LEARNING AND HEALTH. 



401 



it used to be, and that the manners and customs 

 of scholars in school, aDd out of school, are su- 

 perior in every particular. Scholars are cleanlier 

 than they were, less brutal than they were, and 

 less subjected to those painful school accidents 

 which, in our forefathers' time, were wont to 

 leave their marks for life. 



Lastly, it must be obvious to all that the law 

 of kindness in schools is fast replacing the modes 

 of ruling by the rod, and other forms of punish- 

 ment, which once stood out as solemn and legal- 

 ized barbarities — modes which hardened many 

 hearts in their first days, and broke more than 

 they hardened ; modes which have left their im- 

 press even yet in the men and women whom they 

 trained into transmissible forms of character and 

 mind. 



I may, then, leave these departing shadows 

 on the school-day health, that I may touch more 

 definitely on the shadows that are now deepening 

 and daily falling. 



EDUCATION IN CHILDHOOD. 



The first serious and increasing evil bearing 

 on education, and its relation to health, lies in 

 too early subjection of pupils to study. Children 

 are often taught lessons from books before they 

 are properly taught to walk, and long before they 

 are taught properly to play. Play is held out to 

 them, not as a natural thing, as something which 

 the parent should feel it a duty to encourage, but 

 as a reward for so much work done, and as a rest 

 from work done ; as though, forsooth, play were 

 not itself a form of work, and often work of a 

 most fatiguing nature. Play, therefore, is not 

 used as it ought to be used — as a mode of work 

 which the child likes, but rather as a set-off 

 against a mode of work which the child does not 

 like, and which, in nine cases out of ten, he does 

 not like because it is altogether unfitted for his 

 powers ; because Nature is protesting, as loudly 

 as she can and as plainly as she can, that the 

 child has not arrived at a period of growth when 

 the kind of mental food that is forced on it is 

 fitted for its organization. 



For children under seven years of age the 

 whole of the teaching that should be naturally 

 conveyed should be through play, if the body is 

 to be trained up healthily as the bearer of the 

 mind. And it is wonderful what an amount of 

 learning can by this method be attained. Let- 

 ters of languages can be taught ; conversation 

 in different languages can be carried on ; animal 

 life can be classified; the surface of the earth 

 can be made clear ; history can be told as story ; 

 62 



and a number of other and most useful truths can 

 be instilled without ever forcing the child to touch 

 a book or read a formal lesson. 



Under such a system the child grows into 

 knowledge, makes his own inventory of the world 

 that surrounds him and the things that are upon 

 it, and, growing up free to learn, learns well, and 

 eats, and sleeps, and plays well. 



In a child trained after this method, not only 

 is health set forth, but happiness likewise — 

 a most important item in this period of life. 

 Priestley, who was as good an observer of men 

 as he was of inanimate Nature, was accustomed 

 to say of himself, with much gratitude, that he 

 was born of a happy disposition ; that he was 

 happy by heredity. So, in all his great trials — in 

 his failures as a speaker because of his defective 

 stammering habit; in his difficulties as a theo- 

 logian ; in his persecution as a presumed politi- 

 cian, flying for his life, having his house burned 

 to the ground, and all the treasures he valued 

 most flung out of window to a senseless, drunken, 

 groaning mob ; in all these trials, and others to 

 come — the cruel cutting of his colleagues of the 

 Royal Society, and the final parting forever, in 

 his old age, from his beloved England that be had 

 served so well ; in all these trials, I say, which so 

 few could have borne, he sustained the full share 

 of his hereditary gifts, his mental happiness and 

 health — or, I should rather say, his health, and 

 therefore his happiness. 



But this blessed health, which so distinctly 

 propagates itself, is never at any period of life so 

 tried as in the first years. Then it is confirmed 

 or destroyed, made or unmade. 



In this period, in which so many die from 

 vaiious causes, Nature herself, at first sight, seems 

 to set up continued irritations. It is only that 

 she seems, for if she were allowed she would do 

 all her spiriting gently, even to the cutting of 

 teeth, and the modification of digestion to modi- 

 fication of food. 



It is in this period that education is too often 

 made for the first time to stand at variance with 

 health. It is in this period that the enforced 

 lesson too often harasses, wearies, and at last 

 darkens the mind. It is in this period that the 

 primary fault is committed of making play a set- 

 off against work, and a promise of a good game 

 an inducement for the persistence in hard labor. 



"What is constantly attempted to be taught in 

 this period of life is the saddest detail. I have 

 known a regular imposition of work per day equal 

 to the full complement of natural work for many 

 a man or woman. There are schools in which 



