Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Social settlements
It was suggested that if seventy children could be found near enough to the
DeWitt Memorial, where a room for the kindergarten was available, that
perhaps the kindergarten would be established there. Over one hundred calls
were made by the nine members of this club, which resulted in securing the
promised attendance of seventy children. The Lowell Kindergarten was then
opened at the DeWitt Memorial by the New York Kindergarten Association as a
result of this effort. The difficulties the mothers put in the way of good
work in the kindergarten was explained to the members of the club, who
agreed to call on mothers whose children did not come to the kindergarten
in time, or were irregular in attendance. It was most interesting to watch
the growth of public sentiment in favor of regular and punctual attendance,
not only at the kindergarten, but at school. If the kindergarten child
reported Johnny Jones, who was a neighbor's child, as absent, the elder
brother or visitor after school was sent to find out if Johnny Jones were
ill. It became a badge of good motherhood to have the child in the
kindergarten on time. Before this, through talks by doctors and nurses, the
relation between health and cleanliness had been discovered. Cleanliness
was imposed on their own children, and exacted from other mothers of
kindergarten children.
The influx of Hebrews, toward whom the members of this club had a deep race
prejudice, drove them out of this neighborhood. Before seven years had
passed but four of the members were residents of this district. But a
change of residence did not change their belief in the value of the
kindergarten. Wherever they have gone they have sought it for their young
children, who have found always intelligent and sympathetic listeners in
their mothers to all the events and incidents in their kindergarten world.
One mother learned accompaniments to songs, and the children sing
kindergarten songs at the club entertainments, even those in the grammar
grade join.
As time went on, the conviction grew stronger that the real pressure of
poverty or lack of money, among the self-respecting independent poor came
not on the physical nature but the mental and emotional. The pressure was
incessant. There never was a time when there was money to buy pleasure.
Months, years went by without life offering the opportunity for enlarging
the mental horizon of thousands of capable, receptive, devoted mothers. To
the children the Church entertainments were opportunities; clubs and sewing
schools were doing their share, but the mothers were only onlookers. There
was no active part for them except in the world of work. The churches
provided religious opportunity and social opportunity, regulated by the
Church environment. Hundreds were not attracted, and often one sympathized
with their rejection of this kind of social opportunity, tinged too
frequently with patronage, and of necessity, narrow in its scope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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