Indeed, even those Kindergartens which are professedly exclusive, and which confine their ministrations to the children of one particular neighborhood, are obliged by the nature of things to contain nascent individualities of almost every type.  For no neighborhood, however equal in wealth and fashion, ever produced children of an unvarying quality.  In any circle, no matter how exclusive, there are mischievous children, children who use bad language, children who have sly, mean tricks, children who do not speak the truth, and who are in other ways quite as undesirable as the children of the poor and ignorant.  It is often asserted, indeed, that the children of exclusive neighborhoods very often show more varieties of badness than the children of the open street.  The records of the private Kindergarten as compared with the public Kindergarten amply prove this statement.

[Sidenote:  Evil Example]

Since, then, whether you confine your child to the limits of your own circle or not, you cannot successfully keep him from playing with children who are more or less objectionable, what are you going to do to keep him from the harm of such association?  You have to make him strong enough to withstand temptation and resist the force of evil example.  Of course, he must have as little of the wrong example, especially in his younger and tenderer years, as can be managed without too greatly checking his activity and curtailing his freedom.  Yet after all he is to be taught a positive and not a negative righteousness, and if his home training is not sufficient to enable him to stand against a certain downward pull from the outside, there is something the matter with it.

While he must not be strained too hard, nor too constantly associate with children whose manners put his manners to the test, still he ought by degrees, almost imperceptibly, to be accustomed to holding to the truth, to that which is found good, no matter whether his associates find it desirable or not.

[Sidenote:  Social Training]

A good Kindergarten is a mother’s best help in this endeavor, for there her child meets with all sorts of other children.  The very influence of the place, and the ever-ready help of the teacher are on his side.  Every effort he makes to do right is met and welcomed.  In every stand that he takes against temptation, he is unobtrusively reinforced.  Moreover, the wrong-doing of his comrades is never allowed to retain the attractive glitter that it sometimes acquires on the play-ground.  It is promptly held up to general obloquy, and the good child finds to his surprise that he is not the only one who thinks that teasing, for example, is mean and selfish and that a violent temper is ugly.

[Sidenote:  Responsibility to Society]

Moreover, in the Kindergarten the sense of social responsibility is borne in upon him.  Perhaps it comes to him first when he is chosen to lead the march and finds that he must be careful not to squeeze through too narrow places, lest someone get into trouble.  In dealing out pencils, worsted, and other materials he must be careful to show strict impartiality, and give no preference to his own personal friends.  In a hundred small ways he is helped to regulate his own conduct, so that it may conduce to the welfare of the whole school.