The Children: Some Educational Problems

by Alexander Darroch

Further, our school system, which requires that the child should restrain his instinctive tendencies to action, and for certain hours each day assume a more or less passive and cramped attitude, is also prejudicial to the development and free play of the organs of the body which have entrusted to them the discharge of certain functional activities.

Hence the evil effects of the school itself must be removed or remedied by some means having as their aim the increased functional activity of the respiratory and circulatory systems of the body. And therefore the aim of any system of physical exercises should be not merely increase of bone and development of muscle but also the sustaining and improving of the bodily health of the child by "expanding the lungs, quickening the circulation, and shaking the viscera." This, as we shall see later, is not the only aim of physical education. It may further aid in mental growth and development, and be instrumental in the production of certain mental and moral qualities of value both to the individual and to the community.

Another cause operating in the school to prevent the full and free development of the body is the method of much of the teaching which prevails. A quite unnecessary strain is often put upon the nervous system of the child, and as a consequence a lassitude of body results which physical exercise not only does not tend to remove but actually tends to increase. Methods of teaching which fail to arouse any inherent interest in the attainment of an end of felt value to the child require for the evoking and maintaining of his active attention the operation of some powerful indirect interest, and if persisted in, such methods soon result in the overworking and exhaustion of some one particular system of nervous centres, and in the depletion through non-nutrition of other centres. As a consequence, the child is unable to take any part in physical exercises or in school games with profit to himself. He is content to loaf and do as little as he can. The evil is further intensified if there is also present under or improper nutrition of the child.

Thus along with our schemes for the physical education of the child we must endeavour to improve the methods of our teachers, to make them understand that experiences acquired through the arousing of the direct interest of the child are acquired at the least physiological cost, and to make them realise under what conditions this direct interest can be aroused and maintained. No one indeed wishes to make everything in the school pleasant to the child, or to reduce self-effort to a minimum. But effort and interest are not opposed terms. The effort which is evoked in the realisation of an interest or end of felt value is the only kind of effort which possesses any educational value. The effort which is called forth in the finding and establishing of a system of means towards an end which the child fails to see, and which, as a consequence, rouses no direct interest in its attainment, is an effort which should for ever be banished from the schoolroom. Such, e.g., is the effort evoked in the mere cramming of empty lists of words or dates or facts. Little mental good results from such a process, and the physiological cost is often great.

Let us now consider the conditions necessary for sound physical health, and inquire how far the school agencies can aid in the providing of these conditions: they are mainly four in number. In the first place, in order to secure the full growth and development of the bodily powers, there is needed a sufficiency of food. But mere sufficiency is not enough, the food must be varied in quality in order to meet the various needs of the body, and must be prepared in such a way as to be readily assimilated and rendered fit for the nutrition of both body and mind. Manifestly the home ought to be the chief agent in providing for this need. But, as we have seen in considering the problem of the feeding of school children, the home in many cases is unable adequately to provide for it, and, for a time at least, some method of public provision of good and wholesome food for the children of the poor may be rendered necessary. But much of the physical evil results from improper nutrition; and here the school agencies may do a great deal in the future by furthering the teaching of domestic science to the girls of the working classes. Such teaching, however, if it is to be effective, must be real and must take into account the actual conditions under which their future lives are to be spent. At the present time much of the teaching is valueless, through its neglect of the actual income and resources of the working man's home.

The second condition necessary for bodily growth and development is a sufficiency of pure air. This is necessary, since the oxygen of the air is not only the active agent in the maintenance of life, but is also requisite for the combustion of the foodstuffs conveyed into the body. Much has been done within recent years in our schools to provide well-ventilated classrooms and to instruct teachers how to keep the air of the school pure. Here again the problem is to a large extent a social one, involving the better housing of our great town population.

A third condition necessary for the physical development of the child is sleep sufficient in quantity and good in quality. The weak, puny children in arms to be seen in our crowded slums owe their condition, in many cases, to the want of sound sleep, to the fact that they never are allowed to rest, as much as to the under and improper feeding to which they are subjected. As we shall see in the [next chapter], much might be done by the establishment of Free Kindergarten Schools in our overcrowded districts to alleviate the lot and to better the education of the very young children of the poor.

But in addition to the three conditions already named, which may be classed together as the nutritive factors in bodily growth, there is a fourth condition essential for all development, whether bodily or mental—viz., exercise. For "development is produced by exercise of function, use of faculty.... If we wish to develop the hand, we must exercise the hand. If we wish to develop the body, we must exercise the body. If we wish to develop the mind, we must exercise the mind. If we wish to develop the whole human being, we must exercise the whole human being."[25]

But any form of exercise will not do. The exercise which is given must be given at the right time, must be in harmony with the nature of the organ exercised, and must be proportioned to the strength of the organ, if true development is to be attained.

In order to understand this in so far as it bears upon the aims which we should set before us in the physical education of the child, it is necessary that we should understand what modern physiological psychology has to teach us of the nature of the nervous system.