NATIONAL NECESSITIES AND EDUCATION 447 



show that the present school system does more than simply permit the 

 mischief that is progressing, it actually fosters it and promotes it. 

 Asked "to what the effects are chiefly ascribable," she replies : "A 

 part is ascribable to home neglects ; but the greater part of it is due 

 to excessive and prolonged constraints under the common-school con- 

 ditions : too long sitting on badly constructed seats ; but, with good 

 seats, they are kept in bad positions in long writing exercises. The 

 common bad position is, indeed, prescribed by the Government School 

 Inspectors. I have found that, to obtain the school grants, the chil- 

 dren are so constrained as to exclude the exercises that are needed for 

 their bodily development." 



The present system is not only a violation of physiological but of 

 psychological law. The powers of receptivity of the minds of chil- 

 dren of different ages have been tested experimentally, with as much 

 care as physicists take when they are treating in their experiments on 

 the relationships of ordinary matter to force. Certain brains can take 

 in so much, and no more, according to age. The capacity grows with 

 cultivation and skillful teaching, no doubt, but it must be permitted 

 to grow. In the very young a lesson of a minute may be all-sufficient. 

 Later, of three minutes, five, ten, fifteen, and so on, to one hour, two, 

 or three. But to this there is a limit, and it is probable that, with the 

 best scholar of primary-school age, the powers of receptivity rarely 

 extend beyond a period of two hours and a half of direct teaching. 

 Teachers of various districts, and of different countries, have testified 

 in respect to this point, and while they have explained, from direct 

 observation, that the receptivity varies in different children according 

 to difference of temperament, physical health and build, as might very 

 well be expected, the receptivity at one time, in all children, ceases at 

 the end of three hours. 



Proposed Reforms. From these considerations let me now turn 

 to the reforms which we, who are urgent as to reform in the present 

 educational system, have in view. We reason that the existing sys- 

 tem is not a" basis for the national necessities. We are of opinion 

 that in the future the education of a mental kind now being supplied 

 will be imperfect and doubtful, nay, it may be of dangerous use, un- 

 less it be so laid out with physical culture that a perfect or compara- 

 tively perfect health of body shall go with it and sustain it. We 

 urge that, as we must either educate health or disease, it is best to edu- 

 cate hearth. 



The design we have in view, then, includes several heads, which 

 I may arrange in the following order : 



Physical Culture of the Body. We urge that education 

 should be so distinctly physical, that the body should be in no respect 

 less improved than the mind at the close of the educational career. 

 We follow, in this regard, the teaching of the Platonic philosophy, in 

 which the master insists that the symmetry of mind and body be cul- 



