The education of children and youth in Health is a subject in which women are especially concerned. It is a large subject; it demands not only the introduction of sound sanitary instruction suitable for different ages into all our schoolrooms and colleges, but the creation of a love of such knowledge and the habit of its practical application. But this is not all: our great need—education in Health—implies the confirming and improving the health by means of education. It is not sufficient that the course of studies laid down for children and youth should not injure them—it is also necessary that it should do them positive physical good; they should be stronger, better, and brighter for the hours spent in technical education, or there is something wrong in the plan of education. If lessons produce headache, lassitude, inactivity of functions, if they make children pale, quiet, spiritless, then the lessons are bad; they have done the children an injury, no matter how slight the evil effect appears to be each day; and the injury cannot be remedied by sending them out to play and repeating the same process day after day. A wrong cannot be made right by constantly committing it and then endeavouring to repair it. It cannot be too strongly urged that, unless the plan of education adopted with children does them a positive physical good in all its details, it does them a positive physical harm; it cannot be neutral. This is also true of the youth in college or boarding-school. The same principle is applicable: if the course of study is not positively beneficial to the bodily organization, it is positively injurious. The over-taxed brain cannot be righted by boating and cricketing. The rules which apply to the fully-formed adult organization do not apply to the growing youth, and it could be clearly shown how much moral, as well as physical, harm arises from our failure to recognise the radical difference between the youthful and adult natures.
Education in Health, therefore—not simply theoretic instruction—is what we need to make our children stronger; and it requires such a reverence for health on the part of educators that there shall be a constant endeavour to make every part of instruction strengthen the physical as well as mental nature.
In seeking the best means of imparting sanitary instruction to youth we find that a certain preparation is necessary before anything like a full and direct hygienic education can be given. This preparation must be laid in childhood. A knowledge of the structure and functions of the human body is indispensable; yet young women generally shrink with repugnance from physiological instruction for which they have not been prepared. All reference to bodily functions is unpleasant to them. They have never learned to respect the laws of their organization, and they turn from the subject of physical structure as very repugnant, or a great bore. The tastes of children, however, are of a very different character; the intellect, as shown in untiring curiosity and incessant questioning, is predominant in childhood, and taste for any study may then be formed. Children will receive the elements of comparative and human anatomy and physiology, learn to handle bones and examine structure, not only without disgust, but with extreme interest; and they may thus be prepared for the fuller instruction which they should receive as youths. Everything should be done to cultivate the taste for natural history and science that is latent in almost every child. Their fondness for animals indicates this taste, and the care of animals should be encouraged and directed. The manual of physiology in every schoolroom should be pleasantly written, well printed, and with abundant illustrations. Bright, well-drawn pictures, clean and fresh specimens, shelves and little boxes for collections, should be provided.
To the intellectual training which results in the formation of tastes the formation of healthy habits of life must be added. These habits should be formed without, in general, giving any reason for them. Children should not be taught to reason on matters of Health. They utterly lack the power of proportion which is essential to reason, and they run the risk of becoming morbidly conscientious or hypochondriacal if compelled to reason on these practical matters. It is very important that they should go to sleep early, eat simple food, live in fresh air, and take a great deal of out-door exercise, but it is not desirable that they should know too early why they do these things. The proper time for reasoning on these habits has not arrived, but the healthy habits early formed will gradually become a part of their nature. Habits of self-control and obedience to rules are also an essential part of the moral hygiene of childhood; they prepare the nature for the intelligent obedience to law which should come in later years. Children should not be worried with unimportant observances. The precepts which it is necessary to give them will make more impressions if they are not too numerous; the rules laid down must be wise rules; children are trustful, and their trust must never be abused. If, as they grow older, they learn to recognise the wisdom of the obedience that has been exacted, they will escape that dangerous scepticism which so often comes to youth, who find that their intellectual and moral guides have cheated their youthful trust. Intellectual tastes, healthy habits, and obedience to law being thus formed in childhood, the youth is prepared for that full instruction in health which is adapted to the period where reason is developed.
For the education of youth in health—i.e., in physical strength—and in sanitary knowledge and habits a training college seems to be urgently needed. The acquisition of knowledge, enthusiasm for the study, and a practical realization of it must go hand in hand. Modifications may doubtless be gradually introduced into the ordinary plan of family and school instruction. But if, under the present system of schoolroom discipline, we attempt to instruct young ladies in the laws of health, we are called on to contend with insurmountable obstacles, not only with an utter indifference to all subjects of health and repugnance to many topics connected with it, but with enfeebled powers from a neglected or misdirected childhood, and with vitiated tastes from the substitution of artificial excitements for natural healthy enjoyments; it is also impossible to find the necessary number of teachers inspired with that respect for Divine laws which would give them insight into matters of health and the true order of education. This combination of difficulties makes the task of education in health almost a hopeless one, unless the individual be placed in a fresh educational atmosphere where the objects and methods of education are entirely changed. Health education should train the body—of which the brain forms part—into well-balanced strength, giving full command of the various faculties and power to meet the demands of future life. To accomplish this work the hearty co-operation of the individual is essential; such education cannot be forced from without: it must be accepted by the will. All the mixed motives which act upon human nature are needed to vanquish indifference and excite enthusiasm: large and beautiful arrangements in building and grounds; the sympathy of numbers; the stimulus of honours and rewards; the increased prospect of establishment in life. All the motives which act upon young men, stimulating their zeal in college life, are also needed by young women. The natures, if not identical, are strictly parallel. The broad rules applicable in one case are applicable in the other, and success in education can only be attained when it is adapted to the one common human nature.
Education in health would be best attained by giving prominence to the following subjects: First, the practical study of natural science, including sketching from nature. Second, the practical study of hygiene, which would include the structure and management of houses and households. Third, the direct training of the bodily powers in precision, agility, and strength.
1. The importance of the practical study of natural science in the education of youth can hardly be too strongly urged. The love of nature when strengthened by a knowledge of nature gives occupation, amusement, mental and physical development of the best kind; it is an antidote to the morbid influences of fashion and dissipation; it hinders the premature development of function; it furnishes a basis of intellectual companionship between the sexes, and would prove invaluable to a mother in the education of her children. The power of habits formed in children by their parents are second only to the original type of constitution, and often overpower even the original tendencies; these habits are nevertheless formed by the silent working of influences, hour by hour and day by day, that are invisible and cannot be measured, that seem valueless, taking item by item in the long account, and yet in the aggregate they mould body and soul. A mother may instil the love of reading or the love of dress, she may form the habit of outdoor exercise or the habit of gossip, not by set precept or even formal regulations, but by her own tastes unavoidably moulding the tastes of her children, and flowing out naturally into those external arrangements that reflect the ruling spirit or affections of the individual. Did the mother possess a hearty interest in the wonders of field and forest, of sea and sky, what a treasury of delightful intercourse might be found in every country ramble! A mother’s love, joined to broad tastes and knowledge, would never weary of the ceaseless questioning of childhood; the older the child, the closer and more influential would be the companionship. The holiday by the sea-side or amongst the mountains, so often wasted in idleness or frivolity, might be a rich harvest-time of delightful knowledge drawn from the treasures of land and water.
It is the outdoor study of science and art that must be insisted on with the young—the cultivation of the powers of observation rather than memory—which powers compel the exercise of the muscles and senses. The guiding principle of health education is to follow the order of nature, and place the strengthening of the physical powers not independently of, but in advance of, the mental powers. If the order is reversed, and the immature mind be allowed to tyrannize over the immature body, and disturb the proportion of Nature’s work by withdrawing too much creative force to the exclusive stimulus of the mind, the true relations of mind and body can never be restored, the adult will never receive that ready and capable service that the body should render to the mind. In thus urging the paramount importance of some branches of study, particularly in a girl’s education, it is not intended to exclude all others. Many accomplishments, as well as various branches of knowledge, may be taught in such a way as to conduce to physical and mental health, and all studies may be so arranged and subordinated as to be innocuous. The principle here insisted on is that those studies must predominate and lead in the education of youth which most fully require the exercise of the physical as well as mental nature in their pursuit.
2. The direct study of hygiene involves so large a range of profoundly interesting subjects that it is difficult to display its full importance in a condensed sketch. The creation of a healthy happy home (which all will allow is the legitimate work of a woman) requires comprehensive knowledge. The structure and arrangements of a house adapted to the climate, soil, and wants of a family, including drainage, ventilation, warming, economy of labour; the management of a household in relation to individual wants and to society, including the subjects of food and waste, domestic service, petty trading, the care of the sick and prevention of disease, occupations and amusements—these and many other topics belong directly to the formation of a noble Christian home. These are subjects that men and women have a direct personal interest in. They may be taught in graduation with abundant illustration. The examination of economic museums, exercise in the inspection of houses and neighbourhoods, etc., should be added for advanced students. Every method should be used to impress facts on the memory and excite personal interest. To this end a system of rewards would be useful, whether of prizes or honours. There seems to be no reason why honorary degrees, scholarships, and fellowships should not be bestowed for proficiency in knowledge that relates to the health of mankind, as well as for distinction in classical and mathematical study.
3. The third subject of education in Health is the direct cultivation of the various bodily powers in strength, agility, and grace. This culture presupposes close attention to the weak points in the health of each individual student—those tendencies to disease which exist at present in every person. All will have remarked that the same morbid cause, applied to half a dozen people, will produce varying effects, according to individual peculiarities; thus, a current of cold air applied when the body is over-heated may cause either catarrh, bronchitis, neuralgia, rheumatism, intestinal derangement, according to the individual susceptibility. Youthful vitality masks, but does not cure, weak tendencies, unless those tendencies are known, and the exuberant vitality be especially directed to their cure. This season of life is, however, particularly favourable to such cure. Nature will never again present so valuable an opportunity of remodelling the constitution. A doctor of health or preventive medicine, who shall become acquainted with the constitution of each student and determine how far exercise must be modified to meet individual peculiarities, is an indispensable member of the faculty of any college that undertakes to educate in Health. With this observation and caution modern gymnastics and exercise in various forms will become an invaluable part of education. The muscles of the body are capable of the same careful training as the senses. As the eye and hand in painting, or the ear and hand in music, require long and careful practice to acquire skill, so the great variety of delicate or powerful muscles in the human body require careful exercise to draw forth the varied powers that belong to them. The ordinary movements of life do not call forth half these powers. As the large majority of people go through life with only an imperfect use of their lungs, from the constraint of clothing and sedentary habits, which weaken the thoracic muscles, so it is with other organs, and imperfect muscular action and weakened health is the result.