The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1900-12-15
NERVOUSNESS.
Miss Lille A. Williams De-
plores Condition Of Human
Nerves in America.
WHAT SCHOOL CHILDREN READ
Miss Connolly Gives Extracts
From Pupils Favorite
Books.

/
/ The beautiful array of Kindergarten,
| primary, grammar and High School
| teachers in Schools No. and No. yes
terday afternoon at the Teachers Insti-
| tute convention for Hudson County had
| greatly diminished both in numbers and
1 beauty compared with the morning ses-
| sion. Those pretty teachers did not put
on their prettiest smiles, cleaks and bon
| nets to listen all day to lectures, and the
| majority of the younger portion spent the
afternoon in personal pleasure-Christmas
shopping and so on.
| In School No. /, where were assembled
the kindergarten and primary teachers,
Miss Lille A. Williams opened the pro-
gramme with a continuation of her talk
of the morning on the Nervousness of
Children" She said that the condition of
| the teacher was just as essential to the
| salvation Of the school as the condition
of the pupil. The old system of teaching,
she explained, was so exacting in the
discharge of the teachers duties, that her
nervous system was soon broken down.
She suggested in the treatment of ner-
vous children that pupils with twitching
| of the face or like affiction should be
seated where they could not be observed
| by other children; if they had a catch in
their voice they should be made to recite
their lessons before or after school hours.
All children with ST. Vitus dance or sub
| ject to fits of various kinds should be
kept out of school. The laws of nervous
health were not to be trifed with, and
lch foIk 10, h.
America there were more cases of ner-
vous prostration than in any other civil
lied nation of equal population.
The nervous child, she explained, made
the nervous man whose brain was unequal
to the daily struggle of life and he breaks
down to join the army in the insane asy-
lum, and concluded with a quotation from
DR.. Halls Gospel of Wholesomeness,
What profteth it a child if he gain the
whole world and lose his own health.''
Miss Louise Connolly, who had also
spoken in the morning. gave an address on
Literature" in which she told of a trip
she had taken to New England, and be-
ing anxious to ascertain what book the
school children were reading, stepped in
to book shop, where she found the
boys favorfte was skinny on the Road
and the girls, 1.-THE Three Churns' Re-
turn.s In the former the hero Skinny ex-
claims. by Jerusalem! hope 1 may be
horn swoggled and cut into shoe paste if
don't get out of town this week.
There were no oaths here she said,
''but the perusal would lead many young
boy to go to the gambling hells in New
York in imitation of the hero who fieeced
them out of a gold watch and $780,"
The other book was also quoted. 1t told
Of two girls and boy driving in a coach.
The boy turned to the girl with .syour
pardon, little sister, he was about to say
sweetheart, I fear have been discourteous
and as he helped her out of the coach he
seized her hand and kissed it,
The speaker regretted that teachers
were paid by taxpayers to teach pupils to
read such stuff. A young girl has her
miniature mind filled withthougts of love
and the opposite sex, and is on the down
ward path.
When you are tired out and go home
in the afternoon said Miss Connolly, ad-
dressing the teachers direct, ''if there is
copy of Emerson's Essays and one
of Rosa Nouchet Carey on the table
which one do you pick up?'
Rose Nouchet Carey could be heard
in whispers all over the room
Yes continued Miss Connolly, eyou
like the coarse print and short para
graphs which lead the mind down to the
swamp where is the miasma of intellec-
tual DEATH
In choosing books, she said, one should
not judge by the cover, because Ouida
was bound as well as E. P. Roe, and even
the same authors wrote both good and
bad books. In the Sunday school library.
she said, it was just as hard to choose. be-
cause there were both good and bad books
even here, and then went into discussion
on the Elsie books.
She did not believe in marking children
for hardness, and could not see why a
boy should be made to leave his last
boy should have some incentive for the
sacrifice. She had once tried the plan of
ten minute silent session, but the boys
all showed good judgmgent and got there
at 900. Keeping them an hour after
school did not make any difference. Then
she hit upon the plan of reading ten
minute extracts from David Copperfield,
with a picture of Dickens on the board.
The boys always chose looking at the
picture rather than the teacher, but the
plan succeeded admirably.
In School No. 8 the following pro-
gramme was carried out:-sProfessional
Improvement of the Teacher" G. G.
Rounds; intermission; Education Through
the Conscious Study of Beauty" Edward
Howard Griggs.