MENTAL AND PHYSICAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 221 



"opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a 

 blank." 



Science properly taught is most valuable to children, in that it 

 encourages a spirit of inquiry and love of truth, and trains them 

 in habits of accurate observance of all around them, all of which 

 qualities must surely be of use to them. These conclusions will 

 not, perhaps, be acceptable to those persons to whom science is 

 represented merely by the learning by heart of a collection of arid 

 statements : such as the distance from here to the moon the rate 

 at which the earth revolves on its own axis and so on. I should 

 certainly advise them not to teach their children science of this 

 description. 



Before ending my paper, I should like to say a few words with 

 regard to what I think a great evil in the education of girls. At 

 an age of rapid growth, a girl's health is sometimes ruined for 

 life by the system of brain-forcing to which she is subjected. In 

 many cases she has to work eight hours a day, which is the average 

 number of working hours of a grown man. Examinations follow 

 one after another, there is no time to attend to the development of 

 the body, at the most one hour in the twenty-four is given up to a 

 mild walk ; and the continuous sitting in a stuffy room, stooping 

 over books narrows the chest, and spoils the eye-sight ; at the age 

 of eighteen a pale, anaemic young lady emerges from the school- 

 room, doubtless stocked with knowledge, but also with headaches 

 and backaches enough to spoil the rest of her life. 



When one considers the extraordinary rate at which a girl of 

 fourteen will grow, and how much of her forces must be consumed 

 in the mere act of growing, surely it seems more reasonable to 

 lighten her work than to increase it. Such a girl should only be 

 allowed to work in the mornings, when she is freshest, and the 

 rest of the day should be devoted to the open air, and development 

 of her body by healthy outdoor games. Above all, even if she 

 has work in the afternoon and some time must, I suppose, be 

 allowed for preparation no mental work of any kind should be 

 allowed after 5 p.m. After a long day at school, many a time 

 does the tired child return with a quantity of exercises, etc., to be 

 prepared for the morrow, all of which must be done in the even- 

 ing, and it stands to reason that it must be highly prejudicial to 

 the brain to be taxed at a time when it is fatigued, and the phys- 

 ical powers of the child are at a low ebb. 



In a paper entitled " Home Lessons after School Hours/' sent 

 to me by my friend Sir Joseph Fayrer, and read by him at a con- 

 ference at the Health Exhibition, he points out the dangers at- 

 tending the cramming system, and instances many cases of brain 

 disease resulting from it. 



In conclusion, let me say that moral development can not be 



