PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR CHILD HYGIENE 293 



for girls safely be modeled after that for boys ? What time in the day 

 should exercise in physical training be given ? How should it alternate 

 with other school studies ? Can it ever safely replace the old-fashioned 

 free " recess " ? Just what does it mean, physiologically, for a muscle 

 to be " trained " ? Which of the half dozen or more theories is the 

 correct one? How far can training be bunched? Does training pro- 

 duce fatigue bodies and anti-bodies, as Weichardt thinks he has demon- 

 strated ? 



How many hours daily should children study? Can any one dis- 

 prove Dr. Weir Mit:' -ell's assertion (which seems to be the belief of 

 most psycho-pathologists) that children could accomplish as much as 

 they do now if the school day were only half as long? What is the 

 most favorable alternation of work and rest periods in mental hygiene? 

 What is the diurnal course of mental (also moral) efficiency? When 

 is the assignment of home study justifiable? How do the results of 

 home study compare in quality and quantity with school study? Is 

 there much or little ground for the frequent charges of overpressure 

 made against the schools? Is school overpressure responsible for any 

 of the recent and marked increase in child suicides?^ 



Investigations into the sleep of school children show that they 

 sleep on the average nearly 25 per cent, less than " authorities " have 

 usually set as a safe norm. Is there a real sleep insufficiency of 25 

 per cent., or has the amount needed been overestimated ? In the matter 

 of sleep what are the safe limits of habit adaptation? What is the 

 relation of sleep to school progress, nutrition, morbidity and conduct? 



The human eye was evolved to satisfy the demands of ordinary 

 vision — that is, to make on the average 15 or 20 movements per minute, 

 under conditions which permit frequent shifts of accommodation and 

 convergence. The work of the school demands of the immature eye 

 that it execute for several hours a day an average of 150 to 200 separate 

 movements per minute with as many rifle-aim fixations and with a 

 uniformly intense strain of the muscles of accommodation and con- 

 vergence. What is the relative importance of these factors as compared 

 with heredity in the etiology of ocular defects? How does malnutri- 

 tion affect the eye? How much truth is there in Dr. George M. 

 Gould's assertions regarding the reflex efiects of eye-strain upon general 

 health? What is the minimum size of type that should be permitted 

 for children of different ages ? What are the optimum norms for width 

 of stroke, spacing of letters and words, length of lines, color of paper, 

 and intensity of light ? Is the complete conservation of vision possible ? 



What conditions of health obtain among the one-half million school 

 teachers in the United States? What kind of physical constitution 



^See Albert Eulenberg, " Schulerselbstmorde, " Zt. f. Pdd.-psych., 1907, 

 pp. 1-81. Also Louis Proal, "L 'education et le suicide des enfants, " Paris, 

 1910, 



