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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 78
Extract from Presidential Address to the Educational Science Section of the British Association. York, 1906
Extract from Presidential Address to the Educational Science Section of the British Association. York, 1906.
"WhoIly new stress has been laid upon the physical side of education. The reports of the Scottish Royal Commission on Physical Training, 1903, and of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 1904, have helped us to see the whole question of school work in a new perspective. A systematic physical training must be regarded as an essential part of the daily work of every school, and will be found as beneficial to the intellectual and moral development of the scholars as to their bodily condition. For guidance in the educational treatment of every child according to its physical need; for the detection of defects in eyesight, in hearing, and in teeth : for marking the symptoms of organic disease, we require systematic medical inspection of all school children at periodical intervals. .... The attention of great numbers of the teachers is already directed to these matters, and with a fuller training in hygiene they would be able to make a considerable number of the necessary observations for the use of the medical inspectors who would visit the schools at such intervals as the special circumstances required."
Dr Sadler's naive admission shows that English educational authorities needed the actual experimental demonstration of widespread national degeneracy, with irrational education as a leading factor, before they would seriously move in the direction of rationalising school life. Herbert Spencer and Sir James Crichton Browne had shown conclusively throughout half a century to anyone who was open to reason that degeneration must follow if we did not mend our ways. Further, they told us plainly what we had to do in order to arrive at physical, mental, and moral fitness; and now we say we are going to pay attention not to the truths which they revealed, but to the imperative demands of failing power and virility, as established by the recent commisions.
As a first instalment of reason and common sense in dealing with children at school teachers might surely be allowed to act in accord with the following eminently practical advice given by Professor Mia11 ten years ago :—
"I would beg the schoolmaster who finds himself unable to cope with a crowed time-table to simplify the business at all hazards. Take up only so many subjects that each may come round pretty nearly every day. Limit the lesson to fifty minutes (less in junior forms), and have ten minutes out of every hour for a scamper out of doors.* Let the home work sink to a subsidiary, and in great part voluntary, occupation for the older and more ambitious boys. Above all trust to enlightened and animated teaching, and not to long hours and the fear of punishment. (Extract from 'Thirty Years of Teaching,' by Professor Miall.)
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* This has long been the practice in America. The advantages are obvious. On the one hand, the child is prevented from becoming chilled and weary by too long sitting, and the school air is cleared; on the other hand, the power of sustaining attention and thought are not overtaxed.
Some idea of the importance of this aspect of the matter can be formed by referring to the conclusions of Sir Michael Foster and Specht (see Weariness and Fatigue, pages 55. 92, and 93). Professor Kraepelin says the only thing that saves children from being made demented at schools where they are kept continuously work is the fact that they are unable habitually to sustain the thought and attention expected of them for more than about three-quarters of an hour at a stretch. Thus Nature mercifully steps in to prevent the breakdown which man unwittingly does his best to bring about.—F.T.K.