ABUSES.
Bad seats for children at table and elsewhere. Why children hate Sunday.
Seats at Sabbath school--at church--at district schools. Suspending
children between the heavens and the earth. Cushions to sit on. Seats
with backs. Children in factories. Evils produced. Bodily punishment.
Striking the heads of children very injurious. Beating across the middle
of the body. Anecdote of a teacher. Concluding advice to mothers.
It is difficult to determine, in regard to many things which concern the
management of the young, whether they belong most properly to moral or
physical education; so close is the connection between the two, and so
decidedly does everything, or nearly everything which relates to the
management of the body, have a bearing upon the formation of moral
character. This work might be extended very much farther, did it comport
with my original plan. But I hasten to close the volume, with a few
thoughts on certain abuses of the body, which prevail to a greater or
less extent in families and schools; and to which I have not adverted
elsewhere.
The seats of children are usually bad, both at table and elsewhere. It
seems not enough that we condemn them to the use of knives, forks,
spoons, &c., of the same size with those of adults. We go farther; and
give them chairs of the same height and proportion with our own. There
are a few exceptions to the truth of this remark. Here and there we see
a child's chair, it is true--but not often.
But how unreasonable is it to seat a child in a chair so high that his
feet cannot reach the floor; and so constructed that there is no outer
place on which the feet can rest. What adult would be willing to sit in
so painful a posture, with his legs dangling? No wonder children dislike
to sit much, in such circumstances. And it is a great blessing to both
parent and child that they do. No wonder children hate the Sabbath,
especially in those families where they are compelled to keep the day
holy by sitting motionless! Sabbath schools, though they bring with them
some evil along with a great deal of good, are a relief to the young in
this particular--especially if their seats are more comfortable
elsewhere than at home. They consider it much more tolerable to spend
the morning and intermission of the day in going and returning from
Sabbath school, than in constant and close confinement. They prefer
variety, and the occasional light and air of heaven, to monotony and
seclusion and silence.
It happens, however, that the seats at the Sabbath school and at church,
are not always what they should be; nor, so far as church is concerned,
do I see that this evil can be wholly avoided. Children usually sit with
their parents, in the sanctuary--and they ought to do so: and the height
of the seats cannot, of course, accommodate both. If there is a building
erected solely for the use of the Sabbath school, the seats may be
constructed accordingly, without seriously incommoding anybody; but in
the church, I do not see, as I have once before observed, how the evil
can be remedied.
The greatest trouble in regard to seats, however, is at the day school;
especially in our district or common schools. There, it is usual for
children to be confined six hours a day--and sometimes two in
succession--to hard, narrow, plank seats, a large proportion of which
are without backs, and raised so high that the feet of most of the
pupils cannot possibly touch the floor. There, "suspended," as I have
said in another work, [Footnote: See a "Prize Essay," on School Houses,
page 7.] "between the heavens and the earth, they are compelled to
remain motionless for an hour or an hour and a half together."
I have also shown, in the same essay, that in regard to the desks, and
indeed many other things which pertain to, or are connected with the
school, very little pains is taken to provide for the physical welfare
or even comfort of the pupils; and that a thorough reform on the subject
appears to be indispensable.
When I speak of hard plank seats, let me not be understood as hinting at
the necessity of cushions. When I wrote the essay above mentioned, I did
indeed believe that they were desirable. But I am now opposed to their
use, either by children or adults, even where a laborious employment
would seem to demand a long confinement to this awkward and unnatural
position. If our seats are cushioned, we shall sit too easily. I believe
that our health requires a hard seat; because its very hardness inclines
us to change, frequently, our position.
But if we must sit, be it ever so short a time, our seats should always
have backs; and those which are designed for children, should not be so
high as to render them uncomfortable. Nor should the backs of seats be
so high as they usually are, either for children or adults. They should
never come much higher than the middle of the body. If they reach the
shoulders, they either favor a crouching forward, or interfere with the
free action of the lungs.
This might be deemed a proper place for saying something on the position
of children in manufactories. But here a world of abuse opens upon my
view, the full development of which demands a large volume. How many
crooked spines, emaciated bodies, decaying lungs, as well as scrofulas,
fevers, and consumptions, are either induced or accelerated by these
unnatural employments! I mean they are unnatural for the _young_. As to
employing adults in them, I have nothing at present to say. But when I
think of the cruel custom of placing children in these places, whose
bodies--and were this the place, I might add, _minds_--are immature, and
especially girls, I am compelled, by the voice of conscience, and, as I
trust, by a regard to those laws which God has established in our
physical frames, but which are yet so strangely violated, to protest
against it. Better that no factories should exist, than that children
should be ruined in them as they now are. Better by far that we should
return, were it possible, to the primitive habits of New England--to
those by-gone days when mothers and daughters made the wearing apparel
of themselves and their families--when, if there was less of
intellectual cultivation, and less money expended for luxuries and
extravagances, there was much more of health and happiness.
There is one more species of abuse to which, in closing, I wish to
direct maternal attention. I allude to injudicious modes of inflicting
corporal punishment.
Let me not be understood to appear, in this place, as the advocate of
bodily punishments of any kind; for if they are even admissible under
some circumstances, I am fully convinced that in the way in which they
are commonly administered, they do much more harm than good.
But leaving the question of their utility, in the abstract, wholly
untouched, and taking it for granted, for the present, that they are--as
is undoubtedly the fact--sometimes employed, and will continue to be so
for a great while to come, I proceed to speak of their more flagrant
abuses.
Among these, none are more reprehensible than blows of any kind on the
head. Even the rod is objectionable for this purpose, since it exposes
the eyes. But the hand--in boxing the ears or striking in any way--is
more so. The bones of the head, in young children, are not yet firmly
knit together, and these concussions may injure the tender brain. I
know of whole families, whose mental faculties are dull, as the
consequence--I believe--of a perpetual boxing and striking of the head.
Some individuals are made almost idiots, in this very manner.--But the
worst is not yet told. Many teachers are in the habit of striking their
pupils' heads with thick heavy books; and with wooden rules. I have seen
one of the latter, of considerable size and thickness, broken in two
across the head of a very small boy; and this, too--such is the public
mind--in the presence of a mother who was paying a visit to the school.
I have seen parents and masters strike the heads of their children with
pieces of wood, of much larger size;--in one instance with a common
sized tailor's press-board; in another with the heavy end of a wooden
whip-handle, about an inch in diameter.
Children are sometimes severely beaten across the middle of the
body--the region where lie the vital organs--the lungs, the heart, the
liver, &c. They are sometimes beaten too, across the joints, or in any
place that the excited, perhaps passionate teacher or parent can reach.
Rules and books are thrown with violence at pupils in school. There is a
story in the "Annals of Education," Vol. IV. at page 28, of a teacher
who threw a rule at a little boy, six years old, which struck him with
great force, within an inch of one of his eyes. Had it struck a little
nearer to his nose, it would, in all probability, have destroyed his
left eye.
* * * * *
But without extending these remarks any farther, every intelligent
mother who reads what I have already written, will see, as I trust, the
necessity of properly informing herself on the great subject of physical
education; and of being better prepared than she has hitherto been for
acquitting herself, with satisfaction, of those high and sacred
responsibilities which, in the wise arrangements of Nature and
Providence, devolve upon her.