The worst of it all is that the girl leaves off playing games in the open air just about the time when she needs them the most, and not having the open air play and the open air games, she can't get the lung capacity and the oxygen. Another thing that hinders the girl is this: there is no place for her to play where she can do all she wants to and not have people looking over the fence and finding fault with her for having a good time. Every girl ought to have a place where she can play in the open air and not be bothered and we ought to get more and more games for girls of that age. Another thing, the exercise should not be too severe. Don't kill a girl with physical training; because you can kill her that way just as you can kill her with books. Some of our physical training is too severe for a girl of that age. She must have plenty of the right kinds of games and they should be in the open air, and they should be such as she will enjoy and love; if they are not of that kind it won't help a great deal. If you can build up lung capacity in that way then you are drawing in the oxygen; then you are getting out the waste, and you will find the girl will come out all right in nine cases out of ten.
It is a fact, proved by physical examination, that all during this period the better scholars have the larger lung capacity. Those of you who have taught in the grammar schools year after year will know that a bright girl, one that has been very bright, will have a year when she will come to you and will be absolutely stupid and can't learn. "What ails the girl?" you wonder. She will tell you, "I don't know what ails me; I can't learn anything. I have become a fool and I was not always one." The trouble is with the lung capacity; it isn't with the brain; the brain is all right. If you tell that girl to wake up in order to make up that lack of mental ability by studying harder, you are doing the unpardonable sin. I am telling it to you straight. That is not the remedy. The remedy is more play in the open air, then you will find that that girl's brain will clear up. Many a poor girl has been put in poor condition by being urged to study hard, when the fault was that nobody knew enough to turn her out into the fresh air which the Lord intended she should have.
We ought to have in every school five minutes, it would be better to have ten minutes, between school exercises, when the girls can walk up and down, chat with one another and get the blood out of the overloaded head and down into the cold feet. Better still, turn them out in the open air and let them run; that would be another blessing. Don't keep the girls sitting too long at that period. Don't let them sit with wet feet or skirts. That is just about as bad as getting smallpox. Teach them some of the sense which you ought to have if you haven't.
I haven't said a word for the boy, for this good reason: you can't kill him if you try, thank the Lord. You can't kill him if you try, not because he is so very tough; boys are not as tough as girls, physically; but you can't kill them; because they won't let you; but I am sorry to say, some few women teachers are killing off the future women. Again and again I have heard it said by the girls: "We can get along all right with Mr. So and So; we can get on the blind side of him all the time; we can fool him, but when we try to get around Miss So and So she puts it to us awfully, and in the neatest way, to get the work done." Now, why the women can't have a little mercy on the younger people is something I cannot understand at all.
And yet, while I haven't said a word for the boy, ought we not to regard him a little? Now and then there is the ambitious boy, and then again there is your studious boy; there is your bookish boy; there is your shy boy who does not get into the games. He is the boy you should watch all the time. There is the boy who has become delicate and finicky, because he has been doddled at home. I hope you haven't got so many of them here as we have in the East, but he is here and you must watch him, because his parents are doing everything in the world to spoil him. You must stand on the Lord's side of him if you can, for these boys need your help. If you give a little excess of mercy, a little bit more physical vigor gained by this regime of open-air exercise and exercise between the school periods, you simply will be erring on the safe side and doing good to that girl and such boys, because on these years of metamorphosis depend the life and the happiness of the girl and the boy.
Perhaps you are getting ready for examinations. I want to tell you Nature has her examinations just as well as you do. Does not she examine the baby and see that baby can't go on, and many babies do not go on. Then the death rate sinks; at eleven and twelve it is very low, very low, indeed, only perhaps two or three in a thousand, in many countries. Nature is giving them a chance to see whether they will get ready for the second examination. Right after or during puberty the death rate rises. At eighteen, nineteen and twenty, it has gone up. That is Nature's second examination, to see whether that boy or girl is fit to send out into the world to take part in the great drama of life, and if she is conditioned at this time, then it means invalidism for two, three, four, five years, and if she is badly conditioned, it may mean death. When you are preparing those girls for the examination, do not forget your own examination, because it is coming on very fast.
I have talked very plainly this morning and I hope you will forgive me. You may say, "We don't need that talk now." I hope you don't. You will need it in a generation or two; I don't care how strong that pioneer blood was which has come down to your first generation here, we had just as good in Massachusetts a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, but we are getting rid of it just as fast as we can, the Lord forgive us; and you will do that here if you don't look out. If you have strong, red blood, hold on to it; because that is the grandest gift of God to man; it is a treasure which must be handed down unimpaired from generation to generation, that our boys and girls may be strong and efficient for the work of life which lies before them.
LESSON II
(General Subject: "Conservation of the Child," read carefully the foregoing lecture by Dr. Tyler.)
The Body as an Instrument of the Soul