The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-22
BUILDING UP THE BABIES.

From the N. Y. World.
The New York Association for the Advance
ment of Science and Art has now fixed its
contemplative eye on the innocents of our
public schools. In view of this alarming fact,
it becomes necessary to assure the fifty thou
sand fond mothers who have conided the
intellectual training of their darlings to the
State and left their physical culture to ma
ture, that there is really no danger. What
ever may be the inroads of science elsewhere
upon our inalienable evils, there is not the
slightest probability that these venerable and
theoretical gentlemen will so far depart from
their usual cosy habits as to pursue the
unresisting babies with science prepense.
They have, it is true, deemed the physical
welfare of the children of sufficient import
ance to call forth long appeal to the honora-
BILE the Board of Education, in which they
take infinite pains to assure the world that
"the laws of health are SO beautiful that the
pleasure of contemplating them, even indie
pendently of their utility, is a tenfold reward
for all the labor of their acquisition" but,
while we must all subscribe to this proper
sentiment we are not yet sufficiently edu-
Gated to feel any strong desire to have our
infants studying their own soft anatomies and
peering into their other physiological secrets
now wisely hidden from the most of us by
good health
Interesting as it might be to have four-year
olds discoursing on the relations of the sexes,
and able to tell us to scruple how much
blood is sent out of their left ventricles into
their little heads, there is q too strong and
proper prejudice in favor of having them
kicking up their heels in blissful manufacture
of corpuscles out in the sunshine, in the deep
est ignorance of blood and stomach and such
other viscera as never make themselves
known except in disease. If physical health
must underlie all intellectual and possibly
moral strength in q community, there are
some practical questions associated with our
system Of education any one of which will
outweigh in value the elegant theories of the
New York Association for the Advancement
of Science and Art. In the first place, it
might be well to inquire whether the younger
scholars are not kept in school too long al
ready, without superadding to their studies
contemplation of the physiological laws of
health.
No small proportion Of the infants in the
public schools of this city are sent there by
mothers who desire only to be relieved of
their care during the day. 1t is unfortunately
the teachers duty to apply to these wards,
without regard to variation in temperament
and constitution, the rules of the vast system
| under which she acts. She is, moreover,
made personally responsible for the intel
| lectual advancement alone of her charges,
! and has every incentive to cram them and
| reStrlCG unen IoI Iuio purpose. Auu w tulS
| the fact that since corporal punishment has
been interdicted, there is no other means of
intimidatng pupils but that of retaining
them in school long after its dismissal (this is
done every day with infants who are close
prisoners from o'clock in the morning till
at night. and it becomes question, well
| worthy the attention of our philosophers,
whether the very intellectual stringency of
the public schools is not already detrimental
to the health of the younger children.
To build up these babies into healthy, in
telligent citizens was the object for which the
schools were established. To carry out the
benefcent idea we do not want them sling
ing clubs and sand-bags in heated rooms SO
much as we want them to have their own
way regularly out of doors. One good game
of tag or ''follow master" in the open air
is worth all the parallel bars and lectures on
physiology that can be provided by contrac-
tors or societies for the advancement of
| Science and Art "