Keup.—On the Medical Aspects of Education. xli 
perly placed. I understand that, in building schools, the Education Board 
has no system or general plan of lighting, the position of the windows being 
left to the fancy of the architect, who, probably ignorant of the subject, puts 
them in where he thinks they will look best, and of such shape as will add 
most to the architectural effect of the building. In some of the class-rooms 
I have visited, the children who sit in the corners of the room are in such a 
dim light that there must of necessity be a continual strain upon their eyes, 
which cannot fail in time to produce defective sight. The most common 
plan of lighting the class-rooms seems to be, to have a window at one end 
of the room and two or more along one side; the seats are then placed so 
that the children either have their backs to the side where the windows are, 
or their faces; in both cases the effect is bad, because, as I have before said, 
light from behind throws a shade upon the desks, and light from in front is 
exceedingly bad by causing great fatigue to the eyes, owing to the constant 
glare they are exposed to. In one school where the children face the 
windows, I was told by the teacher that when the black-board is used on 
bright days the children complain they cannot see what is written upon it 
owing to the brightness of the light; and so the windows are darkened with 
thick green blinds, which make the end of the room opposite the windows 
too dark to allow of one clearly distinguishing anything. I need hardly 
say that children in this school are subjected to constant straining of the 
eyes—in one case from too much, in the other from too little light, the 
effect of both conditions being to overtax the sight and develope any latent 
tendency to short-sight that may exist, or lay the seeds of it in those other- 
wise healthy. In other schools, the upper part of the windows, which is 
by far the most important part, is darkened, because it would not be in 
keeping with the rest of the building to have them square and with large 
panes. Here the admission of sufficient light is clearly sacrificed to archi- 
tectural taste. 
T now pass on to make a few remarks upon the form of seats and desks. 
The chief faults under this head appear to me to be— 
1. Want of backs to the seats. 
2. Too great distance between the seat and desk. 
3. Want of difference of height of the seat and desk for different 
sized children. 
4. Want of means for altering the slope of the desk for reading and 
writing. 
If there is no back to the seat, and the child is sitting for an hour or 
two at a time, it stands to reason that the muscles which keep the spine 
straight must become tired, and so fail to keep the body upright; it then 
stoops, and the child feeling a sense of weariness puts itself into some un- 
