The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1897-02-12
Take Care of the Children.

An eXhange says: Take the school
room and discover to your dismay
how many ailments of children can
be traced directly to overheating,
overcrOwding, poor ventilation, bad
drainage and defective lighting.
Ask yourself if it is not a disgrace to
civilization that maladies should
exist, familiarly known and spoken
of as "schOol-bred diseases?" Ought
we not to blush when we seat our
children, or those of anybody else,
on a bench or at a desk where it is
impossible to work with the body in
a proper position? Ought we to al
low for Il moment in our schools,
any system of writing which is like
ly to produce curvature of the spine
and which does produce it in great
number of cases? Have we not
cause to be ashamed if we force chill
dren legally to attend the public
schools and then provide them with
books so badly printed that they
permanently iniure the eyes?
These are some of the indictments
as to books and schOOl-rooms. Let
us see how we may be judged when
we consider school curricula and
systems Of management. Note, of
course, that all of these are not by
any means bad, many of them being
well suited to some children in fact,
but the danger in their application
lies in that they are not suited to all.
The great fault in our school system
is that we try to educate children in
battallions. We do not individual
ize sufficiently, and the one sweep
ing reform which we hope that child
study may make, if it does nothing
else, is to open peoples eyes to the
fact that you cannot bring up chill
dren as you can string beans, plant
ing them at exactly the same depth,
furnishing them with the same fer
tilizers, and providing them on the
same day with twelve dozen beam
poles to run on all of the same
length and diameter and stuck
straight into the ground at rigidly
mathematical intervals.
Numbers of so-called "dull" and
backward" children are such only
because of their impaired senses,
and when this is recognized, a ply
sican's advice obtained and condi-
tions changed to meet their needs,
they become as bright as others.
Many of the school records of such
children are intensely pathetic in
the glimpses they give of the long
and bitter suffering which these mis-
understood human creatures must
have endured before the new science
came to their aid.
Not defective children alone, how
ever, suffer from bad school meth
DDS, for which, by-the-way, we are
more to blame than the teachers. 1t
is well known that nervously over
wrought child, either in school or at
home, becomes weak-willed and va.
cillating, and that mental excite
ment and strain, such as are caused
by high-pressure examinations and
rigid marking, are marvellous pro-
ducers of chorea and hysteria. Con-
tinued over-presure in childhood
means weakened possibilities in
adult life. Forcing child prema
turely into the conventional studies
of the school may cause arrested de-
velopment, and, finely, out-of-schoO
study, 50 universally required, il
most injurious in the brain-weari
ness and loss of sleep it occasions
A fine, strong, well-balanced chile
can, it is true, go through almos
any system of education and com,
out unscratched, but how about thOs,
who are mentally, physically OIL
morally handicapped for the ordeal,
Is it our desire that "even the leas
of these little one shall perish?"
Y