The Discovery Of The Child

54 THE DISCOVERY OF THE CHILD

people of better standards to live there. Nor can such work
succeed in its purpose unless some common advantage or interest
unites all the tenants in an effort towards better things.

This tenement is new also because of the pedagogical organi-
zation of the "Children's House". This is not simply a place
where children are kept, not just an asylum, but a true school for
their education, and its methods are inspired by the rational prin-
ciples of scientific pedagogy.

The physical development of the children is followed, each
child being studied from the anthropological standpoint, being
given linguistic exercises, a systematic sense-training, and exercises
which directly fit him for the duties of practical life, from the basis
of the work done. The teaching is decidedly objective, and
presents an unusual richness of didactic material.

It is not possible to speak of all this in detail. L must, how-
ever, mention that there already exists in connection with the school
a bathroom, where the children may be given hot or cold baths,
and where they may learn to take a partial bath—hands, face, neck,
ears. Wherever possible the Association has provided a piece of
ground where the children may learn to grow the vegetables in
common use.

It is important that I speak here of the pedagogical progress
attained by the " Children's House " as an institution. Those who
are conversant with the chief problems of the school know that
today much attention is given to a great principle, one that is
ideal and almost beyond realization—the union of the family and
the school in the matter of educational aims. But the family is
always something far away from the school, and is almost always
regarded as rebelling against its ideals. It is a species of phantom
upon which the school can never lay its hands. The home is closed
not only to pedagogical progress, but often to social progress. We
see here for the first time the possibility of realizing the long talked-
of pedagogical ideal. We have put the school within the house;
and this is not all. We have placed it within the house as the
property of the collectivity, leaving under the eyes of the parents-