The Kindergarten

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4. The Effect Of Kindergarten Training Upon The Physical, Mental And Moral Traits Of Japanese School Children



A. Ohject of the Investigation

The object of the investigation was to secure general information in regard to certain traits of kindergarten children enumerated in the following questionnaire. The result is of great importance to parents, to teachers of the kindergarten or elementary school, to supervisors and to school authorities. Some educators in Japan think that there is no need of kindergarten training for normal children if the mother can pay due attention to them. Others emphasize the need of transition classes.' Some teachers praise blindly the effect of the training, while others are quite skeptical. I know also that in the United States some prominent educators believe that money devoted to kindergarten training is more than wasted. Yet, the number of the kindergartens is increasing year after year. The investigation of the effect of kindergarten training is not less important and it suggests many worthy queries.

a. If we should find by the use of still other and more comprehensive investigations that the effect of the kindergarten is inappreciable or positively harmful to the subsequent development of children, it would be wise to prohibit the establishment of kindergartens, as did a Prussian Prime Minister in the time of Froebel. If there be definite good effects, it will be well to know the example that California set : "Upon petition of parents or guardians of twenty-five or more children between the ages of four and a half and six, residing within a mile of an elementary school, and with the approval of the School Authorities, the Board of Education shall establish and maintain a kindergarten." And if there be good effects we would recommend the establishing of kindergartens in our Japanese Girls' Schools and also of classes for training kindergarteners and future mothers.

b. If, again, it be found in the grades that some traits of kindergarten children are more desirable than those of nonkindergarten children, parents and elementary school teachers would get some hints for their training methods; on the other hand, if the traits of kindergarten children are less desirable than those of non-kindergarten children, the kindergarteners and their supervisors should know this and contrive some remedy for the difficulty. To know what group of traits is stronger or weaker than the other group is of no less interest.

c. The author does not pretend to solve all of these problems nor does he assume that any one study can settle conclusively these important questions. The data which follow, however, furnish a basis for answering some of these questions and give suggestions to all of them.




B. Method of the Investigation

The data which are received in the article were secured by means of the questionnaire which is reproduced herewith. One thousand copies of it were distributed to 75 typical schools. Returns were received from 28 schools. The questionnaire was given to each teacher of each grade. They were asked to fill out all the blanks. But in order to save the teacher's time and also to get many returns, the author asked teachers (with the exception of those in Hiroshima City), to grade only kindergarten children in each of the eleven qualities. The grading was to be done as conscientiously as possible. The blanks under each trait were then to be filled out to show how many kindergarten children belong to the A, B, and C group in each class.

In Hiroshima City the author himself went to each school, saw the teachers, explained the grading method, answered the questions and studied the traits of hoth kindergarten children and nonkindergarten children. Taking the results which were obtained in Hiroshima as the standard, the author has tried to compare the results of the other groups.

The study includes, then, data from twenty-four elementary schools in nineteen cities (24 = 20 in 18 cities, and 4 in Hiroshima City) ; three Middle Schools in three cities and five girls' schools in five cities. The data from the Middle Schools and Girls' School have been used only for the sake of comparison. The main effort has been expended upon the data from the elementary schools and here the ipiaterial from 20 cities represents estimates upon the kindergarten pupil only and that from Hiroshima, upon both kindergarten and nonkindergarten pupils.

Hiroshima City was selected as the standard city, because conditions there are favorable for such a study. Thus: (1) Hiroshima is a city which has, in its 200,000 population, comparatively few of the very rich or very poor class; (2) the kindergartens have been established there for over 20 years; (3) kindergarten training has been regarded favorably; (4) there are many good elementary schools, - one is the training school of Hiroshima Higher Normal School ; another, the Training School of a Model Normal School, and the others are also of good quality; (5) there is the tendency among the teachers to stay longer in the same school than in other cities.

The teachers were also asked to set down in the space left in the middle of the questionnaire their general criticisms of the kindergarten children. From these records, the author aimed to find the general opinion of the teachers concerning the merits and desirability of the kindergarten.



About the estimations of Japanese elementary school teachers the author believes that they are comparatively reliable for these reasons: (1) in general, they teach the same pupils for many years (some teach the same pupils from the first grade up to their graduation) ; (2) they try to study the individuality of their pupils ; (3) every school has the record of every pupil, concerning parentage, school career, school marks, physical traits, individuality, etc.

To save space in the tables and to avoid repetition, K. in this paper signifies Kindergarten children, NK. Non Kindergarten.

In order to compare the K. and NK. pupils in each trait, it is evidently desirable to reduce their standing to a single standard. The author has reduced the values to percents by multiplying them by the quantity indicating their value ; i. e., all A% 's have been multiplied by 9, all B%'s by 7, and all C%'s by 5 respectively, according to the grading standards. Thus, for example in Attention of Grade I, the author got 724, being the sum of 31 X 9 + 50 X 7 + 19 X 5.

Fig. II shows the result of this comparison, the nnn columns are the traits of NK. pupils of the common elementary schools in Hiroshima City, and kkk columns are those of K. pupils in the same schools.

Inspection of Fig. II shows that K. were judged superior in understanding, imagination, and scholarship ; but judged in the other traits, distinctly inferior. These results were quite different from what had been expected.

TABLE I

Percents of pupils graded A. B. and in eac. trait of Kindergarten children in 20 Common elementary schools.

1. Attention
2. Patience
3. Decision
4. Understanding
5. Memory
6. Imagination
7. Friendliness
8. Love of natural objects
9. Scholarship
10. Moral conduct
11. Health










Fig. Ill is the comparison of NK. of the common elementary schools in Hiroshima City and K. of twenty typical common elementary schools in 18 cities. Here it appears that in imagination and scholarship there was not as much difference between K. and NK. as in the former comparison, yet the traits in which the K. were superior to the NK. were exactly the same ones, i. e., understanding, imagination, memory and scholarship : and again they were inferior to the NK. in the other traits.

Fig. IV shows the combined comparison of the five groups. The aaa columns are the traits of NK. of common elementary schools in Hiroshima City, the bbb columns are those of K. of 20 typical common elementary schools in 18 cities, the ccc columns are those of K. of common elementary schools in Hiroshima City, the ddd columns are those NK. of higher elementary schools in Hiroshima City, and the eee columns are those of 20 higher elementary schools in 18 cities.

Fig. V is the comparison of three groups of common elementary schools. In this case the K. groups surpass in understanding, memory, imagination and scholarship as mentioned before.

Fig. VI is the comparison of pupils who were attending the higher elementary schools. Here, K. were superior in imagination and scholarship but inferior in other traits. The reader must understand in this case that there is a general tendency for the superior pupils to enter the Middle Schools, Girls' Schools and the Normal Schools.











Fig. VII shows the comparison of the total number of each trait of each group and their averages. The higher column signifies that the teachers estimated the group better than others. The inspection of the figure tells us distinctly that NK. come first in common elementary schools, and also NK. surpasses K. in higher elementary schools. About the Middle Schools and the Girls' Schools the author cannot say anything of the comparison of K. and NK.

In order to investigate whether or not there is any correlation between these groups, the author tried to find co-efficients of correlation between both K. groups or both NK. groups, etc. For this purpose, the author used Spearman's rank-order method. For illustration the author will describe the case of the series of traits of K. in 20 common elementary schools (K. 20 C. E. S.) and those of K. in common elementary schools in Hiroshima City (K. C. E. S. H.).

The author found that there was the highest correlation (83) between the traits of the K of 20 common elementary schools and those of K. of common elementary schools in Hiroshima. Its P. E. was .09. There was the least correlation between K. of 20 common elementary schools and NK. of Higher elementary schools in Hiroshima City. From these investigations the author can assume that between both K. groups there is higher correlation than between K. and NK. groups. Further inference from these data the author leaves to the readers.




C. The Classification of the Teachers' Criticisms of the Kindergarten Children

The total number of the criticisms offered by teachers in the grade schools was 269. The following classification will bring out the chief features:


TABLE II


INTELLECTUAL SIDE (62)

Strong Points

1 Better scholarship 18
2 Better marks in manual training 12
3 Better expression 7
4 Well developed reasoning power 6
5 Developed imagination 5
6 In general, their intellectual development is better than in the other group 5
7 Know the day's news better than the other group 3
Total 56

Weak Points
1 Superficial knowledge ... 3
2 Bad scholarship 3
Total 6



EMOTIONAL SIDE (43)

1 Sympathy 9
2 Social attitude 8
3 Humor 5
4 Love of natural objects. . 5
5 Innocence 3
6 They like group activity 2
Total 32

1 They become too familiar in bad sense 4
2 Too capricious 4
3 Weep easily 3
Total 11



VOLITIONAL SIDE (61)

1 Quick activities 3
2 They do not put teacher to much trouble in teaching 2
Total 5

1 Inattentive 17
2 Lack of habit of effort 9
3 After all, they are not firm-spirited children 7
4 Bad habit of disorder 6
5 Put teacher to much trouble in controlling them 6
6 Talkative 4
7 Disobedient 4
8 Bad conduct 3
Total 56



MISCELLANEOUS (98)
The criticisms offered by teachers in the higher elementary schools, Girls' Higher schools and Middle schools were 37 in number.



HIGHER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

1 Roughly speaking they belong to the middle class in scholarship 1
2 Better marks in arithmetic 2
3 Obedience 1
4 It seems to me that they have more ability to play than the other group 1

1 Too much spirit of dependence 1
2 They act rashly, not thrifty 1
3 No self-possession 1



MIDDLE SCHOOL

1 In my class there are only two K.s, both are mild and frank 1
2 Among them there are some good students 1
3 It seems to me all of them have better health, but, of course, we can not say that it is caused by the Kindergarten training 1
4 Among 126 second-year students there are only 3 K. s. They all are obedient and in higher standing of moral conduct and scholarship, but they have retiring disposition and not enough vitality 1

1 No effect of Kindergarten In general, they are inattentive 1
2 There are many so called fast boys among them 1
3 In general, they are not healthy 1
4 Bad marks in composition 1
5 It seems to me that they waste much energy in infancy and that is the reason why they have bad health 1


These classifications confirm the above-given percentage tables, for we find the criticisms which refer to intellectual aspects are 62 in number, of which 56 favor the K. pupils as contrasted with only 6 against them. On the other hand, on the volitional side there are 61 criticisms of which 56 are unfavorable to the K. pupils. They are declared inferior in attention, moral traits, orderliness, all of which have been claimed as special aims of the kindergarten. Kindergarteners who may read this study will, I am sure, seek to improve their work in these respects if improvement is needed.




D. Supplementary Investigation of the School

Marks of Kindergarten and NonKindergarten Children

Method : This investigation was based on a report of an elementary school in Tokyo. This school has an attached kindergarten and the majority of the school children were, and are, the graduates of the kindergarten. The principal of the school made an interesting report concerning the school marks of 1000 K. and NK. pupils. Table VII gives these data. The number of the grade children was 1000. The number of K. was not mentioned in the report. Grading standards were: Very high, A; Medium, B; Low, C. K. signifies Kindergarten children; NK. Non-Kindergarten children.


TABLE III



The subjects were 13 in all, i. e., moral, reading, composition, penmanship, arithmetic, drawing, music, gymnastic, manual training, needlework, geography, history and science. To find out the ratio of all the school subjects of NK. and K. the author used the same method which he used in the former investigations, i.e., he found the ratio of NK/N. In the 1st grade this is 0.93, by following procedure.



NIC

The average ratio of NK/K. As the reader will understand, this means that if the scholarship of K. were 1 then that of NK. will be .94.

Conclusion. This investigation shows obviously that the scholarship of the K. surpasses that of NK.




E. Comparison With Other Investigations

In 1909 Dr. Leonard P. Ayres in New York and in 1911 Supt. Holland, in Louisville, made investigations of the time required by K. and NK. pupils to complete the eight grades. They report no appreciable difference. The investigations made in New Orleans (1914), in Newton, Mass. (1913) and in Kenosha, Wis. (1912) were based upon the length of time taken to complete the work, of certain grades. In all three investigations the results were in favor of K. children.

In these investigations the basis of comparison between K. and NK. children has been the length of time required to complete the work of the grades. But the mere speed is only one criterion of educational value.

In Savannah, Carol P. Oppenheimer (1912) made an investigation, based on the school marks of K. and NK. children in the primary grades. The outcome was decidedly in favor of the K. children.

Mr. L. A. Marsh made a study of 380 elementary school children in 12 grades, all of the Edgewood public schools in Pittsburg (1914). The investigation was made with the aid of questionnaires. Teachers Avere asked to report upon the following points :

1. Self-confidence
2. Moral attitude
3. Love of nature
4. Ability to mix
5. Friendliness
6. Interest
7. Attention
8. Ability to think
9. Originality
10. Observation
11. Response to direction
12. Response to ideas
13. Manual ability
14. Cleanliness
15. Orderliness
16. Oral expression
17. Ability to play

He found that K. children showed greater self-confidence. In moral attitude the NK. surpassed and showed a total difference of 0.33. In love of nature, ability to mix and friendliness K. were ahead; but NK. were far ahead in attention. In all, the NK. surpassed in four points : namely, moral attitude, attention, manual ability and orderliness. The most remarkable differences in favor of K. were in ability to mix, in originality, and in response to ideas. The difference was high in favor of K. in self-confidence, love of nature, friendliness, observation, oral expression, and in ability to play.




F. Conclusions

From these data the author draws the following conclusions: Where K. and NK. children are compared during their progress through, the public schools, the kindergarten children are (a) superior to non-kindergarten children in scholarship, understanding and memory; roughly speaking K. children are better on the intellectual side ; ( b ) inferior in capacity for sustained effort and diligence, (c) inferior in many moral habits, as disorderliness, inattention, talkativeness, disobedience, etc., (d) not superior in physical capacity and bodily health.