7 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We come now to the large and important class children. It seems 

 a mere commonplace to say that children ought to he allowed to run 

 about and romp and play as much as ever they like or can. Yet this 

 commonplace is far from having a common place in the usages of 

 modern society. Among the upper classes children are much too fre- 

 quently restrained from taking their full amount of natural play, either 

 by preposterous ideas of genteel decorum, or by the respect due to ex- 

 pensive clothing ; while among the lower classes the playground is too 

 often restricted by the limits of the gutter, and even in the parks we 

 too often witness the melancholy spectacle of children still a long way 

 from their teens acting the part of nurse to still younger members of 

 the family. To remedy these evils in the case of the upper classes 

 there is nothing to suggest, except that fathers and mothers should 

 cease to regard their children's clothes as of more importance than 

 their children's health, and learn to estimate at its due value the re- 

 sponsibility of fostering the most precious of their possessions these 

 living, feeling, loving little ones whose capacities of life-long happiness 

 are being molded by their parents' wisdom, or destroyed by their 

 parents' folly. In the case of the lower classes, the crbche, or public 

 nursery, where abundance of romping play is permitted, deserves the 

 most strenuous encouragement. Children of all classes will play as 

 they ought to play if only Nature is allowed to have her course with- 

 out let or hindrance from artificial restraints. 



But, as the only object in rearing children is not that of making 

 them healthy animals, some amount of artificial restraint is necessary 

 when the time for systematic mental training arrives. Nevertheless, 

 as bodily health is the most essential condition even to mental train- 

 ing, the most fundamental principle which ought to guide the latter is 

 that of supplying it with the minimum of cost to the former. Yet in 

 school-life this fundamental principle is almost universally disregarded. 

 So long as the general health of a school is maintained at a level com- 

 patible 5 with work, and not below the level that declares itself by con- 

 spicuous " break-downs," so long nobody cares to reflect whether the 

 system of school discipline is in all particulars the best for maintain- 

 ing the general health at the highest possible level. I will not wait to 

 consider the disgraceful food which, even in many of our better-class 

 schools, is deemed sufficiently good for growing children to thrive 

 upon ; nor will I wait to inveigh against the system of competition 

 which, when encouraged beyond moderate limits, acts as a baleful 

 stimulus to the very pupils who least require to be stimulated. But, 

 confining my remarks to the one particular of punishment, I should 

 like to put it as a question of common sense, whether it would be pos- 

 sible to devise any mode of punishing school children at once more 

 fatuous, more pernicious, or more opposed to every principle of science 

 and morality, than are the modes which are now most generally in 

 vogue. Consider for a moment the practice of giving " impositions." 



