The Child under Eight by Henrietta Brown Smith;E. R. Murray
page 47 of 258 (18%)
page 47 of 258 (18%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
conditions generally provided for these little children. Among those who
joined in this discussion was Miss Margaret M'Millan, so well known for her pioneer work in connection with School Clinics, and more recently for her now famous Camp School. Miss M'Millan had already done yeoman service on the Bradford Education Committee, but was now resident in London, and she had been warmly welcomed on the Council of the Froebel Society. It was from the date of this Conference that the name Nursery School became general, though it had been used by Madame Michaelis as early as 1891. In the following year, 1905, the Board of Education published its "Reports on Children under Five Years of Age," with its prefatory memorandum stating that "a new form of school is necessary for poor children," and that parents who must send their little ones to school "should send them to nursery schools rather than to schools of instruction," to schools where there should be "more play, more sleep, more free conversation, story-telling and observation." It would seem that the recommendations of 1905 may begin to be carried out in 1919, a consummation devoutly to be wished. In the meantime voluntary effort has done what it could. Birmingham had good reason to be in the forefront, since many of its public-spirited citizens had in their own childhood the benefit of the excellent works of Miss Caroline Bishop, a disciple of Frau Schrader. The Birmingham People's Kindergarten Association opened its first People's Kindergarten at Greet, in 1904, and a second, the Settlement Kindergarten, in 1907. Sir Oliver Lodge spoke strongly in favour of these institutions, calling them a protest against the idea of the comparative unimportance of childhood. Miss Hardy opened her Child Garden in 1906, and that work has grown so that the children are now kept till they are eight years old. The |
|