Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - Women of the Future - 1916.pdf/30

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learning, in trade schools, and in gymnasiums and on athletic fields providing wholesome sports, not allowing them to become workers until they are fully developed physically, educated mentally, and trained industrially or professionally. On the other hand the public school will reach out among the little ones and provide education for them, long before they begin to learn their A B C's. The kindergarten idea will be developed more and more, in keeping with the progress of pedagogy, and every school will have its kindergarten, and every child of normal health will attend the kindergarten as surely as the higher grades. But even before kindergarten age, there will be provision for the care of the little ones. Model nurseries will constitute the lowest grade of the future public school system. They will be equipped in accordance with the highest requirements of an advanced, enlightened age. They will be better places for babies to be in than the most ideal nursery in the most ideal home of the present day, because public effort can always achieve better results than private effort. Plenty of air and sunshine, absolute cleanliness, peace, order and regularity, wise management by highly trained nurses, and medical supervision will make these nurseries as perfect as human knowledge is able. It cannot be doubted that to such nurseries mothers will take their babies as willingly and cheerfully as they send their older children to school. That will not mean that mothers are going to be separated from their babies, that they will be deprived of the joy of caring for them and playing with them, of watching their little minds and bodies grow. Mothers will not be separated from their babies by having them socially educated at the nursery for a few hours each day, any more than mothers of the present time are separated from their children by having them socially educated at school for five hours daily. The baby's play-day at the nursery will generally coincide with the mother's workday at her trade or profession, and that day will be short. It has been computed by economists that if all adult, healthy members of human society performed socially productive labor, a five-hour workday, six days a week, would suffice to provide humanity, not only with all its necessities, but with all its luxuries as well. As human

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