CHILD 



1325 



CHILD 



In this development the school, the home 

 and the playground are almost equally im- 

 portant. It is the duty of every parent and 

 every teacher to see that all three are forces 

 for progress and not for retrogression. Under 

 the headings EDUCATION; CHILD STUDY, and 

 other related topics referred to at the close of 

 this article, this phase of a normal child's edu- 

 cation is treated in greater detail in these 

 volumes. Space will be given here only to a 

 brief treatment of some of the conditions 

 which must be guarded against. 



Physically-Defective Children. It is rapidly 

 becoming the practice to have physical inspec- 

 tion in all public schools. This is of prime 

 importance, because it has been found in many 

 cases that children who are considered obsti- 

 nate, stupid or positively bad are partly blind 

 or deaf, or are the victims of serious nervous 

 trouble. The eyes and the ears are the prin- 

 cipal channels through which knowledge comes, 

 so the child who cannot hear and see perfectly 

 is seriously handicapped. He may not know 

 of his trouble, unless there is actual pain, and 

 for this reason his parents and teachers should 

 be alert for signs. Defective eyesight can be 

 discovered by noting a child's position when 

 he is reading or writing. If his eyes are either 

 more or less than a foot from the book he 

 is reading, he should be given special tests 

 with a set of cards, which can be bought for 

 ten cents, to determine what is the trouble. 

 Nearsight, farsight and astigmatism are the 

 most common ailments (see EYE; BLINDNESS; 

 ASTIGMATISM). 



By first determining, by means of a watch, 

 how far a normal child can hear, the standard 

 for testing the child suspected of deafness may 

 be fixed (see EAR). If a child is dull or does 

 not pay attention, or if he asks constantly to 

 have things repeated, he should at once be 

 tested for ear trouble. And it should be re- 

 membered that the purpose of testing children 

 in these ways is always to discover whether 

 a doctor's care is needed. 



Fatigue. Complete fatigue, or nervous ex- 

 haustion, is almost as difficult to recover from 

 as a severe illness. For this reason children 

 must be watched carefully and guarded against 

 overwork, too long hours of work, too great 

 worry over their tasks, not enough work, or 

 work that has not sufficient variety, for all 

 these conditions bring about a state of fatigue 

 which is likely to result in serious harm. The 

 great trouble with our public schools is that 

 the classes are large and the teacher has not 



the time to give every child sufficient indi- 

 vidual attention. This, then, must be the duty 

 of parents. It is essential that they be on the 

 lookout for signs of nervous or bodily fatigue. 



In order to avoid excessive fatigue a child 

 must be interested in his work, and he must 

 find a great deal of variety in it. His hours 

 of work must not be too long; he must not 

 do much outside work; he must get plenty of 

 play, plenty of sleep and plenty of good, 

 nourishing food. It is the duty of parent*, 

 wherever possible, to cooperate with the 

 teacher in securing the best working conditions 

 within their power for the child light, well- 

 ventilated school rooms, a comfortable desk 

 and seat, adequate teaching equipment and 

 well-kept, spacious playgrounds. The com- 

 fortable seat and desk are of vital importance, 

 because the body of a growing child is very 

 plastic, and a wrong sitting position held for 

 several hours out of every day will change and 

 deform his body. 



Signs of Fatigue. The signs of fatigue are 

 inattention, restlessness and irritability. Tests 

 have shown that a person who is very tired it 

 also not as sensitive to touch, that his eye 

 cannot distinguish colors as well as when he 

 is rested and that his muscular control is im- 

 paired, for he will be more clumsy and awk- 

 ward in moving about. He is more likely, too, 

 to be impertinent and undisciplined than when 

 he is rested. A good night's sleep and plenty 

 of wholesome food ought always to restore a 

 child's good temper and energy. If it does not, 

 then the conditions under which he works and 

 I'hys must be changed. 



The Exceptional Child. There is a large 

 class of children who are constituted differently 

 from the average child and for whom no pro- 

 vision is made in the public schools. There if 

 the exceptionally-bright child; there is the 

 eccentric child, who has marked individuality 

 without being either inventive or original; 

 there are the feeble-minded child, the backward 

 child and the wayward child. Of course til 

 children vary a little from the average, be- 

 cause there is actually no such individual per- 

 son as the average child. It is simply a Unn 

 given to a composite of all the statistics on 

 children. Up to a certain point thii variation 

 from the average has no significance, but be- 

 yond it we have the abnormal or exceptional 

 child who is so great a problem in the school*. 

 Institutions are now solving the problem of 

 feeble-minded children and those difficult to 

 manage, and in smaller classes and by special 



