g such
knowledge." (Geo. P. Brown.) _Report on Correlation of
Studies by Committee of Fifteen_. With annotations by Geo. P.
Brown.

The kindergartner often forms his sentences for the child,
over-directs him when he is matching colors, gives names to the
objects he constructs without waiting for him to do so, moves his
blocks, sticks, tablets, rings into more accurate position, changes
his spacing when incorrect, rearranges his inventions, selects the
colors for his parquetry work,--and all for what reasons? Primarily,
to produce a better effect, it is probable, glorying in the
consciousness that the work on every child's table is exactly right,
and blind to the truth that uniformity must always be mechanical; and
secondarily, to quiet her own feeling of impatience, which sometimes
comes from nervous exhaustion and sometimes from an over-eagerness to
get a quantity of work done regardless of the method by which it is
obtained.

There is a thirdly, too, which is that the inaccurate work, the
awkward designs, the unfortunate blending of colors which the little
one inevitably makes at first, so offend her artistic eye that she
trembles with eagerness to set them right, forgetting that by so doing
she is imposing her superior taste upon the child and thereby failing
to develop his. We shall never see this matter clearly, nor know how
to bear with the crudity of the child's work, until we learn that the
crudity is natural and therefore to be respected, and that it is in a
sense beautiful after all, for it is a stage of being.

This vice, for it is a vice, of assisting the child too much causes
him to lose his own power of bravely and persistently overcoming
difficulties, and makes him weak and dependent. It gives occasion for
teachers to say, and apparently with justice, that kindergarten
children need constant assistance in their school work, that they are
always crying out for help, and seem incapable of taking a step alone.

That this is not true of all kindergarten children we know, but that
it should be true of any is a disgrace to our interpretation of
Froebel's system, which is, in reality, a very treasure-house of
self-reliance, of self-development, and of independence of thought and
action.

Value of Interrelation in Kindergarten Work.

One of the highest essentials of gift work is that it should not be
isolated from other experiences of the child and concern itself merely
with first principle