International Kindergarten

Squatting on the floor like so many tiny tailors, the 26 tots peered at each other with calmness and mild curiosity. They evinced none of the wary caution their parents sometimes showed. As they warmed up to the situation, their silence gave way to a babel of comment in five different languages. The United Nations nursery school was officially open.

The new school is in a white colonial farmhouse 200 yards from the huge, functional ex-factory that houses the U.N. at Lake Success. The U.N. turned the farmhouse over rent-free to a parents' association of delegates and secretariat members. U.N. parents park their youngsters at the nursery school on their way to work at 9:30 a.m., leave them there till 6 p.m.

The three-woman staff is suitably international : one is American; one is Hungarian by birth and Haitian by marriage; one is Swiss by birth, U.S. by citizenship, and married to an expatriate Russian. Mrs. Lea Cowles, the plump, attractive widow who directs the nursery school, was borrowed from the University of Alabama department of child development. Says she: "When some of the parents heard I was at Alabama, they thought I would turn out to be a race bigot."

Tuition averages $35 a month, including orange juice, milk, cookies and a hot lunch. The youngsters will speak both English and French, the two principal U.N. languages; they still lapse into their native tongues when excited. Mrs. Cowles believes in progressive education for the three-to six-year-olds--with the emphasis on carpentry, finger painting and other "creative" games. She hopes her pupils will also learn international understanding. Says she: "Maybe this is a way to build from the bottom up."

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