Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1858-12-04
THREE HOURS SCHOOLING IN A DAY.

The teachers association Of Middlesex county
have adopted resolutions expressing the opinion
that children in the primary schools should not
be confined to study in their seats more than
three houre per day. and if the convenience Of
their parents requires hatthey should be under
their teachers tuition longer time each day,
the additional hours should be devoted to ex-
ercises calculated to promote tho moral, the So
cial and physical welfare Of the pupils. They
also suggest that as pupils advance in years, it
is proper to increase the hours of study. This
is true and reasonable doctrine, and we honor
the Middlesex teachers for having the good
sense and the courage to proclaim it.
There is absolute cruelty in compelling young
children to sit in school six hours every day
1t is an outrage upon human nature in the girls
tie, to the comfort and health of which constant
movement is necessary. There are many child
rem who cannot be kept still in their seats by any
amount Of punishment. They are not worse
than other children, but only more active, and
to punish them for it and palsy their mercurial
limbs by stress of bodily fear is just and cruel.
The difficulty which most teachers find in main
tanning order and decorum among the children
in which lies the great labor and constant vex-
alton of the school-room-arises from this war
upon human nature, and it is hardship for the
teacher as well as the pupil. Half an hour is a
great while for young child to sit still in one
position. If he succeeds in doing it, it is by O
painful effort and at the end of the thirty min.
utes his little bones and muscles will ache and
he will feel uneasy all over. Under this exper.
ience he will soon come to hate school, II will
be prison to him, and he will never outgrow
the natural prejudice against study thus acquir
ed. The most that he knows about it is that i
is a "weariness to the flesii'-we wonder if Sol
omon went to district school and sat on
hard plank when he was "a little shaver'-ant
the association of pain and WEAKNESS and com
pulsatory martvrdom Of all the youthful instincts
with study will never be outgrown.
We suppose parents, mothers especially
would streuously object to a diminution of schoo
hours. 1t is a great relief to them to get rid o
the noise and confusion of the young ones fo
six hours of the twelve or fourteen in whicl
they are alive and kicking. So we suppos
school must continue to keep six hours da,
for the young children well as the older ones
But the needfu relief to the teacher and schol
ars can be obtained by varying the exercises
Half the time of school devoted to literary ex
ercises is enough for children from five to eigh
years old. The balance should be devoted, a
the Middlesex teachers suggest, to moral, soca
and physical exercises Especially the latter
we should say. Music. calisthenics, and a com
ical movements, tending to give the children
grace and ease of posture and motion-and W
should say dancing outright, if it were not 70
the violent religious prejudice against "the poe
try of motion, could be introduced at inter
walls of an hour or so, and not only given tn
children relief of body and mind, but lay tn
foundation of a sound pysical training in the fu
ture.
We should be glad to see this system intro
duced into all our primary schools. We do no
believe the children would suffer by it in thei
learning, and we are confident they would gai
immensely by it in physical comfort and heatl
in beauty and grace, and what is of no sma
consequence in attachment to the school-room
They would soon love school as the place c
their peasantest recreations as well as their frs
requirements in useful learning, and there woul
be no sweeter sound to them than the schoc
bell.