1S6 REPORT— 1860. 



vals of relief. After the mid-day meal the capacity of voluntary attention is gene- 

 rally reduced by one-half, and not more than two half-hour lessons requiring mental 

 effort can be given with profit. 



The capacity of attention is found to be greater in cold weather than in hot, in 

 winter than in summer. 



I collect that the good ventilation, lighting, and warming of a school-room will 

 augment the capacity of attention of the pupils by at least one-fifth, as compared 

 with that of the children taught in school-rooms of the common construction. 



I also collect, that the capacity of attention varies with bodily strength and 

 weakness. It is reported to me that school-boys, of nearly the same ages and con- 

 ditions, of the same school-rooms, and under the same tuition, being weighed, and 

 divided into two classes, the light and the heavy, the attainments, as denoted by 

 the number of marks obtained, were found to be the greatest with the heaviest, 

 that is to say, those of the greatest health and bodily strength. 



These were chiefly of town-bom children, of common habits. The robust 

 children of rural districts, of less cultivated habits of attention, are found to be 

 slower in receiving ideas ; but with cultivation they are brought up to equal 

 capacities of attention, and to greater retentiveness of the matter taught, than the 

 common classes of town-born children. 



There are differences in the capacities of attention in different races, or in the 

 habits of attention created previously to the school-period by parents of different 

 races. The teacher of a large school in Lancashire, who had acted as a school- 

 teacher in the southern counties, rated the capacity of attention of the native Lanca- 

 shire children as 5 to 4, as compared with those in Norfolk. In other instances the 

 differences were wider. 



Experienced teachers have testified to me that they can and do exhaust the 

 capacity of attention, to lessons requiring mental effort, of the great average of 

 children attending the primary schools in England, in less than three hours of 

 daily book instruction, namely, two hours in the morning, and one hour after the 

 mid-day meal. 



Infants are kept in school, and the teacher is occupied in amusing and instruct- 

 ing them, for live or six hours, but the duration of mental effort in the aggregate 

 bears only a short proportion to the whole time during which they are kept 

 together. So in schools for children of more advanced ages. Even the smaller 

 amount of mental effort in infant schools is, however, subject to dangerous excess. 

 I am assured by a teacher in the first infant school established in Scotland, that he 

 did not know a pre-eminently sharp child who had in after life been mentally 

 distinguished. 



In common schools, on the small scale, the children will frequently be not more 

 than one-half the time under actual tuition ; and in schools deemed good, often 

 one-third of their time is wasted in changes of lessons, writing, and operations 

 which do not exercise, but rather impair the receptive faculty. 



It may be stated generally that the psychological limit of the capacity of attention 

 and of profitable mental labour is about one-half the common school-time of 

 children, and that beyond that limit instruction is profitless. 



This I establish in this way. Under the Factories Act, whilst much of the in- 

 struction is of an inferior character and effect, from the frustration of the provi- 

 sions of the original bill, there are now numerous voluntary schools, in which the 

 instruction is efficient. The limit of the time of instruction required by the statute 

 in these half-time schools for factory children is three hours of daily school teaching, 

 the common average being six in summer and five in winter. There are also 

 pauper district industrial schools, where the same hours, three daily, or eighteen 

 in the week, or the half-time instruction, are prescribed ; which regulation is in 

 some instances carried out on alternate days of school teaching and on alternate 

 days of industrial occupation. Throughout the country there are now mixed schools, 

 where the girls are employed a part of the clay in needlework, and part of the day 

 in book instruction. Now I have received the testimony of school inspectors and 

 of school teachers, that the girls fully equal in book attainments the boys who are- 

 occupied during the whole day in book instruction. The preponderant testimony is 

 that in the same schools, where the half-time factory pupils are instructed with the 

 full-time day scholars, the book attainments of the half-time scholars are fully equal 



