This divergent trend in discipline between
the higher and the lower learning is especially noticeable as
regards the primary education in its latest development in the
advanced industrial communities. Here the instruction is directed
chiefly to proficiency or dexterity, intellectual and manual, in
the apprehension and employment of impersonal facts, in their
casual rather than in their honorific incidence. It is true,
under the traditions of the earlier days, when the primary
education was also predominantly a leisure-class commodity, a
free use is still made of emulation as a spur to diligence in the
common run of primary schools; but even this use of emulation as
an expedient is visibly declining in the primary grades of
instruction in communities where the lower education is not under
the guidance of the ecclesiastical or military tradition. All
this holds true in a peculiar degree, and more especially on the
spiritual side, of such portions of the educational system as
have been immediately affected by kindergarten methods and
ideals.
The peculiarly non-invidious trend of the kindergarten
discipline, and the similar character of the kindergarten
influence in primary education beyond the limits of the
kindergarten proper, should be taken in connection with what has
already been said of the peculiar spiritual attitude of
leisure-class womankind under the circumstances of the modern
economic situation.
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