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 atten-tion 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 sen-tence him to attentive listening for more than ten minutes. The mis-tresses 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 instruc-tion 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 con-

struction 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...