EFFECTS OF SCHOOL LIFE 



257 



THE EFFECTS OF SCHOOL LIFE UPON" THE NUTRITIVE 

 PROCESSES, HEALTH AND THE COMPOSITION 



OF THE BLOOD 



By LEWIS M. TERMAN 



STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA 



THE school is a formal agency devised for the purpose of bringing 

 the child into possession of the main body of our social inherit- 

 ance — the treasures of knowledge and skill laboriously accumulated by 

 many generations of ancestors. When these treasures were few and 

 pertained mostly to the affairs of immediate self-preservation, there 

 was little danger of overburdening the young in the process of their 

 acquisition. The intricacy of present-day civilization, however, is con- 

 stantly increasing the difficulties which must be met and overcome by 

 all who are not to become playthings of complex social and industrial 

 forces. The period of infancy has not lengthened in proportion to the 

 increased educational demands upon it. The school year has been con- 

 siderably extended and for the first time in the world's history attend- 

 ance has been made generally obligatory. 



That this situation involves certain physical dangers to the child is 

 self-evident. Indeed, the charge of school overpressure has been made 

 repeatedly for at least half a century, though it is only recently that 

 investigations of scientific character have been directed to the problem. 

 Some of these are here reviewed, in the hope that further researches in 

 this important field may be stimulated. 



The Effects of School Life upon Growth 



Schmid-Monnard sought to ascertain the influence of school life 

 upon growth by comparing the growth attained during the seventh 

 year of life by children in school with that attained by children of the 

 same age who had not entered school. The results, as shown in the 

 following table, indicate that school entrance constitutes a shock to the 

 nervous system of the child severe enough to retard growth (15). 



VOL. LXXXIV. — IS 



