Excerpt from Milwaukee Normal School Bulletin, Vol. 5: The Proposed Constitutional Amendment and the Wisconsin School

It is the custom to require higher qualifications of grammar and high school teachers than are required of teachers in the lower grades, and to pay the former better salaries than are paid the latter. While even the high schools need improving, it may be asked whether the most effective method of bringing about such improvement, as well as of inducing more pupils to enter the high schools, is not the improvement of the work in the lower grades. The high school teacher declares that she can not do the work which the high school calls for because she must spend her time teaching the fundamentals which the children should have been taught in the grammar grades. The teacher in these grades likewise declares that she is obliged not only to teach what the children should have been taught in the primary grades, but to correct the bad habits formed there. No edu cational structure can be strong that has a weak foundation. One of the main reasons why children leave school before reaching the fifth grade is lack of interest. What a commentary this is on the work of the primary grades! Is it not time for school authorities to see that true economy consists in giving children the right start? Will the passage of the proposed amendment strengthen, or will it weaken the beginning work?

The claims of early childhood are receiving increasing recognition at the hands of American educators, and no movement has exerted a stronger influence in that direction than the kindergarten movement. The growth of that movement in the United States means infinitely more than the organization of kindergartens; it registers the progres sive recognition of the claims of childhood not only to a place in the educational system, but to a kind of training adapted to its needs. It is because kindergarten progress has meant progress in elementary education that the main facts in the development of the kindergarten movement are here brought to the attention of Wisconsin people. The facts given are obtained in the main from The Kindergarten in American Education, already referred to.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.