differences in respect of cleanliness are very great. But soap and hot
water do cost money and washing takes time, and the modern habit of
brushing teeth has not yet been acquired by all classes of the
community. The Free Kindergartens provide for necessary washing, each
child is provided with its own tooth-brush; and tooth-brush drill is a
daily practice, somewhat amusing to witness. The best baby rooms in our
Infant Schools carry out the same practices, and these are likely to be
turned into Nursery Schools.

It cannot yet be accepted as conclusively proved that a completely
open-air life is the best in our climate. We have not yet sufficient
statistics. No doubt children do improve enormously in open-air camps,
but so they do in ordinary Nursery Schools, where they are clean, happy
and well fed, and where they live a regular life with daily sleep.
Housing conditions complicate the problem, and all children must suffer
who sleep in crowded, noisy, unventilated rooms.

Up to the present time Nursery Schools have been provided by voluntary
effort entirely, and far too little encouragement has been given to
those enlightened headmistresses of Infant Schools who have tried to
give to their lowest classes Nursery School conditions. Since the
passing of Mr. Fisher's Education Bill, however, we are entitled to hope
that soon, for all children in the land, there may be the opportunity of
a fair start under the care of "a person with breadth of outlook and
imagination," the equivalent of Froebel's "skilled intelligent
gardener."

In the following chapter an attempt is made to explain how it is that so
many years ago Froebel reached his vision of what a child is, and of
what a child needs, and the considerations on which he based his