Evening star., 1925-02-15
BY MRS. HENRY CASH.

- OMETIMES a trivial occurrence
serves to reveal a momentous
truth. The old story runs that
~ the fall of an apple led to
Newton's discovery of the law
| of gravitation. To compare a smaller
thing with a greater, a few foreign
words spoken at random in the bed
room of my children revealed to me
| that l could literally make the place
a night school. l found / could teach
| them while they slept / haveAbeen
doing it regularly ever since, and
| many of my friends have adopted the
| same revolutionary practice.
That night I had put the children
to bed as usual. 1t was Autumn. and
frosty. After they fell asleep I lay
down beside them to keep warm.
Two hours later 1 reused from doze
to find my husband home from the
late session of law school "Tengo
| mucho frio,' he said to me. CT am
very cold.D
Not knowing any Spanish then,
asked what the words meant. But
he only repeated them teasingly sew
eral times, ''Tengo mucho frio. Tengo
| mucho frio.'' 1t was all done very
quietly. The children were not dis
turoed sufficiently even to make them
stir in their sleep.
girl, only years old, began to chant
the short phrase over and over. L
found she did not know what she
was saying. She was merely de-
lighted with the linguistic novelty
that had come tripping to her tongue
from somewhere. But from where?
Could it possibly be that in her sleep
she had heard and learned her IA
ther's words?
1 was full of wonder and excite
| ment. To me it had always been
torment to see so much time. the
very fabric of life, consumed in the
unconscious existence of sleep. Was
here an opportunity to redeem for
a good purpose portion of those
lost hours?
Without delay I began experiment.
ing. Many Of my earlier efforts were
! blank failures. But others were sue
cessful. Gradually 1 worked out a
method for imparting knowledge to
my children while they slept. Such
instruction, 1 may say at this point,
requires no effort from the pupil.
does not disturb slumber in any
recognizable way, and is in fact as
easy as the act of sleeping itself.
Then, too, those hours of the night
are ideal for such a purpose. There
Is no noise to distract pupil or teach
er. The children's attention does not
wander, nor do I have to take them
away from a favorite pastime. What
1 say to them is heard and accepted
in it's entirety. Their conscious
minds are asleep with them. / meet
no resistance and have no inertia to
overcome.
MY "slumber pedagogy" takes the
AvA form of simple little lectures
which / usually begin a couple of
hours after the children have en-
tered the realm of Nod. Those first
few hours of sleep being the soundest
of the night, there is little danger of
rousing the involuntary students, and
it is also very convenient time for
most mothers to allot to this use.
I enter the bedroom quietly and
deliver the lecture in soft but easily
audible tone. How can any tone be
audible to q sleeping child and still
not wake 1t, does some reader ask?
Well, sleep is not like death. 1t is
not a complete suspension of bodily
activity. Our lungs breathe, our
hearts pump blood, all the vast func-
tions which sustain the vital needs
of the body go on just the same.
They lie outside conscious control
We only become aware of them un-
der such abnormal conditions as ILL
ness.
Sleep is not even a. complete sus-
pension of mental activity We have
two minds-one conscious, the other
subconscious. The latter never sleeps,
and that is the part of my children to
which 1 deliver my little lectures
while their bodies and their conscious
minds are sunk In deep slumber.
But how, ycu repeat, can they hear