Growth and education

Preface

Some years ago I became greatly interested in the question bow a cbild grows. Principal Burk's monographs gave full information concerning growth in height and weight, and concerning some of the most important changes in the nervous system. Professor Donaldson had told us of the growth of the brain. Concerning the growth of heart, lungs, and other organs, I could find at first but little information. I found an abundance of books concerning diseases of children, but not one attempting to give a complete account of the growth of all the systems in the normal or average child.

It looked as if we had been rearing and training our children without ever asking whether the child entering school was merely a small edition of the adult, or something quite different. We seemed to have been attempting by education at home and at school to supply the child's needs without having first asked what those needs were, and whether they differed slightly or greatly at different ages.

It seemed to be of the greatest importance to discover first of all whether all organs needed exercise equally at all ages, or whether every organ had its special epoch or epochs when exercise was more profitable than earlier or later. In the latter case we needed to know what organs at every epoch most needed exercise, and of what kind and amount. Furthermore, it would be useful to parents and teachers to know whether vi PREFACE

children and youtli have the same or steadily increasing vigor, endurance, and power of resisting disease or adverse conditions at all ages, or whether there are periods of less power of resistance, when leniency and care are necessary.

Later I became surprised at the large amount of material concerning the growth of different organs and systems which is scattered through medical and other journals or in separate monographs. The chapters in this volume on the growth of the child are based on a large amount of this material arranged and tabulated. At first I intended to publish the tables as an appendix in this volume. But I preferred to defer their publication until I had gathered much more material and had gained answers to certain important but difficult questions.

I have taken for granted the often forgotten or neglected axiom that a healthy physical growth and development are daring childhood more important than any amount of learning. In the first chapter I have tried to show that physical training and education are more needed to-day than ever before. The facts of human evolution, briefly discussed in the second chapter, seem to prove that, until the human stage is fully attained, the muscular system is the head and the strategic centre of development rather than the brain. In other words, the brain is developed through the exercise of the sense-organs and the muscles rather than these through the training of the brain. In this respect the young child resembles the animal. If the higher mental powers of the brain do not awaken until the eleventh or twelfth year, it is of little use to attempt to train them before this time. If, during all these earlier years,

PREFACE vii

the muscles are needing and craving exercise, we certainly should do well to meet and satisfy these needs.

The balance of organs in the child's body, in other words his constitution in the literal derivative sense, is quite different at different epochs. The great mental changes during youth and early manhood are familiar to us all. The physical changes during childhood and early youth are equally great, but often pass unnoticed or but poorly understood. Yet these physical changes modify or cause certain traits in the child. What appears to us carelessness or clownishness in gait or behavior may be due to immature muscles. Poor eyesight and defective hearing often cause the child to be considered stupid. The young girl is often blamed for lack of application when the real cause of her poor success in school work is lack of outdoor exercise and of sufficient lung capacity.

We wisely desire that our children should form right habits of physical, mental, and moral behavior. This is well. But let us not forget that the child must think and act as a child. Most of his childish instincts and cravings are wise and healthy, even though they appear rude and unsatisfactory to us. What appears faulty, when judged by adult standards, may be normal, natural, and beneficent in the child. Many of his failings are due to immaturity, and he will outgrow them of himself in due time. We need to learn when not to notice, as well as when and how to correct. The parent who knows and understands the laws of growth will have more faith, hope, and courage, and will be spared much needless anxiety.

When one has studied the different epochs of child life, he cannot fail to see how admirably the life on viii PREFACE

the New England farm a half-century ago was fitted to promote physical and mental growth and development. The debt of New England to the farm has never been duly recognized. The preponderance of town and city, and the changes in farm life, have resulted in the loss of certain elements of the education of our fathers which we can very ill afford to spare. These losses have greatly decreased the efficiency of the home in education, and have thrown a far heavier burden of responsibility on the school. Hence our education is often criticised as unpractical and not suited to fit boys and girls for life. The present condition is certainly not the fault of the teachers, nor altogether that of the parents. New burdens have been thrown upon the school almost without warning. The educator has to face new and very difficult problems. Our present system has not been able to reform and change front quickly enough to meet the new emergency. But the emergency must be met, and it will be met mainly by the school. Hence parents and teachers need to know and understand one another ; and to work in harmony, unison, and mutual help and support.

This book is intended to be an introduction to the study of the growth of the child. Hence the most important part of it is the bibliography. If I can introduce teachers and parents to the monographs and articles cited, I shall surely have done them a service. I have attempted to select articles which are accessible, accurate, and trustworthy, and not too technical. I am well aware of the incompleteness of the bibliography. Much of whatever excellence it may possess is due to the great kindness and patience of Dr. Louis N. Wilson, Librarian of Clark University. I am under great obligation to

PREFACE IX

liim and his assistants for many services and acts of kindness.

I wish to express my thanks to President G. Stanley Hall for many helpful suggestions and for his unfailing kindness and encouragement. I am under great obligation to Drs. Hitchcock, Ho]t, Porter, Hastings, and Hall, for permission to use the material in the tables. I wish to thank Dr. E. M. Hartwell for permission to use his table of mortality of Boston children. Part of the material has been used in lectures in Boston, under the auspices of the Committee of Education of the Twentieth Century Club. To them I am very grateful for a great opportunity and for many kindnesses.

J. M. T.

Amhebst, Massachusetts, 1907.

Chapter I

Systems of education must be suited to needs of place and time. New England a century ago. Farm-work in the open air. Education on the farm. New England to-day. Cities. Sedentary life. Wealth and class distinctions. Need of physical and moral vigor. The man of power . » 1

Chapter II

Complexity of the human body. Stages in its development : protozoan, zoophytie, animal, human. Complexity of muscular system, and effects of its development. Development of nervous system : cerebellum, midbrain, cortex, Flechsig's association areas. Use of nervous system. Practical considerations and results . . 25

Chapter III

Development of the chicken. Nature's "blunders." Metamorphosis. Provisional structures. Instincts. Three stages of growth of every organ. The craving for exercise. Interests. Embryotic recapitulation of racial development 49

Chapter IV

Growth in weight of males and females. Growth in height. cJhest-girth. Rhythms of growth. Proportions of the body . . , 63 xii CONTENTS

Chapter V

Absolute and relative weight of muscles at different ages. Weight of different groups of muscles. Ratio of strength of forearm to area of cross-section. Growth of the brain. Development and maturing of nerve-cells. Order of development of parts. Suecession of interests 69

Chapter VI

Digestive System. Liver. Kidneys. Heart and arteries. Lungs : weight and capacity. Metabolism in child and adult. Amount of food required at different ages. Amount of oxygen used, and of energy produced. Use of material for growth 81

Chapter VII

Mortality at different ages. Morbidity in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, in boys and girls. Overpressure and fatigue ... 92

Chapter VIII

Constitution as inlierited ; as the result of the size and balance of organs. Differences in constitution at different ages. Periods of life. Infancy and adolescence. Periods of transition and of preparation. Nature's tests and examinations. The pubertal metamorphosis. Triennial epochs 104

CHAPTER IX The First Three Years of the Child's Life

Size and growth of infant. Surface and mass. Sensitiveness to cold. Metabolism. Need of food, air, sunshine, sleep. Mortality. Constitution. Training of nervous system 115

CONTENTS xiii

Chapter X

Size and growth of child. Metabolism. Food. Mortality. Morbidity. A sensory period ; but heavy muscles crave exercise. Plays. Content of mind. Sensory training 129

Chapter XI

Size and growth. Heart. Constitution. Mortality and morbidity. Preparation for pubertal metamorphosis. Interests. Weakness and discouragement. Training suited to epoch. Learning by imitation. Habits. Feelings. Importance of epoch. Stories. Effects of school life, The epoch viewed from the standpoint of racial development 139

CHAPTER XII The Girl and the Boy in the Grammar Grades

Size and growth. Retardation. Acceleration of increase in height. Readjustment and increase in height an expensive process. Relative small size of trunk. Pubertal metamorphosis : its vital importance. Waste and its removal. Importance of lung capacity. Modern conditions and the health of the girl. Her small vital capacity and its increase through exercise. Lack of play and games. School life. Preparation for college. Home life. Changes needed. A plea for mercy 156

CHAPTER XIII The Boy and the Girl in the High School

Size and development. Mortality and morbidity. Constitution : its effect upon mind and character. Period of instability and of mental metamorphosis. Reign of the heart. Ethics. Religious development. The new life. Examinations for entrance to college. Methods of teaching. Character building. Hero-worship. The " everlasting miracle " 179

CHAPTER XIV Physical Training — Place of Play in Education Physical training needed at all periods for growth and developxiv CONTENTS

ment. An essential part of school work. Effect upon the mind. School gardens. The play instinct. Classification of plays and games ; their hygienic value. Mental, social, and moral training through games. Friendships of the play-ground. Habits of study. Locke and others concerning play. Teachers and play. Athletics. 198

Chapter XV

Meaning and purpose of gymnastics. Need. Hygienic gymnastics. Effects. Gymnastics in the school-room. Anthropometry in the school 218

Chapter XVI

Manual training as brain training. Suited to all classes of society. Laboratory work. Effect upon will. Practical advantages. Needed by girl and boy who go to college. Respect for handcraft. The boy who does not take to books. Industrial training. Manual training needed by girls 228

Chapter XVII

Health a necessity. Vital organs and muscles. Growth the business of the young child ; education must promote and not hinder it. Physical training essential in lower grades, but needed in higher also. Effect of loss of farm life on education. Criticisms of present system. Physical training and mental ability. Development of the will. Need of change of emphasis in present system, not of a revolution. Advantages of change. Hindrances : thoughtlessness, conservatism, the friends of learning. Our failure to appreciate that changed conditions demand corresponding changes in our system of education. Cooperation between parents and school 242

A. Tables 263

B. Bibliography 271

Index •• 293

Chapter I

It was a favorite maxim of Socrates that, if a thing is good, it surely must be good for something. What is an education good for? This much-abused word has been used in many senses. Its definitions vary greatly. Higher mammals were educated by their parents before man appeared on the globe. The lowest savage tribes educate their children, and their systems of education are often interesting and instructive. Great thinkers from the most remote times have written on the subject. But we are still disputing over definitions, and the ideal system has not yet been discovered.

What we most need is not so much a complete, accurate definition, as some criterion by which we can test our present systems and methods, and see whether they are accomplishing all that we can reasonably expect from them. Our test must be one which can be easily and readily applied, if it is to be of practical use. This thought of Socrates, that a good thing must be good for something, may, perhaps, furnish us a standpoint from which we may wisely view our present systems, and seek to discover possible improvements.

If any one could discover or frame a system of education which would enable the child and the man to avoid or to cope with the dangers of life, and to seize its opportunities; in one word, to meet its emergencies successfully, lie would evidently render us a great service. Sucli a system would be exceedingly useful. Seizing tlie opportunities of life means making the most of ourselves physically, mentally, and morally; it implies health, vigor, and power; knowledge and wisdom ; goodness and love ; use, service, and the highest joy. It means making the most and best of this goodly world in which we live, and framing from our surroundings an environment to which we may wisely conform, and hence survive and progress. Opportunity is limitless ; we fail to recognize and grasp it.

But the dangers and opportunities, in one word the emergencies, of state and individual are not the same in different places and times. Every state frames its system of education to meet its own dangers and to grasp its special opportunities, and to enable its citizens to do the same. The dangers of the German state and citizen are evidently not the same as ours. A nation in the middle of Europe, with few natural boundaries and surrounded by warlike neighbors, has dangers which we find it hard to appreciate. Differences in soil, climate, and natural advantages, in government, traditions, and social conditions, give to the individual citizen opportunities and emergencies different from ours. Hence a system of education which would be exactly suited to German needs would not suit American conditions. We may learn much from the German, and he from us ; but neither one of us can safely copy the other. We have our own dangers and opportunities, and must meet them as best we may.

Similarly a system of education suited to the needs of one period of our national development will naturally be inadequate when conditions liave changed to any great extent. In the eighteenth century New England was peopled with a comparatively homogeneous English stock. It was as vigorous, sturdy, and tough a race as the world has ever seen. English climate and conditions had given it marvelous strength and endurance. The boldest and most vigorous had been sifted out for the planting of the New World. It was leading an agricultural life, of manual labor, largely in the open air of the country. The birth-rate was very high, and the population increased with marvelous rapidity.^ The transfer of the somewhat heavy English Puritan stock to the nerve-tonic of our bracing air, new conditions and emergencies, and the spur of necessity, had roused all the mental powers of this marvelous people. They were keen, quick, shrewd, inventive.

They were scattered in small towns and villages, each one of which was more remote from its nearest neighbor than is New York from Boston or Chicago to-day. Every village was fringed with farms scattered over the hills, wherever a man could wring a living from the soil between the ledges. Wealth and luxury were almost unknown, the farms furnished the necessities of life. Behind them stretched the wilderness, tempting the adventurous as well as the shiftless to a life of barbarism, if not of savagery. Educated men were rare, books few and expensive. No wonder that the first settlers feared that learning would be buried in the graves of their ministers. Illiteracy and barbarism were very real dangers in those days ; from wealth, luxury, and the evils of overcrowding they had little to fear.

The stress and strain of life bore heaviest on the

^ Walker, ' ' Restriction of Immigration, " Atlantic, vol. Ixxvii, 1896.

tough muscular system. This rested and recovered quickly, for the sleep of the laboring man was sweet. There was little competition. Life was simple, often very monotonous. Even an Indian raid must have been a welcome change. Opportunities were few. Children looked forward to the time when they would clear a farm, and establish a household, as their fathers had done before them.

These Puritan ancestors of ours were not all saints. They often drank heavily, quarreled outrageously, and varied the monotony of respectability by the rudest outbursts of animal, if not beastly, tendencies. Even their wit and jokes were often cruel. Those who disagreed with them were summarily banished. Life is certainly much pleasanter in the twentieth century.

Education was gained mostly at home. In the large families the children educated one another. The farm offered more opportunities for physical exercise than the child or boy wished. His labor was needed; "he was a member of the firm." When the forest had been cleared, the stumps burned or uprooted, and the walls built, there were endless jobs for him. Stones had to be picked up, and every plowing brought up a new crop. The animals had to be cared for, wood and kindlings had to be provided daily. AU the light work fell upon the children. Very early they shared, as far as possible, the labor of the adults. Nature study was forced upon them.

The farm was a hive or laboratory of manual training.^ The farmer and his boys had to be carpenters,

^ Hall, " Boy-Life in a Country Town a Quarter of a Century Ago," Proc. Am. Ant. Soc, Worcester, October, 1890 ; Abstract in Ped. Sem. £, 232 ; Bailey, Outlook to Nature, p. 154.

cabinet-makers, blacksmiths, wood-turners, chair-seaters, basket-makers, all at once. There was hardly a trade or handicraft of which they did not have some experience. Responsibility fell upon them early, and they had to meet countless emergencies as best they could. Necessity was the mother of invention. The girls did housework, spun and wove; made butter and cheese; learned to dye, and bake, and brew. They were often as good farmers as their brothers. Boys and girls had to make their own playthings, as weU as a host of other things for the whole family.

President Hall^ in his article on Moral Education has well said: "Ten days at the hoe-handle, axe, or pitchfork, as an eminent educator has said in substance, with no new impression from without and one constant and only duty, is a schooling in perseverance and sustained effort such as few boys now get in any shape."

The child saw but few books at home. The Bible was the usual library, with one or two volumes of sermons, and perhaps "Pilgrim's Progress" for fiction. A book was a rarity and a treasure. Learning was possible only for the very few. The child respected and coveted it as much as his father or mother did. The very best use of the few weeks spent in school was to devote it wholly to book-study. It is very imfortunate that so well-balanced, wise, and practical a system of education is no longer possible.

The dangers and opportunities of the twentieth century are quite other than those of the eighteenth. Mr. Gladstone 2 estimated that as much real wealth was

1 HaU, " Moral Education and Will-Training," Fed. Sem. ii, 73.

2 Loomis, Modern Cities, p. 43.

6 GKOWTH AND EDUCATION

produced during the first haK of the nineteenth cen« tury as during the preceding eighteen hundred years. An equal amount was produced during the next quarter-century. Probably quite as much has been added since 1875. Between 1860 and 1880 the wealth of the United States increased three times as fast as its population.

As wealth increases, men are no longer content with food and raiment. There is a steadily increasing demand for manufactured articles, and more money for their purchase. Hence the growth of factories, the crowding of population in manufacturing centres, and the consequent dangers to health and morals.

New means of communication have made the fertile prairies accessible, agricultural tools and machinery have been invented or improved. It has been estimated that the average farmer with horses can do with three men the work formerly done by fourteen, and can do it better. The Eastern farmer cannot compete with his Western brother. This means displacement of population on a grand scale. The people, especially the energetic, ambitious, and strongest intellectually, pour from the country into the city.

President Carroll D. Wright ^ tells us that between 1790 and 1880 the population of the United States increased about sixteen-fold ; the population of cities and towns having more than 8000 inhabitants increased almost 140-fold. In 1790 about one thirty-third of the population lived in such towns and cities; in 1890 about one third. In 1890 there were about seventy-five times as many towns and cities as in 1790. In 1870 there were fourteen cities having more than 100,000

^Wright, " Lessons from the Census," Pop. Sci. Mo.y xlvi, 459.

inhabitants; in 1880, twenty; in 1890, twenty-eight. More than one half of the population of the North Atlantic States live in towns or cities. In some or most of these states the rural population has actually decreased.

The great city, with its vast opportunities for good and evil, its wealth and luxury, its poverty and misery, its vice and crime, with its heterogeneous population, and contrasts of race, creed, class, and condition, has confronted us suddenly with its almost insoluble problems. Life in a great city has its advantages, but the poor are many, and their condition is often sad enough.

Read the report of the Council of Hygiene to the Citizens' Association as to the sanitary condition of the tenements of the city of New York in 1867.^ It speaks of them as rapidly becoming the " nests of fever and infection, and the poisonous abodes of physical decay." The Tenement House Commission of 1900 reports that the present type of tenement gives to its occupants less light and less ventilation, less fire protection and less comfortable surroundings than the average tenement of fifty years ago.^ The air of the great city is spoiled by smoke, decay, and germs ; sunshine is kept out of the deep and narrow streets, soil and ground water are polluted. No wonder that the death-rate of London rises alarmingly when fogs blanket the city. No wonder that the death-rate from consumption for the state of New York was not far from twice as great in cities of over 25,000 inhabitants as in the rest

^ Loomis, Modern Cities, p. 36.

2 First Report of the Tenement House Department of the City of New York, pp. 5, 6.

of the state.* Let us not forget that consumption is not merely a death-scourge, but a symptom of bad heredity and surroundings, and of weak constitution. There is some reason to fear that cities having a population of 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants are less healthy than the largest. They appear to have overstepped the danger limit in size without having yet taken proper sanitary precautions.

How many children go to school breakfastless, or at least hungry ? Mr. Hunter guesses 50,000 in New York City. Let us hope and cheerfully assume that he has greatly exaggerated the number. It is a fair-sized army in one city alone. A parliamentary committee reports even worse conditions in manufacturing cities in England. These children grow up weak, stunted, inefficient, hopeless. They fill our poor-houses, reformatories, and jails. They become the derelicts of society. They will have children like themselves, or weaker.

But the poor are not the only sufferers. The great middle class is in some respects at a still greater disadvantage. The children of the poor play in the streets. The child of the middle class is usually not allowed this advantage. He finds very little useful employment or exercise. He is almost entirely deprived of active and vigorous play or work in the open air during the years when he most needs these opportunities.

It is a fact beyond all doubt that a very large fraction of our population has exchanged rural for urban life during the last two generations. It is equally indisputable that, as fast as we can, we are exchanging a life of muscular effort in the open air for one of brain-work indoors. We avoid manual labor. The farms are de-

* Handbook of Prevention of Tuberculosis, p. 74.

serted ; store, office, and desks are crowded. Operatives in our factories object to having their children receive manual training ; they wish them to gain accomplishments which wiU fit them for business or professional life. We can hardly blame them.

We have exchanged a life of simplicity and monotony for one of great variety and complexity. The strain, which used to be mainly muscular, now rests heaviest on the youngest and most delicate portions of the nervous system. This strain is very severe. Professor Huxley has well said that the struggle for comfort is far more cruel than the struggle for existence. Competition and a feverish longing for wealth and luxury, accompanied by discontent, fret, and worry, diminish the joy and increase the wear of work. Such a revolution in our habits and conditions of life affects the balance and working of all our organs.

Dr. Baxter,! j^ j^jg report of the Provost-Marshal- General's Bureau, tells us that nearly three fourths of all the teachers examined as to their fitness for military service in the War of the Rebellion were rejected as unfit; of physicians and clergymen, two thirds; of laborers and farmers, one third. There is, he continues, a steady increase of disease as we ascend the so-called social scale from the man who works with his heavy muscles only to those who rely on cerebral to the practical exclusion of muscular work. Even if the profession is the refuge of the weak, as Dr. Baxter suggests, and not the cause of their weakness, the child of the professional man is in danger, at least, of inheriting a low tone of vitality.

1 Baxter, Medical Statistics of the Provost-Mar shal-GeneraVs Bureau, i, chart xxxiy.

It seems clear that nervousness in tlie sense of nerV' ous weakness or fatigue, or of lack of nervous strength and endurance, has increased rapidly during the last half-century.^ As Beard has shown, its cause is modern civilization with its haste, worry, and strain upon the highest, finest, and weakest brain centres. Supplementary causes are a dry, bracing climate, and our social, political, and religious institutions and habits.

The signs of this increasing weakness, or of decrease of resisting power, are clear and many. We cannot endure the amount of alcoholic drinks, narcotics, drugs, or excesses which our ancestors tolerated. Sensitiveness to heat and cold, insomnia and early breakdown, premature baldness, point in the same direction. Even the fine, " chiseled " features and the quick, mobile play of expression of our American girls are signs of a dangerously sensitive nervous system. Thus Beard argues, and there is certainly some ground for his conclusions.

But it is very probable that the nervous system is affected by sedentary life to a large extent indirectly through the weakening of the digestive and assimilative powers. The sedentary man or woman can digest only the lightest food. The essential fats are almost tabooed ; pork is fast becoming intolerable. Without abundant air and exercise a sound digestion is, of course, impossible. We crave concentrated and stimulating foods, especially the albuminoids of meat. The excess of albumen brings a heavy strain on the kidneys, and they weaken and become diseased. The incompletely digested food ferments in the alimentary canal, and the whole body, especially the brain, is poisoned or

^ Beard, American Nervousness.

depressed. Sedentary workers suffer greatly from constipation, which leads to similar results. Hence the commonness of nervous dyspepsia, a double root of every sort of evil and mischief. With such conditions and modes of life, anything very different is hardly to be expected.

Heart, lungs, and kidneys owe their development and present power to the demands and stimuli of the muscular system ; and these stimuli greatly increase the efficiency of our digestive and assimilative tissues. It was sensation and motion, not thought or learning, which laid the foundations of the brain, and stimulated the development of all its centres. Our internal organs can and will respond to all reasonable demands of our muscular system. It is an inherited habit. They require these customary motor stimuli to maintain them in their best condition. Without them, as in sedentary life, they degenerate, and invite, if they do not produce, disease.

The death-rate does not rise proportionally to the increase of morbidity. Neurasthenics are exceedingly cautious and careful of themselves. They generally -'ixist through a long period of invalidism. The case of the nervous dyspeptic is similar in a less degree. But it is not the kind of long life which we desire for ourselves or for our children.