Children's party

“ Now let us see what message the Socialist party has for the children and why all children should be socialists and help to speed the day when the brotherhood of socialism shall prevail throughout the earth. ”

“ It is most essential to have a sufficient number of amusements planned to keep the children entertained every minute of the time. They cannot be trusted to take care of themselves especially if the party is a mixed one. The hostess must also be careful not to have the games so active as to tire the youngsters out and she must be sure that the refreshments are wholesome. It is no very small undertaking to give a successful children's party but the reward is great enough to make it worth while. ”

“ No one can tell whether it is so with all children, or even with a majority; but with some children, of passionate fancy, there occurs now and then a children’s dance, or a party of any kind, which has a charm and glory mingled with uncertain dreams. ”

“ Children should not be taught "party manners." If they are to be well-bred at all, they must be so at all times; and ill-bred parents can no more have well-bred children than an oak tree can have pine needles. ”

“ A party is something that the average child looks back upon with pleasure for a long, long time. There is no more pleasant way of inculcating a feeling of genuine hospitality or of bringing about an easy manner in the drawing-room than through allowing children to have parties and giving them a large share of the responsibility for making them successful. The mother should superintend everything but she should consult and advise the child about favors, refreshments, etc. The most attractive invitations are those which the youngster himself writes. ”

“ There is scarcely a household the children of which are not indulged with one large party at least, while others are allowed as many as two or three children's parties during the winter months. These parties offer no little elasticity as to their arrangement, varying from a child's tea party, composed, perhaps, of five or six children, to a juvenile ball, or fancy dress ball. ”

“ As to the young girls and school-children, if, in a school or party of two hundred, you can pick out thirty well-developed, well-proportioned, robust, ruddy children, you will do better than I have sometimes been able to do. ”

“ Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother --it was all a sort of glorious game to them. ”

“ Very often when the slices of birthday cake are distributed, tiny gifts are presented with them.
WHEN THE YOUNG GUESTS LEAVE
A problem which the hostess of children's parties invariably meets, is how to get the children home safely. Undoubtedly, the parents of the young children should provide some means of having them escorted home safely after the party; the duty should not be allowed to devolve upon the hostess. If the children are older, of high-school age, the young boys may be trusted to escort the girls to their homes. When children are very young they have no idea when to leave. ”

“ All sorts of people were made happy by that birthday party. Mr. Perks and Mrs. Perks and the little Perkses by all the nice things and by the kind thoughts of their neighbours; the Three Chimneys children by the success, undoubted though unexpectedly delayed, of their plan; and Mrs. Ransome every time she saw the fat Perks baby in the perambulator. Mrs. Perks made quite a round of visits to thank people for their kind birthday presents, and after each visit felt that she had a better friend than she had thought. ”

“ We need the public kindergarten educationally as the vestibule to our school work. We need it as a philanthropic agent, leading the child gently into right habits of thought, speech, and action from the beginning. We need it to help in the absorption and amalgamation of our foreign element; for the social training, the opportunity for coöperation, and the purely republican form of government in the kindergarten make it of great value in the development of the citizen-virtues, as well as those of the individual. ”

“ It may be true that there is considerable advantage in dramatizing the form of government in which the children live, and for that purpose policemen, councilmen or aldermen, mayors, and other officials, together with their election, may help in the understanding of the social obligations which they will have to meet later on. But the main thing is to have these children come to accept responsibility for each other, and to seek to make the school a place where each respects the rights of others and where every one is working together for the common good. ”

“ But this system is not one fitted to prepare the children for democratic social and political life. In the United States of America some of the elementary schools have a method of government which is quasi-parliamentary in character. ”

“ What an opportunity for amalgamation of races, and for laying the foundation of American citizenship! for the purely social atmosphere of the kindergarten makes it a life-school, where each tiny citizen has full liberty under the law of love, so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of his neighbor. The phrase "Every man for himself" is never heard, but "We are members one of another" is the common principle of action. ”

“ The subjects discussed in the debating clubs are almost always of the boys' choosing, and represent a broad field of interest, economic, social, moral and political. They range from "Resolved, That Washington did more than Lincoln for his country," "That civilization owes more to the railroad than the steamboat," "That the fireman is braver than the policeman," in the clubs of boys from the sixth and seventh grades, to the discussion of municipal ownership, tariff commission, establishment of a central bank, and commission government for cities, in clubs composed of high school boys. ”

“ What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy. All that society has accomplished for itself is put, through the agency of the school, at the disposal of its future members. ”

“ In such an institution the law-abiding spirit can never be fostered.
The play-ground, too, affords a preliminary training for future citizenship. On the play-ground the scholars learn to select and to obey their own leaders, to maintain the rules of the game, and to put down any infraction of them, whether in the shape of violence or fraud. They also learn to defer to the will of the majority—a most important lesson, especially in democratic communities—and to bear defeat good-humoredly. ”

“ Whatever the views of the separate parents, and whatever their standard of justice, a great improvement would be made if there were some publicity and community of action in their methods. A hundred men together can decide upon and carry out a [76] higher course of action than they could be trusted to follow severally. Our beautiful growth in justice and equity (for grown people) has always required this openness and union. Many a mother, tired and cross with her housework, does things to her child which she would be ashamed to retail to a cool and unprejudiced circle of friends. ”

“ When one has seen a club of ambitious lads who, when they first organized, cared only for success, reject a boy who is a good debater and athlete on the ground that in another club he had shown that "he was a sorehead and couldn't seem to understand that the majority's got to rule," one is tempted to feel that organization can do so much for the children that an organized library club justifies itself on that score alone. ”

“ So much for the training of the sense of right and wrong! Now for the provision which the kindergarten makes for the growth of certain practical virtues, much needed in the world, but touched upon all too lightly in family and school.
The student of political economy sees clearly enough the need of greater thrift and frugality in the nation; but where and when do we propose to develop these virtues? Precious little time is given to them in most schools, for their cultivation does not yet seem to be insisted upon as an integral part of the scheme. ”

“ It is at school that children should begin to learn group initiative, group responsibility—in other words social functioning. The group process must be learnt by practice. We should therefore teach subjects which require a working together, we should have group recitations, group investigations, and a gradual plan of self-government. Every child must be shown his place in the life that builds and his relation to all others who are building. ”

“ They want also women who will be friends to the sick and, more than that, befriend the girls who drift wretched to the workhouse, or go out lonely from the pauper schools. School Boards want those who, visiting the schools, will seek out the children who are fit for country holidays, visit the homes, and do something to follow up the education between the years of thirteen and twenty-one.
Wherever there is an institution, a reading-room, a club, or a playground there is work for volunteers. It may not be that the volunteers will seem to do much; they will be certain to do something. ”

“ It is the wide world in miniature, and if it is a properly organized Kindergarten, it will contain within itself a wide variety of children—children of wealth and of poverty, of ignorance and of gentle breeding—and will bring them all under one just rule. For only by this commingling of many characters upon a common level and under the strict reign of justice can the child be fitted practically, and by means of a series of progressive experiments, for citizenship in a genuine democracy. ”

“ Since children reared in the home will be one day responsible citizens of a republican state, it were well to enlist them early in the work of committees. They will learn thereby to subordinate personal desire to the will of the majority, and to co-operate in action for the common weal. The amusements and conduct of children are well within range of their own understanding, and although supervision by adults is necessary, great freedom should be allowed them in the management of their conduct clubs and amusement committees. ”

“ But all must not be told; as far as may be, children should be led to anticipate. Thus in a narrative of a campaign, generally so dry and unprofitable, the children should be led to consider what were the aims, what would be the best way of carrying out operations, what posts would be occupied, which leader chosen, how the money would be raised, etc. ”

“ Indeed it is only when it can go to pieces that there is any reality in the effort to hold it together." "True responsibility and even obedience [Pg 783] of the highest type is felt only when the group is free."
The positive view of liberty and independence is urged, not the negative one which teachers,—and he might have added club leaders,—are too prone to take. "If children are to be trained socially, they must feel the full effects of social causes,—not merely of society at large, but especially those of the embryonic society of child life to which they belong. ”

“ Only to-day, at last, we see in some few advanced communities the mothers' club and congress, the women's civic associations, and other forms of union for the improvement of social conditions, all helping to enlarge the application of mother-love, and set that great force free to bring on the better day for children. These clubs and societies are jeered at by the majority of mothers, who proudly say that they are too busy taking care of their children to go to a mothers' congress and learn how. ”

“ But every adult member of the body would have an equal voice in determining the collective system designed for the benefit of all. Here, then, is a most fruitful source of discord in every association. All who had any opinion or preference as to the education they would desire for their own children, would have to rely for their chance of obtaining it upon the influence they could exercise in the joint decision of the community. ”

“ The education and discipline, labor and recreation of the child figure larger all the while in our legislation and taxes, our thinking and literature.
Democracy, machine industry, immigration and child psychology combine to make the child a new problem to the modern state and city, especially in America. With the problems of the child's normality and defectiveness, discipline and delinquency, work and play, and its assimilation into the body politic, our towns and cities, states and nation have been forced to deal. ”

“ It is the children who are needed for the nation; it is the nation who supports them; and it is the nation who must decide their future.
Speaking for myself (not in any official capacity) , twenty-two years’ experience as manager of a barrack school, two years’ membership of the Departmental Committee, twelve years’ work as the honorary secretary of the State Children’s Association have brought me to the well-grounded opinion that the children should be removed altogether from the care of the Local Government Board and placed under the Board of Education. This Board’s one concern is children. ”

“ And the strength and success of the school system in any municipality have been in proportion to the absence of party spirit, and the union of all parties for its promotion.... What is true in school polity is true in civil polity; and what is true in the educational branch of the public service, is true in every branch of the public service.
I am aware that many good and intelligent men, of different views and associations, regard partyism as a necessity, a normal element, in the operations of free civil government.... ”