[ . . . ] Parents of a somewhat more delicate disposition send their children, as soon as they can walk at all, to kindergartens, thinking that they are under supervision there and do not burden them while attending to domestic affairs. With respect to the group of mothers forced to provide and prepare their food without any further support, probably having to leave the house to go work, one may well grant this reason. But when even mothers from the higher classes send their still very small children to school immediately to get rid of them for a few hours and to breathe easy during this time for once, I do indeed not know what to say about it. [ . . . ] Any mother who really sends her children to school in order to exempt herself from their supervision for a few hours, I accuse outright of having no idea of education.
In the schools intended for such small children, no attention is actually paid to them learning anything. [ . . . ] However, not only are they kept in such schools from the physical movement so essential to them and thus accustomed to the sedentary lifestyle, which ought not to be the case; but in addition, they have to sit for several hours a day in a cramped room, breathing in enclosed, foul air; they are exposed to the danger of getting vermin, even becoming ill, especially when coming from the open air into these confined, stuffy rooms [ . . . ].
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