Health, Work and Study

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HEALTH, WORK AND STUDY.

During the last few days we have written upon two subjects which though not identical are nearly akin. The one is the too great length of the labor done by all classes in this community, and the other the too great duration of school hours, in addition to the tasks given to the children to be mastered out of school. On both these topics we find the views expressed by us amplified and enforced with an ability which deserves universal admiration, in an article in the Atlantic Monthly¹ for September, entitled "the Murder of the Innocents." This article is alone worth more to the readers than the entire cost of the Atlantic Monthly since its establishment. The facts which it gives are of undisputed accuracy, and the arguments based on them are irrefutable. It is shown that the forcing system of school instruction is prematurely wasting the physical stamina of the population, and crowding thousands of promising children into premature graves. It was under this conviction, now so forcibly expressed by the writer in the Atlantic, that we appealed to the Board of Education in this city to forbid the studying by the children of lessons out of school. Hitherto no notice has been taken of the subject—there does not appear to be one member of that august Board sufficiently skilled in the laws of health to be aware that the children must necessarily be overtasked and their constitutions enfeebled, by adding to the duties and confinement of the regular school hours, lessons to be learned at home in the evenings and mornings.

The Atlantic article quotes, among other authorities, that of Sir Walter Scott,² that five and a half hours of daily intellectual labor was the greatest amount that any man of full health could safely perform. Eminent medical authority—all medical authority in fact—concurs that children cannot labor mentally, with safety, for even so short a period as five and a half hours.

"The late Dr. Woodward,³ of Worcester said, that children under eight should never be confined more than one hour at a time, nor more than four hours a day; and that, if any child showed alarming symptoms of precocity, it should be taken from school altogether. Dr. James Jackson,⁴ of Boston, allowed the children four hours' schooling in winter and five in summer, but only one hour at a time, and heartily expressed his 'detestation of the practice of giving young children lessons to learn home.' Dr. S. G. Howe,⁵ reasoning elaborately on the whole subject, said that children under eight should not be confined more than half an hour at at time—'by following which rule with long recesses, they can study four hours' daily; children between eight and fourteen should not be confined more than three-quarters of an hour at a time, having the last quarter of each hour for exercise in the playground—and be allowed six hours of school in winter, or even in summer, solely on condition of this deduction of twenty-five per cent. for recesses."

These out of school lessons have often been denounced and their destructive tendency has been exposed; but the desire of school teachers and committeemen to turn out prodigies from their respective schools induces them to persist in giving these extra lessons to be learned after school hours. An agitation on the subject took place in Boston in 1854, which resulted in the triumph of the physiologists over the cranium crammers, who were compelled by public opinion to pass the following rule:

"In assigning lessons to boys to be studied out of school hours, the instructors shall not assign a longer lesson than a boy of good capacity can acquire by an hour's study; but no out-of-school lessons shall be assigned to girls, nor shall the lessons to be studied in school be so long as to require a scholar of ordinary capacity to study out of school in order to learn them."

The rule is still in force, greatly to the annoyance of many teachers and trustees, who complain that it "retards the intellectual progress of the pupils." It is well that it should, when this intellectual progress can only be attained at the expense of physical health, and even life itself.

There are in the Atlantic article more illustrations and instances of the evil tendency to health of "forcing" the young onward in the path of learning, than we can find space to mention; but we do most seriously exhort every member of the Board of Education of this city to read it, and then say whether he can conscientiously delay voting to abolish the practice of giving the scholars lessons to learn after school hours. We will conclude with a single sentence, which disposes effectually of the pretence that the attainments of the pupils in our public schools would be less if they only studied during a reasonable space of time every day.

"All excess defeats itself. As a grown man can work more in ten hours than in fifteen, taking a series of days together, so a child can make more substantial mental progress in five hours daily than in ten. Your child's mind is not an earthen jar, to be filled by pouring into it; it is a delicate plant, to be wisely and healthfully reared; and your wife might as well attempt to enrich her mignonette-bed by laying a Greek Lexicon upon it as to try to cultivate that young nature by a top-dressing of Encyclopædias. I use the word on high authority. 'Courage, my boy!' wrote Lord Chatham to his son, 'only the Encyclopædia to learn!'—and the cruel diseases of a lifetime repaid Pitt for the forcing. I do not object to the severest quality of study for boys or girls; while their brains work, let them work in earnest. But I do object to this immoderate and terrific quantity. Cut down every school, public and private, to five hours' total work per diem for the oldest children, and four for the younger ones, and they will accomplish more in the end than you ever saw them do in six or seven."

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