That Last Waif; or, Social QuarantineFletcher, Horace
History
That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine
Fletcher, Horace
Child welfare
Social Quarantine means throwing a perfect cordon of care around
tender souls coming into a nation or community so that none shall
escape contact with the wholesome suggestions and adequate nourishment
that are essential to growth and habit-forming according to the best
intelligence of the Science of Child-Life.
Social Quarantine requires the extension of the crèche and
kindergarten systems and the provision of parental farms and
manual-training schools to meet all needs, and it promises in return a
crop of material for good citizenship whose character and efficiency
shall save at least one-fourth of all taxation and add a proportionate
percentage to the productive equipment of society.
Until the time of Froebel, society had depended on family quarantine
to protect it against the evils that beset childhood, without
furnishing models by which families might learn to know the best
methods of care. In seaport quarantine the use of independent, State
or municipal systems is securely supplemented by a national system,
with the effect that there is a double cordon of protection, so that
there is the least danger of a weak point to menace a whole country by
its neglect. Perfect Social Quarantine, such as here recommended,
would have the quality of a national, State or community quarantine to
supplement the hallowed family institution, always ready to render
service wherever needed.
If you cannot force a horse to drink, it is none the less criminal not
to supply him with water. If society does not wish to coerce the
family institution into complying with scientific methods of
child-care, it is none the less criminal not to supply facilities so
that none shall escape care who need and seek it.
The experience of kindergartners has taught that incompetent parents
do not need coercion, or even coaxing, to submit their children to
care, and that the greater the strenuousness of the need the easier
the compliance following it.
Nowhere did Christ say, "Let childhood follow _any_ course until it has
formed habits of evil and ruined its digestion, and then send it to me
for right teaching." "Suffer little children to come unto me (for what
they may need to _start_ them aright) and forbid them not, for of such
is the Kingdom of Heaven," is a burning protest against the possibility
of child neglect such as prevails.
Christ's protests were misunderstood by his followers, who tried to
reconcile them with the old traditions, until Saint Froebel suggested
a practical application of Christ's injunctions, but out of that
method wonderful results have already been obtained and marvelous
possibilities have been uncovered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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