THE AUSTRALIAN CHILD BODY. 



775 



duties of citizenship, would be inevitably forced to the conclusion that 

 they were a celibate and childless race. 



Since Mr. Spencer's day a vast alteration has taken place in 

 school methods and in pedagogic study. The study of the child brain 

 as interpreted by many learned educationists, and not a few medical 

 specialists, has become an integral part of pedagogic ti'aining. The 

 newest product of a Training College will fire off abstruse psycho- 

 logical terms on the slightest provocation, and will demonstrate the 

 Herbei-tian reasonings with excellent aptitude. The beauty of the 

 child-brain bursting into blossom like a garden of flowers is a never- 

 ending subject for rhapsody by any student of the New Education. 

 With a little prompting the enthusiast will readily admit that 

 educationists are the builders of the ship of the nation, and that upon 

 the faithfulness and skill of their work will depend the safety and 

 progress of the race. 



Nevertheless, if one applies Mr. Spencer's classification to the 

 curriculum and metliods of teacliing in almost any Australian school, 

 the ornamental knowledges will be found to occupy at least nine-tenths 

 of the available brainspace. A cynic may derive some quiet amuse- 

 m'ent from checking the school work against the morbidity tables of 

 the local hospital. Anybody with the cause of Australia at his heart 

 will rapidly doff his cynicism for quite another feeling as he 

 recognises that duinng the eight years or so in which the youthful 

 citizen is undergoing his initial preparation — or is starting his civic 

 career, as many educationists will have it — he is given practically r,'0 

 instruction in an}i:hing which will tend to protect his body. As nmsi- 

 tenths of these children will depend on their bodies, not upon thc./r 

 brains, for their happiness and success in after life, it scarcely appears 

 reasonable to adopt the methods of the Stoic philosophers in pi'epar- 

 ing them for that after life. It is not economical — for example, all 

 the clay modelling, the nature study, the Sloyd-work, the recessional 

 hymns, the singing, reading, v.-riting, arithmetic, English, poetry, 

 geography, history, and other lessons which young Australia is 

 apparently believed to require as a necessary equipment for fighting 

 the battle of life, may be soon wasted by fatal typhoid fever for want 

 of sufficient knowledge to keep flies away from his food. The know 

 ledge could be easily taught as nature study. How many teachers 

 can explain the peculiar utility of a fly's foot as an effective filth- 

 transferrer, and indicate simjile and effective means whereby it can 

 be prevented from Avashing those feet in the milk-jug after a con- 

 stitutional in a neighbour's closet pan? The girl who in a few years 

 will produce her first young Australian will find her years of com- 

 pulsory education of veiy little value in feeding and looking after 

 that particularly helpless and easily damaged individual. It is 

 useless to argue that such knowledge will '"' come to her by instinct." 

 It will not, any moi'e than dressmaking or playing the piano will. 



Similarly in many other aspects of everyday matter-of-fact 

 existence it is not admitted in practice that life is now an artificial 

 affair, that the business of keeping the body in good working order 

 must be learnt. The artificiality is freely taught, but not the means 

 of overcoming its bad effects on the individual. The educationist is 

 in very truth the builder of the ship, but he is putting in a vast 



