success in life. Opinions have been quoted which imply that success is to be measured by ability to amass wealth-that the almighty dollar is the one thing needful. Do we not rather wish so to conduct the education of the young that they may grow up feeling that noble character, conquest of self, the consciousness of God-given powers growing stronger by use day by day-the being a man, in the breadth of all which that implies that this is an aim and an end, and not the mere getting of money? Let us not teach them to worship the golden image which the Nebuchadnezzar of this generation has set up.

able to repeat now what I I said that science teach

MR. POWELL (in closing): I am glad to be said on the occasion referred to four years ago. ing has come and changed the whole purpose and method of university work. The kindergarten has come and is changing the purpose and method of primary teaching. Manual training has come to change the purpose and method of the grades between the primary grades and the university.

MR. BRADLEY (in closing) said that he would not detain the audience at so late an hour to reply to anything that had been said, or to offer any new suggestion. He recalled the meeting four years ago to which Supt. Marble had referred. He recalled the apprehension then expressed, that the movement to introduce manual training into the schools meant the displacement of their established work by the introduction of crude and impracticable schemes. It was then feared that a fruitless attempt was to be made to teach trades and industries in the schools, while their legitimate work in training the mind and character was to be crowded out. The discussion this evening has shown that such apprehension has been dissipated by experience and greater familiarity with the subject. Those cities which have made the greatest progress in the incorporation of manual training into their courses of study have found that it brings, not weakness, but strength. Trusted friends of the schools, who earnestly opposed manual training four years ago, now believe that, wisely directed, it will train neglected mental powers. He congratulated the department that all had been able practically to unite on so important an issue. The only questions now are those of method and detail. Experience has demonstrated the educational value of manual training. He believed it would also demonstrate its practical utility. It now remains for the friends and advocates of the new work to guide it wisely, and to protect the schools from mistakes and excess. Among the various means which are now proposed for enriching our courses of study, none is more promising, educationally and practically considered, than a judicious training of the eye and the hand, along with the education of the intellect and the heart.

THE HEALTH OF SCHOOL CHILDREN AS AFFECTED BY SCHOOL BUILDINGS.

BY G. STANLEY HALL, PRESIDENT OF CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.

[AN ABSTRACT.]

THE development of education in nearly every country of the world in the last few years has been amazing. Not only in civilized, but in lands till lately uncivilized or half-civilized-in New Zealand, Algeria, Finland, as well as in India, South America and Japan-schools and school systems have become methods of colonization and of political influence. They now do the pioneer work once done by missionary preaching; and even the missions of the world are more and more teaching stations. Schools have a control over the bodies and minds of children five or six hours a day, for five or six days a week, which is greater than the control ever exercised by any other institution in history. Schools are uniformizing the knowledge and the sentiments of the world: men of all creeds, races, ranks, those who differ in everything else, unite in believing in the efficacy of schools. This is a consensus omnium gentium which the mediæval church long sought, which philosophers have postulated, and is now more practical and comprehensive than either have ever dreamed. The modern school is thus in a sense a church universal, and has all that deep consecration of a belief-a love now well nigh universal. When a child begins to go to school the change of his environment is very great. Instead of constant activity, he must now sit still and keep still; instead of moving his hands and arms freely, the strain of effort is now focussed upon the very few, tiny, pen-wagging muscles. The eyes, instead of moving freely, are confined in the zig-zag treadmill of the printed line. It is no wonder, therefore, that the child so commonly loses weight on first entering school; that short-sightedness and other eye troubles increase almost regularly through the school period; that headaches, anæmia, scoliosis, defects of development if not signs of disease appear in stomach, heart, and lungs, and especially in the nervous system, the gradual deterioration of which is so hard to recognize (see the wellknown works of Hertel, Key, Warner, Cohn, and others). If the school is tending to physical deterioration and toward a sickly age, as certain mediæval institutions are said to have caused the dark ages and the plagues, we ought to know it. The school ought to develop a sound mind in a

sound body; for what shall a man give in exchange for his health, or what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world of knowledge and lose his own health? I hold that it is not too much to say that everything about the school-building, seats and desks, hours, subjects and methods of study-should be determined primarily with a view to health, on which, especially in children, even morality so largely depends.

In much of what follows I am immediately indebted to the studies of Dr. William H. Burnham, who has devoted the entire year in his course of Pedagogy at Clark University to hygiene, and who has allowed me to examine and condense his far more extended and detailed studies, a part of which are now in press for the "Pedagogical Seminary." Of his studies, much of what follows is simply a digest, and to these the reader is referred.

The body of the growing child is a mazy federation of cells, freighted by heredity with reverberations from a past, the remoteness of which we can hardly conjecture. It is so infinitely plastic that there is nothing in the environment that does not affect it. Every effort of thought modifies the temperature of the brain, and every effort of the muscles increases the products of waste and modifies circulation, while fatigue and all its demoralization is always lurking to prey upon the body and mind. Yet so little does science know of many of these problems that the body might almost be called a laboratory marked "No admittance;" while for the average teacher the ignorance of the psycho-physic organism of the child is profound.

The schoolhouse, which has been called more important for the development of the average child than the home itself, ought to be a palace of health. I proceed to sketch very roughly the salient points culled partly from laws, which are far more detailed in Europe than here, partly from norms recommended by educational bodies, and partly from ideals described in various books.

A. The Site.-This should be high, dry, a natural and not artificial soil, with no foreign matter in it; is sometimes tested by boring; marl, lime, or sand ingredients being good, and clay bad. It must be remote, if possible, from liquor saloons, the noise of machinery, offensive or unwholesome odors, marshes, ponds, graveyards, dust, or any form of nuisance or danger, and the street should, if possible, be asphalted near it. One norm prescribes that the distance of the schoolhouse from all other buildings should be twice their height.

B. Fard. This should be enclosed by a hedge rather than a high wall, or by some transparent enclosure, that children may see the life of the street, and that all passers-by may see and be interested in the children, their play, and the school. The yard should be a poròus earth rather than brick. Some norms prescribe three square meters per child as the minimum. Sheds for play in rainy days, often with glass roofs, are very

common, especially in France. A few simple, permanent pieces of gymnastic apparatus are perhaps more common in Germany. In more rural districts school gardens containing a few medicinal plants, and even a few poisonous ones to be avoided, flower-beds, a bee-hive, a tiny hothouse, and even individual beds for children to be responsible for, etc., are often found.

C. Basement and Walls.-All the building should be undercellared ; should never contain water-closets; janitor's quarters, especially pantries, should be separated from the rest of the cellar by tight walls; the floor should be cemented; the basement should be kept. scrupulously clean and well ventilated, and more or less heated. Some norms prescribe a water-table all round the building, a meter wide and plastered, to prevent the ascent of ground moisture. The walls should contain plenty of air chambers, and be strong enough for an additional story. Steps up to the building should always be protected above and on the sides, or, better yet, within the walls.

D. Floors. The lower floor, for the youngest children, should be at least a foot or two above the street level, should be of boards neither too hard nor too soft, but splinterless. Hamburg legislates on the cracks in the floor, which have been found to contain almost as many bacteria as the filth under the finger-nails of children. The thickness of the floor boards should bear a fixed ratio, often prescribed, to the distance between the joists. There should be no dry sweeping, and the floor might sometimes be washed with a weak sublimate. Some ideals avoid all corners and angles by means of curved moldings such as are sometimes found in hospitals. All ceilings should not only be double, but should contain sound-deadening layers.

E. Halls and Stairs.-The halls should be wide, light, well ventilated, so that not only clothes-racks and umbrella-stands can be placed in them, if necessary, and sometimes bookcases, etc., but that exercises may be held in them. This is, of course, quite ideal. The stairs should be at least a yard and a half wide, with steps broad and not too high, and corners not too sharp. The stairway should always be broken by one or two landings, never circular; should be of brick or iron, or some fireproof material, should have hand-rails on both sides, should be light, warm, and ventilated.

F. The Schoolrooms and Windows should contain no posts or pillars, should be from three to four meters high; the walls of the room should be of some mild color-light blue, green, yellow, or gray. If a wood finish can be afforded, pipes for gas and water, and electrical and other connections, should not be covered. Some laws prescribe the proportion of length of room to its breadth as two to three, some as three to five. The ratio of the window surface to the floor has been regulated by many laws, and in point of fact has been found to range from one-third to

one-ninth. There is little uniformity as to exposures, but south and east seem on the whole preferred. There should be no direct or reflected sunlight. Windows in front of the pupil are worst, those behind better, and windows on the left of the pupil are preferred. Windows should be openable,—a horizontal axis preferred,-should go to the ceiling, and be square and not curved at the top. The height of the top of the window should be at least three-fifths the width of the room. The bottom of the window in one norm must be a meter and a quarter above the floor; another law prescribes a minimum distance of one and a fourth meters between windows, but they should be as near together as possible. Dr. Cohn thinks that each child should see the sky from his seat, and has devised an instrument to determine the amount of sky visible to each child. He would have a photometer used in each schoolroom, and suggests, as the norm, what would be equivalent to the reading of good diamond type at a distance of ten inches. The door should be a meter wide, never behind the children, should open outward, and should have a transom. The cross piece bearing the number of the room should be as high as the eye of the average child in that room.

G. Heating and Ventilation.-I am inclined to agree with the sentiment of Dr. Burnham, that whoever says that any existing system is superior to all others is either uninformed and crotchety, or else an agent. Architects, as a rule, know almost nothing of heating, and still less of ventilation. It is these matters in which false economies are most often practiced. Living, as we do, at the bottom of a sea of air, where it takes as much force to move 100 lbs. of air as it does 100 lbs. of iron, we forget too that each day has its own problem. Many an excellent system is quite ineffective because not well managed through the ignorance or carelessness of a janitor. To change the air in a schoolroom completely once in every twenty minutes or half-hour, as should be done if each child has on an average only 14 square meters of surface and five cubic meters of air space, is a very grave problem. The "school smell," and the injury foul air works in the blunting of faculties and the deterioration of tone, is due not so much to the carbonic acid as to the organic matter in the air of which this in the index. One ideal system is heating at frequent intervals all over and through the floor, with gratings and pockets to prevent the ascent of floor dust, by a central system regulated by thermometers in each room, with electrical contact shutting off or letting on heat automatically-a system, however, involving great expense, and therefore not generally practicable. Jacketed stoves, with air coming directly from out-doors, are used in country schools. Open fire-places with their great waste are now sometimes resorted to in despair of a better system. This whole matter is a very complex bundle of problems in physics, as yet but partially understood, and still less often well applied.

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