Builders of Tomorrow... Our Children

The masters of the two modern sciences of education and psychology hold, in the rearing of the young — especially those under eight — certain principal principles. Among them: that the kindergarten must, in its atmosphere and its arrangement, resemble the home. It should be fitted with pretty little chairs or benches of suitable size; its floor should be spread with carpets; on its walls should hang pictures and drawings attractive in color and suitable in subject; and the corners of its rooms should be adorned with flowers — for all of this keeps the bond between home and school close, and guarantees the child the best and finest of atmospheres for his growth.

There is another principal principle which has wrought a revolution and an upheaval in the rearing of the young: that the child must be left free to occupy himself with the work toward which he inclines, and to pass from one occupation to another without hindrance. It thus becomes the duty of the kindergarten, and of the mistresses who work in it, to surround the child with opportunities and activities that stir his latent inclinations and powers, and urge them on to work and to steady growth.

Among the first necessities is that the teacher be thoroughly acquainted with the traits and qualities that mark the child's growth in this grave first stage. One of the fathers of modern education said: If you wish to teach the child, watch him, and he will teach you how to teach him. This saying came as a new conquest in the world of education; it overturned the tables of the old teaching and drove the ignorant, dull-witted teachers out of the school building. That pioneering, matchless educator who discovered this immortal educational principle deserves to be set among the ranks of the discovering scholars and the inventors, for his discovery is no less important — in serving society and in determining man's destiny — than the miracles of medicine, chemistry, and physics: 'Watch the child, and he will teach you how to teach him.' Upon this principle modern education has been founded, and by it the foundation was laid for the greatest and most important of factories: the factory for the making of men.

Watch a child of five or six, and he will teach you that it is natural for him to spend most of his time in movement and play — and not that alone, but that play and movement are the greater and inseparable part of his life at that important stage of his growth; indeed, they are an instinctive inclination which nature has cast into the soil of his soul, to be her right arm in the process of growth. What justification, then, can there be for the school that imprisons its children under a roof, between damp walls, at worn-out wooden benches, in a killing atmosphere of pressure, in the name of preserving quiet and order? Watch the child, and he will teach you that this is a crime, and a betrayal of the laws of life which God has set in his small, beating heart. Watch the child, and he will teach you that his program must consist, for the most part, of games and movement in the open air.

Watch the child with a practiced eye, and he will teach you another of the principles of education: that it is by working that the child learns to work. That is to say, the window through which knowledge descends into the heart of the small child is not his ears, nor his eyes, but his hands and his feet. Every attempt to make the child play the part of a listener, standing in a passive position while the teacher pours information upon him, is nothing but a betrayal of the buried potentialities of his soul, which demand to burst forth and appear.

Watch the child, and he will teach you that the span of mental attention in him, at three or four years of age, is very short, and does not exceed ten minutes in the child of five or six. It is folly, then, to sentence him to attentive listening for more than ten minutes. The mistresses of education watched the child, and he taught them that the program must be highly varied in its materials, so as to enable the child to spend most of his time in play, in movement, and in work, giving expression to what stirs in his thoughts and moves the muscles of his hands and feet.

There is an aspect of very great importance which I cannot omit from this brief study: the health aspect of the kindergarten. How many a school ought to be shut, and how many a house of instruction ought to be pulled down — especially in our beloved Arab countries — for they have staged tragedy after tragedy in the worst of the invading diseases and the deadly epidemics. And how many a child sound of body have they crippled, or disfigured, or destroyed, without the overseers being aware.

The experts say that the area of the windows of a single room, in relation to the area of its floor, must be in the proportion of one to five — that is, for every five square feet of the room's floor there must be one square foot of window, through which the sunlight pours in flood. The best means of lighting is that each room should have a row of windows whose tops stand about 6 inches below the ceiling, their area bearing to the floor area the proportion mentioned above. And the light must fall from them over the left shoulder onto the pages of what is read or written.

Among the things that must likewise be observed scientifically in kindergartens are the seats or chairs and the study desks; for if these are not made according to the technical principles laid down for them, they become pickaxes in the hands of ignorance, laboring to demolish the edifice of good health — which is a natural right belonging to every creature.

The desk's surface should slope at about fifteen degrees, and stand at a distance of about fifteen inches from the eyes. Its height above the floor must be so fixed that thigh and leg, when seated, form a right angle.

As for the lavatories, they too must be given their share of technical attention, before construction and after. They must be sufficient to meet the children's needs; they must be fitted with the modern means of cleaning and disinfection; the children ought to be trained in their use; and they must be kept clean at all times — for if their care is neglected, they turn into carriages that carry germs and diseases from the infected to the healthy.

Those are some of the pertinent matters of health which must be taken into consideration when a building for a kindergarten is erected, so that we may guarantee our children good health, and our nation an everlasting existence. For they are, beyond dispute, the builders of tomorrow...