Women's Work in Lebanon

The movement for day nurseries and kindergartens is a recent, budding movement; no more than a hundred years and a little over have passed since its founding. At the opening of the nineteenth century the two sisters Rachel and Margaret McMillan established the first day nursery in England, and in 1838 Froebel established the first kindergarten in Germany, built on the principle of developing the child through self-activity and attending to moral and physical education.

Concern for the education and care of the Lebanese child is a fundamental matter in building the edifice of our nation, for the measure of a nation's advancement is the amount of serious, sound attention it devotes to caring for its children, protecting them from bodily and moral diseases, and erecting for its rising generation the special training schools that belong to them. A nation that has grasped this great fundamental problem is a nation that is without doubt facing the most important and gravest of matters and dealing with its destiny by its own hand.

In our country there is a small number of kindergartens, most of them merged into the teaching programs of the foreign and national schools, and this number is confined to the cities to the exclusion of the countryside. A successful educational awakening has begun; our ladies have become alert to the problem of the child, and certain women's associations have taken it upon themselves to open kindergartens—such as the Child Welfare Society in Tripoli, the Lebanese Women's League in Beirut, the Al-Nahda An-Nisaiyah Society in Zahle, and the Islamic Makassed Charitable Society in Beirut.

These kindergartens, which arose out of awareness and not out of mere need, earn for the women who run them every appreciation and assistance. From these educational endeavors it is clear how much our associations have grasped of the great influence of environment on the education of their children, especially in their first six years, for it is the second factor, after the factor of heredity, that affects the formation of the child's personality.

But it is no secret at the same time that women's associations have multiplied in the country, and we still see a wide field for works of charity and benevolence, however much effort and money we spend to make good this deficiency. And if we look closely into the country's need on the reformative and cultural side, it becomes clear to us that in several regions we lack something other than these surface works.

Will our numerous women's associations not, then, awaken to converting their aims from charitable to cultural, and will these institutions not cooperate with the government in carrying out genuine works of reform, such as opening the day nurseries and kindergartens that are still confined to a few of the large cities only?

However much money and relief we spend on the vagrant children in the alleys of the cities, we ward off from them only some part of their want; by this work of ours we do not treat the causes of their vagrancy at all, and they remain a burden on society. Would the inclination toward crime, vagrancy, and begging remain in the little ones, one wonders, if we cared for them from early childhood, coming to know early the points of strength and weakness in their souls and encouraging in them what deserves encouragement and nothing else?! Is it not possible that we should discover in the child of today a leaning toward a trade, or mechanical work, or music, so that tomorrow he becomes useful to his surroundings, instead of becoming a burden upon them for want of this early discovery and guidance?

I therefore consider it a duty to direct the attention of the women's organizations (and the government and the wealthy of the country) to some of what we lack in our land in this regard, so that their works may be freed more and more from the stamp of superficiality and charity and take on the stamp of genuineness and fundamental reform:

1 - Encouraging young ladies to specialize in the art of education and the management of kindergartens.

2 - Erecting day nurseries and making kindergartens general in all regions of the country.

3 - Composing Arabic stories, tales, songs, and pieces suited to the Lebanese child and his cultural heritage, developing his imagination (not adapted word for word from the Western heritage); and it is no secret that our need of an Arabic literature for the child is very pressing.

4 - Establishing a child-education bureau in the Ministry of Education, its purpose being:

a - To work for the composition and translation of bulletins on the newest methods of education and training and the principles of health.

b - To distribute the bulletins to schools, kindergartens, and women's associations.

c - To write some of these bulletins with pictures, in an easy manner, so that the village mother may profit from them without difficulty.

5 - Opening centers for the child's recreation in certain villages where a kindergarten can be opened, containing handwork and games suited to the age.

6 - Attending to the provision of cinema films made specially for the child.

7 - The appearance of a magazine for children on the model of "Samir al-Sighar," "Mawrid al-Ahdath," and "Rawdat al-Atfal."

8 - Founding a special library for the little ones, suited to their ages from 5 to 12 years, in every school or city, to enable the child to spend part of his free time outside the kindergarten, the school, or the home, giving himself there to music, patriotic songs, stories, and artistic pictures.

Our women's associations boast, and rightly, that they are turning toward the founding of kindergartens; and this, upon my life, is a beginning to be proud of, for it points to a fundamental, genuine endeavor. And who is more fit than woman to grasp the problems of childhood and to attend seriously to every positive, guiding proposal in its field? The move to found day nurseries and kindergartens is the most genuine of our ladies' works up to the present time, and their works will grow ever more genuine the more they turn away from the allure of showing on the surface of the waters and set themselves to diving into the depths.