SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF RECREATION. 789 



It is not supposed that copying out a stated number of lines is an 

 economical way of gaining information, so that even the plea of im- 

 parting instruction can not be advanced as a benefit to compensate the 

 evil of the method. And this evil is a very serious one. The object 

 of all our methods in education ought to be, as much as possible, to 

 economize effort ; the mental energies ought, as it were, to be nursed, 

 so that by their exercise they should lay up the largest possible store 

 of information. But the mental energy which is expended in writing 

 out an imposition is wholly, or almost wholly, profitless ; and the 

 amount of energy so expended is considerable especially in the case 

 of long impositions. For the whole punishment of writing out an im- 

 position consists in the tediousness of the process ; and tediousness, 

 by the painful class of emotions which it arouses, is the most weari- 

 some or exhausting of the influences that consume the nervous ener- 

 gies. It may therefore be said that in whatever degree the writing of 

 an imposition is a punishment, in that degree are the nervous energies 

 dissipated in a wholly useless manner. Therefore, to say nothing of 

 the actual time that is wasted in the writing of impositions, or of the 

 slovenly style of handwriting which this mode of punishment induces, 

 my great objection to the mode of punishment is that, by consuming 

 the nervous energies in a wholly profitless manner, it stands in direct 

 antagonism with all the principles that I am endeavoring to inculcate. 

 And still more foolishly wrong does this method of punishment become 

 when it is united, as it generally is, with another and still more objec- 

 tionable method I mean the custom of imprisoning children during 

 playtime with the express purpose of denying them healthful recrea- 

 tion. To shut up a child already weary with work in an empty school- 

 room under a depressing sense of disgrace, is something worse than 

 cruel ; to the child it is a wrongful injury that does not admit of be- 

 ing justified by any argument ; and, in running counter to all the 

 principles both of physiology and of education, it is a sin against 

 society. In most cases the time during which a child is thus confined 

 is the only time in the twenty-four hours that there is an opportunity 

 afforded for any recreation at all ; so that, when the weary time of 

 solitude is over and school again meets, the unfortunate victim resumes 

 work with energies doubly exhausted. Even if a child had the stamina 

 of a man, it would be impossible that mental work resumed under 

 such circumstances could be profitable the faculty of memory being 

 quickly affected by mental fatigue. But, as a matter of fact, owing 

 to the great rapidity of physiological changes in a growing organism, 

 a child has much more need of frequent exercise than has an adult ; 

 so that, whether we look at the matter from a sanitary or from an 

 educational point of view, I think it is impossible too strongly to con- 

 demn the practice of confining school children during playtime. 



Of course I shall be asked what modes of punishment I would sug- 

 gest as substitutes for the two which I have thus so strongly con- 



