Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-07-26
School Furniture That Is Fast
Making a Generation of StoOp-
ShOuldered People.
TOURS THROUGH THE TWO CITIES
And Talks With Aggrieved and 0Dservant
Parents Show Where a Great
Evil Is Allowed.
WHAT DOCTORS THINK OF THE MATTER.
They Say Many Diseases are Contracted at Poorly
Arranged School Desks

During vacation it might be good time
to arrange the desks in the schools to accom-
modate pupils of different ages" said an
East End mother yesterday. ''It is no un-
common sight during the school terms to see
crowds of boys and girls trooping to and
from school, their satchels slung over their
shoulders and all keeping up perfect Babel
of voices, in which it is impossible to dis
tinguish one word from another. Some ap-
pear to be possessed with an, extraordinary
degree of good spirits and healthy vigor,
while others carry an air of depression on
THAR pale faces, and their bent shoulders
and dropping heads illustrate the type of
hard students.
ut is not so many years ago when school
boys and school girls made up the most
lusty portion of the young people of our
country. The boys were then strong and
big generally, and the girls had a COM
plexion and buxomness that was pleasant to
look upon. and which is now rarely found
outside of the remote rural districts. The
old people of to-day who were young people
then will tell that they assImilated just as
much erudite lore in those times as our
school boys and girls do to-day under all the
present vast Improvements in educational
systems. 1t was an exceptional thing then
that boy or girl should grow delicate and
puny and bent from his course of education
in the public schools. To-day strong,
healthy-looking school boys and girls are so
rarely found among the pupils of the public
schools that they form an exception to the
general class of school children in the
country.
WHAT BREAKS so MANY BACKS.
"What is the reason of this and why chill
dren start in to school in apparently per-
feet health and come out with broken-down
physiques and aged-looking beyond their
years, are questions which fathers and moth
ers are asking themselves every day, with
out the appearance of being able to arrive
at anything like satisfactory solution.
1.-The school boards have tried to probe
the matter. They have instituted various
reforms in the construction of school build
ings, the systems OF teaching, the subjects to
be taught, the hours of school sessions, the
text books, the furniture of the schoolrooms,
etc., etc, and yet the pupils grow up with
pale faces full of solid intellectually, deli
cate frames, so that live, rosy-faced boy or
girl among them is like a green spot on a
sand hill. That the reason is not to be
found wholly in the amount of learning that
is pumped into the pupils is sufficiently
clear from the fact that instead OF there be-
ing a tendency to decrease the number of
school studies, there appears to be desire to
increase the number of studies.
''The line in which the greatest effort to
turn out reasonably perfect human beings
from the schools has been made is in the con-
struction of the buildings, improved furni-
ture and better ventilation, and it is rec
ognition of the fact that the mechanical
appliances and structure of the school
houses have been up to the standard of
other improvements.
"Hygieneis one of the sciences with which
teachers now are supposed to be learnedly
familiar, and it is supposed to form one of
the studies in which the teachers shall in
struct their pupils. Hygiene may be called
the science of prolonging life by inculcat-
ing the principles of the preservation of
health. Its application in the schoolroom
is in proper ventilation of the rooms and in
instructing the pupils how to sit erect in
their seats"
INSPECTED AND MEASURED.
To ascertain whether the seats and desks
in the schoolrooms of the two cities were so
constructed as to enable the pupils to pur-
sue their studies there according to the best
hygienical principles, several schools were
visited yesterday by DISPATCH reporters
and statistics were taken on that point.
Al ID Il C.l-
Ninth and Tenth wards. there are Is rooms,
running from the lowest grades,
where the little tots are taught
their A B Cs, to the grammar grades
where the pupils are prepared for the High
School. There was but one room in the
building-and it was learned that that room
was rarely used during the school session
in which the seats and desks were not ma
chimes for turning out crooked-backed,
round-shouldered and dropping chill
dren. That exceptional room was on the
third floor.
The seats were made with curved backs
and bottoms and seated four pupils each.
Instead of desks in front of each pupil there
was an arm rest, which widened out toward
the end on the right of each pupil, and
which could be used either as a
writing desk or a book rest. II the pupil
were left-handed, however, be was left
without anything to write upon. These
seats were comfortable to sit upon, and en-
abled the pupil to write or study or read
without having to bend his spine in the
effort There were five of these desks,
which would seat 20 pupils.
Room 9, on the same floor, was the high
est graded room in the building, and the
oldest and largest scholars are to be found
there. The seats there were the old-fash-
ioned double seats, which were long ago
tabooed as gone out of use. The desks
were % inches from the floor and 13 inches
above the seats. From the edge of the
desks to the back of the seats there was a
space of 20 inches, and here is where the
pupils obtain their round shoulders,
crooked backs and hollow chests. A DIS
PATCH reporter sat at one of the desks and
went through the pantomime of writing.
To do so and sit erect against the back of
the seat at the same time, he was obliged to
straighten out his arm to nearly its full
length. To get nearer the desk, he was
Obliged to bend over or get on the edge of
the seat. If he were a small boy going to
school there he would be bent over that
desk from the beginning to the end of the
school session.
WHERE THE FAULT LIES.
It was easy to see where the principal
fault was. The desk and the seat were too
far removed from each other. The desk
should be ten inches nearer the seat to en-
able the pupil to sit comfortably erect and
use his desk without doubling up his body,
or requiring a long-range telescope to see
what was upon the desk.
The room would seat GA pupils, As the
reDortaP eat there II occurred to his mind