TEE UTILITY OF SCHOOL-RECESSES. 91 



account of freedom from recess-troubles " ; " more time for teachers," 

 etc. ; " less tardiness and absenteeism " ; and less frequent opportu- 

 nities for vicious pupils to come in contact with and corrupt other 

 pupils." Believing that these reasons are unsatisfactory, and that the 

 tendency is a bad one, I propose to offer some general considerations 

 that weigh strongly against it. 



The schools are utilitarian in their aim ; to fit the child for living 

 successfully is the object of their existence. As animal strength is 

 the foundation of all moral and physical welfare, and is the chief 

 condition of success in all the pursuits of life, the future welfare 

 of the child in every way depends upon the normal development of 

 his body. 



An effeminate man is half sick ; and when it comes to any of the 

 severer trials of life, either physical or moral, where great endurance 

 or courage is required, the weakest must inevitably be the first to 

 succumb. This is as true of moral trials as of physical, for moral 

 cowardice often results from physical feebleness. It is to be doubted 

 if anything that is taught in the schools is of so much value to a 

 child that it would not better be foregone than to be obtained by 

 the loss of any physical vigor whatever. Taken in the truest sense, 

 that city has the best schools where the school restraints have least 

 effect upon the physical growth and normal development of the 

 pupils, and not the one where the pupils show the greatest proficiency 

 in acquiring in a memoriter way a few fragments of conventional 

 facts which happen irrationally to pass current for an education. 

 But because in so many schools the test to be applied at the end of 

 the term, or at the end of the course, is the memoriter one, and be- 

 cause no teacher expects her pupils to be examined as to their health, 

 or as to whether they are forming habits of life that will be conducive 

 to healthfulness, it is not to be wondered at that all the plans of the 

 teacher look more to the development of conventional proficiency than 

 to the infinitely more important matter of health. 



Under our present standard for successful teaching, it is a necessity 

 that the teacher bend all her energies to the attainment of those things 

 which are to be measured by a technical school examination, and that 

 the matter of health be entirely ignored ; in fact, it is a thing rather 

 to be shunned, for, as a rule, the nervous, sallow-cheeked, flat-chested 

 boy or girl, with the attenuated skeleton, will vanquish his more robust 

 and healthful brother in one of these examination-jousts ; and that 

 teacher whose school contains the largest per cent of the former class 

 may reasonably expect to obtain the greatest per cent from the ex- 

 amination by the superintendent. Hence it is that the " no-recess " 

 plan will frequently meet with great favor among teachers who are 

 most zealous and honest in doing their duty as they understand it. 



There is already too strong a tendency, under our mode of civili- 

 zation, to form troglodytic habits. This is shown by the number of 



