opportunities—I am sure I would have
fainted away. I t was as vague to me as an artist—the result of his
labor was a picture—a kindergarten had something to do with the
delights and joys of little children and I am sure the only result
I had ever heard mentioned was a "paper chain."

My career through college showed me too truly, I never could
aspire to such heights as being a "picture artist." And for some un-
accountable reason, "paper-chains" began to hang around and I
became a kindergartner.

As it is always best to state one's platform in advance, I must
announce mine, kindergarten has meant more to me and has done
more for me, I am sure, than anything else I could have taken up.

The training course is broad, it deals with educational principles,
it delves into art and music, it trains the hand to mold in clay, to
paint, to cut, to tear; it trains the brain to build, to invent—but
most of all through its agencies of songs, stories, games, and materi-
als, it teaches one to know a little child.

The kindergarten is a little social community—the kindergartner,
the mediator—the children, the citizens; wrong is punished, right
stands guard. They build a city in the sand-box, with the school,
the church, the government buildings, the homes, the bakery, the
carpenter-shop, all the trade-shops; they are doing with their own
hands what they see with their eyes, that " i n the world's work, each
must help."

That the kindergarten is good for the child has always been em-
phasized but the good that it does for the kindergartner is manifold.
The trusting, loving adoration smoothes out the rough and stony
paths and it simply makes you want to be what the children think
you are, and it is worth while trying. I t rounds out a girl's l i f e ;
she can not be a snob nor a prude, she finds herself becoming an
unaffected natural girl, and within her comes the first blossoming of
true motherhood.

She is always searching for something new, she reads much, she
lives with nature, she studies pictures and music—all art; she inter-