The Elements of Child-protection

by Sigmund Engel

But, in view of these considerations, it is all the more necessary to provide for special moral instruction in the public elementary school. It is not a valid objection to say that ethics are too difficult for children; in this matter everything depends upon how they are taught. Evidently moral teaching will be effective only if the right educational methods are employed, and it cannot be said that this has hitherto been the case to any considerable extent. Moral instruction must not consist in mere repetition of ethical principles, but must be a lesson of a very practical order; it must not be a dry enumeration of duties, but an introduction to the realities of social life, the aim of moral instruction being to teach the pupil sound views of life, and to lead him to regulate all his thoughts and all his activities with reference to their “social reaction.” The introduction of ethical problems and moral outlooks into the instruction given in other branches of study is also necessary, and may indeed begin at once, for this offers no difficulties. But it is also absolutely essential that moral questions should receive a comprehensive and connected consideration in a special course of lessons. For more than a quarter of a century moral instruction has been given in the elementary schools of the United States and of France. In France this course of lessons is used, not merely as an instrument in the campaign against clericalism and monarchism, but also, quite wrongly, as a means for the cultivation of jingoism.

Physical Education.—The modern public elementary school, in pursuit of mental education, neglects not moral education only, but physical education also, by condemning the child to prolonged physical inactivity. As soon as a child is barely six years of age, it is forced to sit, day by day for many hours, stiff and quiet, on the narrow benches in the class-rooms, although such repression of the childish instinct towards incessant activity is injurious to the health. The child is overburdened mentally, the school curriculum being overloaded with subjects, and a bad system of instruction being employed. The gymnastic lesson of to-day consists mainly of the comparatively useless exercises of the parade-ground type, and in the country schools even these are neglected. Well-grounded complaints about all these defects are incessantly heard. The results are disastrous. Imbecility and mental hebetude may ensue; there even exist special diseases of school life, such as nervous debility, headache, lateral curvature of the spine, short-sightedness, jaundice, &c. Bad air, dust in the class-rooms, interference with free breathing consequent upon long-continued sitting, and catching cold on the way home from school, favour the acquisition of tuberculosis.

Of late satisfactory efforts for the reform of school hygiene have been initiated. On the one hand, the attempt is made to secure that school life should not entail any dangers to the child’s health; on the other hand, efforts are made to provide proper treatment for the various disorders that prevail among the children, and especially among the younger ones; the physical energies and adroitness of the children are stimulated by technical instruction, gymnastics, and free movement in the open air. It is recognised that the education of children should take place mainly in the open; that not natural history only, but most other subjects, should be taught in connection with open-air walks and excursions. More and more stress is laid upon the provision of playgrounds, school gardens, and the like. School gardens are already to be found in many towns, where the children can do bodily work in the fresh air—dig, for instance, tend flowers, &c., occupations which have an excellent influence upon their health. Quite recently baths have been provided in many schools, and sometimes even the use of these baths is compulsory. This is especially valuable where the school children are very poor, for in the case of the very poor, as is well known, not much attention is paid to cleanliness in the children’s homes.

In every progressive State, school doctors have now been appointed. It is a sound principle that the school doctor should not be engaged in private practice, but that he should also be physician to the poor-law authority. The institution of the school physician is, however, of value only if a skilled and detailed examination of the individual children is undertaken, and if steps are taken to secure that the medical advice given in individual cases is actually carried out. In many German schools provision is made that sick children without means shall be sent by the school authorities directly to the town physicians for treatment. In some of these schools, school nurses have been appointed, who supervise the carrying out of medical instructions, and, when necessary, accompany the children in their visits to the doctor. The tendency of evolution is that necessary treatment should be carried out by the school doctor. For some years past, in many towns in Germany, dental clinics have been instituted in connection with the schools. They are necessary in view of the fact that a very large proportion of children attending the public elementary schools have diseased teeth; those whose parents are poor would otherwise receive no dental treatment, and the proper treatment of these disorders of the teeth constitutes an important adjuvant in the campaign against the infectious diseases and in the prevention of tuberculosis. Very recently the question has been discussed whether tubercular children ought not to be excluded from the schools.

Among more recent movements tending towards the destruction of the hegemony of the towns, we find an attempt to remove the schools from the towns, and to give them the form of boarding-schools, with an attempt to provide a sort of family life, much stress being laid upon the physical education of the children. Such schools are to be found in England and in the United States of America and here and there in Germany. They are more costly than the others, and the attempt to reproduce in them a kind of family life is apt to be a failure. For children suffering from physical debility they are extremely useful, and they offer a valuable field of experiment for teachers who wish to apply exceptional educational ideas. Of late, also, the attempt has been made to utilise the school in the campaign against tuberculosis, alcoholism, and the venereal diseases. It is declared to be absolutely necessary that the children should receive far more hygienic instruction than has hitherto been customary—of course, merely as an adjunct to the other branches of education.

Manual Training.—Loud complaints are heard to the effect that the elementary school fails to secure a general and harmonious development of the bodily and mental capacities of the child—that it merely crams the child with certain information, without endeavouring to secure that it shall acquire knowledge by its own experience. It is recognised that that knowledge only is permanent and possesses serious moral influence which constitutes an indispensable constituent of general culture; and it is understood that the recognised defects of our school children cannot be avoided unless we include as a part of the school curriculum a sufficiency of manual training. At first sight it may seem quite impossible for the educationalist, by training the child to perform certain suitable bodily movements, constituting the elements of some particular handicraft, to influence that child’s mental or moral development; it seems impossible, that is to say, that to teach the child a handicraft can subserve a profoundly important educational end.

The impulse to physical activity is deep-seated in human nature, and is irresistible. It is present in every healthy child. It is an aim of education to cultivate the proper manifestations of this impulse; otherwise it is very apt to take the form of some bad habit, of passionate outbursts, or of destructiveness. In earliest childhood the impulse to activity finds complete satisfaction in the games of which young children are so fond. The irregular and mutable activity of games must gradually, and without obvious compulsion, be transformed into a regular and orderly activity. (Many physicians insist that children should not begin to learn to read and write until they are nine or ten years old, and that below this age their only instruction should be manual. The reason they give for this demand is that it is during the first seven years of life that the human brain grows most rapidly, that this organ should receive very gentle treatment during this period of life, and that all risk of its overstrain by one-sided stimulation of the intelligence must be carefully avoided.)

Manual work invariably represents an attempt to gain some particular end. Every such end is made up of various components; we see this composite character most clearly when the aim of the work is to achieve some definite physical result, such as the putting together of some complex body made up of numerous parts. Such work as this, children usually undertake with pleasure. Since the final aim and the constituent aims are all obvious, the child sees at once that it is continually approaching more nearly to the attainment of the ultimate aim, and notes with delight the progressive steps achieved towards this end. (Self-esteem is essentially nothing more than the consciousness on the part of the individual of his capacity for producing some tangible result.) Manual work is interesting even to the naughtiest and most impatient of children. It arouses and increases will power and desire for work; satisfies the impulse to activity; forces the child to think independently, to use its perceptive faculties, to be practical. It is for this reason that manual work plays so great a part in the education of intellectually backward and neglected children. Manual training gives the child opportunity for productive work, and thus prepares it for its subsequent life. Manual training develops in the child precisely those faculties which it will most need in later life, namely, conscientiousness, precision, pleasure in its work, enterprise. It develops the hand and the eye, the two most important organs of the human body, to a fuller degree than can be effected by writing, drawing, or gymnastics; and in this way it provides the child with something which will be found valuable whatever trade or profession may ultimately be adopted. It thus gives the child the necessary preparatory training for every subsequent occupation. The idea that the growth of machine industry has rendered manual training superfluous is utterly erroneous. Manual training is good for the health and the physical strength of the child. At the period of the puberal development, manual training is of especial importance to children. It has a quieting influence upon the brain and the senses, and distracts the child from morbid and sensual impulses. Through bringing into play the physiological influence of fatigue, it hinders and delays the awakening of the sexual impulse, and does nothing to direct the child’s attention towards the sexual life.

To-day much stress is laid upon training the perceptive faculties by means of object-lessons. Manual training affords the best training of the perceptive faculties, being even more valuable in this respect than the actual object-lesson. We learn to know an object fully not merely by looking at it, not even, in addition, by handling it, smelling it, tasting it, and listening to it. If we wish to know an object through and through, we must work upon it.

The child is always glad to engage in physical work. Both child and teacher soon learn to recognise for what the child has inclination and talent. The child will then choose for its life’s occupation that which it has already learned to understand, and which best corresponds to its own inclinations. In this way the mistakes, which are so common to-day, in the choice of an occupation will be avoided, and the almost morbid desire of children for a clerical or professional career will be mitigated. Opportunity is given for the recognition and cultivation of any special artistic faculty the child may possess. The aim of education, namely, to awaken and cultivate the child’s natural capacities and inclinations, can only be attained when the teacher recognises their existence, and is able to form a correct picture of the child’s mental life. But the teacher will not be able to do this unless he sees his pupil engaged in physical work as well as in mental. If at school young people are exclusively occupied in mental work, they acquire an antipathy to physical work. Manual training, on the other hand, teaches children to esteem physical labour and the proletariat. Anyone who has received a thorough manual training necessarily possesses mechanical knowledge and skill. Since such knowledge and skill are the first requisites of so many skilled handicrafts, one who possesses them is unlikely to become an unskilled labourer.