[Sidenote:  Right Doing Made Easy]

There are those who object that by the kindergarten method right doing is made too easy.  The children do not have to put forth enough effort, they say; they are not called upon to endure sufficient pain; they do not have the discipline which causes them to choose right no matter how painful right may be for the moment.  Whether this dictum is ever true or not, it certainly is not true in early childhood.  The love of righteousness needs to be firmly rooted in the character before it is strained and pulled upon.  We do not start seedlings in the rocky soil or plant out saplings in time of frost.  If tests and trials of virtue must come, let them come in later life when the love of virtue is so firmly established that it may be trusted to find a way to its own satisfaction through whatever difficulties may oppose.

[Sidenote:  Neighbors’ Opinions]

In the very beginning of any effort to live up to Froebel’s requirements it is evident that children must not be measured by the way they appear to the neighbors.  This is to reaffirm the power of that rigid tradition which has warped so many young lives.  She who is trying to fix her child’s heart upon true and holy things may well disregard her neighbor’s comments on the child’s manners or clothes or even upon momentary ebullitions of temper.  She is working below the surface of things, is setting eternal forces to work, and she cannot afford to interrupt this work for the sake of shining the child up with any premature outside polish.  If she is to have any peace of mind or to allow any to the child, if she is to live in any way a simple and serene life, she must establish a few fundamental principles by which she judges her child’s conduct and regulates her own, and stand by these principles through thick and thin.

[Sidenote:  The Family Republic]

Perhaps the most fundamental principle is that enunciated by Fichte.  “Each man,” he says, “is a free being in a world of other free beings.”  Therefore his freedom is limited only by the freedom of the other free beings.  That is, they must “divide the world amongst them.”  Stated in the form of a command he says again, “Restrict your freedom through the freedom of all other persons with whom you come in contact.”  This is a rule that even a three-year-old child can be made to understand, and it is astonishing with what readiness he will admit its justice.  He call do anything he wants to, you explain to him, except bother other people.  And, of course, the corollary follows that every one else can do whatever he pleases except to bother the child.

[Sidenote:  Rights of Others]

This clear and simple doctrine can be driven home with amazing force, if you strictly respect the child’s right as you require him to respect yours.  You should neither allow any encroachments upon your own proper privileges, except so far as you explain that this is only a loving permission on your part, and not to be assumed as a precedent or to be demanded as a right; nor should you yourself encroach upon his privileges.