522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



utes of free play. With adults application may profitably con- 

 tinue for longer periods, but even here the rhythm of concentration 

 and relaxation must be observed in order that effort may have the 

 most fruitful issue. There would assuredly be less dullness, care- 

 lessness, and disorder in our schools, high and low, and in our homes, 

 if this law were observed in the arrangement of the activities of 

 daily life. The writer knows of a normal school where the work 

 begins at half past eight in the morning and continues until one 

 o'clock, with a pause of only ten minutes in the middle of the ses- 

 sion. During the passage of classes from room to room at the close 

 of recitations, monitors are placed in the halls to prevent any ex- 

 hibition of freedom in communicating with one another or in the 

 movements of the body. Here there is little if any relief to the 

 attention, since pupils are under practically the same constraint as 

 when reciting in Latin, Greek, or geometry. This enthronement 

 of discipline, which we all seem natively to think necessary that we 

 may prevent the reversionary tendencies of youth, is sure to breed 

 in some measure the very maladies stupidity and disorder which 

 various agencies in society are striving to cure by all sorts of for- 

 mulae. 



In the normal, well-organized adult brain the various areas are 

 closely knit together by association pathways or fibers,* which ren- 

 ders it possible to employ in particular direction the energies gener- 

 ated over large regions. But this development comes relatively 

 late and is not fully completed under about thirty-three years of 

 age, it is now believed. It is in a measure, then, impossible for 

 the young child to utilize the energies produced in one part of the 

 brain in activities involving remote sections. One who observes 

 little children in their spontaneous activities can not fail to note 

 evidences in plenty in illustration of this principle. It should be 

 apparent, then, why a school programme so arranged that a lesson 

 in writing is followed by one in written language, this by written 

 number, and this in turn by written spelling, or possibly by a writ- 

 ten reproduction of a lesson in Nature or literature, is admirably 

 suited to exhaust the overused areas of pupils' brains, whereupon the 

 mental and physical effects of fatigue make their appearance. In 

 one of the large cities of our country the amount of time spent 

 in writing was calculated for all the grades in the schools, and it 

 was found that at least one hour was required of the children in 

 every grade, and in the fourth and fifth grades they were engaged 

 for two hundred minutes every day in writing in some form 

 or other. 



* Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain, chapters ix to xiii. 



