Hygiene
125
Schools
635. Many mothers feel that they have not time to instruct their
children, and in order to get them out of the way, and get rid of their
noise and trouble, they send them to school. The schoolroom is a hard
place for children who have inherited enfeebled constitutions. School-
rooms generally have not been constructed in reference to health, but
in regard to cheapness. The rooms have not been arranged so they
could be ventilated as they should be without exposing the children to
severe cold. The seats have seldom been made so that the children can
sit with ease, and keep their little, growing frames in a proper posture
to insure healthy action of the lungs and heart. Young children can
grow into almost any shape, and can, by habits of proper exercise and
positions of the body, obtain healthy forms. It is destructive to the
health and life of young children to sit in the schoolroom, upon hard,
ill-formed benches, from three to five hours a day, inhaling the air
made impure by many breaths. The weak lungs become affected, the
brain, from which the nervous energy of the whole system is derived,
becomes enfeebled by being called into active exercise before the
strength of the mental organs is sufficiently matured to endure fatigue.
In the schoolroom the foundation has been too surely laid for
diseases of various kinds. But, more especially, the most delicate
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of all organs, the brain, has often been permanently injured by too
great exercise. This has often caused inflammation, then dropsy of the
head, and convulsions with their dreaded results.... Of those children
who have apparently had sufficient force of constitution to survive this
treatment, there are very many who carry the effects of it through life.
The nervous energy of the brain becomes so weakened that after they
have come to maturity it is impossible for them to endure much mental
exercise. The force of some of the delicate organs of the brain seems
to be expended....
During the first six or seven years of a child’s life, special attention
should be given to its physical training, rather than to the intellect.
After this period, if the physical constitution is good, the education of
both should receive attention.... Parents, especially mothers, should
be the only teachers of such infant minds. They should not educate
from books. The children generally will be inquisitive to learn the
things of nature. They will ask questions in regard to the things they