In the morning trials he was no better than A. M., but he, too, was
subjected to five different tests at half past eleven, with the result
that he could in every instance complete the task without any apparent
fatigue. There was no constraint apparent in the face or hands, no
unusual effort to co-ordinate the muscles of the body, and no
twitchings of any kind. Now, it seems probable that in the case of W.
R. the brain was able to adjust effort in right degree to the needs of
the occasion, while with A. M. there was such prodigality in the
expenditure of energy in various irrelevant motor tensions and
activities that it not only defeated its purpose, but it was soon
largely spent. A. M. showed this tendency to nervous extravagance in
all the work of the school. While an unusually bright boy, he yet
became fatigued in the performance of duties that W. R. could
discharge with no evidence of overstrain; indeed, the latter boy
seemed never to reach a point beyond which he could not go with safety
if he chose.
Further illustrations of this principle of individual differences in
the conservation of nervous energy were afforded by another simple
experiment. The apparatus employed consisted of a plate of smoked
glass set in a frame so that it could be moved horizontally. Just
touching the glass, and adjusted to it by a delicate spring, was a
fine metal point which could be maintained at any height by a silk
thread to be held in the fingers of the subject to be experimented
upon, who stood with closed eyes endeavoring to keep his hand
perfectly quiet for one half minute. During the test the glass was
moved slowly in the frame, the metal point thus tracing a line which
was a faithful index to most of the movements, at any rate, of the
subject's hand. Five sets of experiments were made upon a number of
pupils in the morning soon after the opening of school, and again just
before the noon recess. The accompanying tracings are reproductions of
those gained at one of the tests, and are typical examples. The first
two were secured from a girl, M. L. R., eleven years of age. The one
made at half past eleven, after two and a quarter hours' work in
school, shows a significant phenomenon which could be easily witnessed
during the experiment. She had become so fatigued that all muscular
expressions were unusually constrained. During the short period while
the experiment continued one could observe the arm and fingers
contracting, which accounts for the upward direction of the tracing.
The body swayed almost to the point of falling, the fingers of the
hand not employed were clinched, and all the expressions indicated
great tension. The second set of tracings, gained from a girl, E. H.,
twelve years of age, shows evidences of marked fatigue after a few
hours' work; but the effect upon the bodily activities is quite in
contrast with that of the case just mentioned. Here there was
relaxation of the muscles, a general letting go of the whole body,
revealed in the tracings taking an abrupt downward direction. The
third group of tracings was gained from W. R., whose characteristics
have already been adverted to, and who indicated here, as in the other
tests, that his morning's duties had had no serious effect upon his
nervous energies.
[Illustration: M. L. R.]
[Illustration: E. H.]
[Illustration: W. R.]
It should be said in passing that the principle of healthful mental
growth and activity seems to require that in education of any sort
cerebral cells should be freely exercised up to the point of fatigue,
but never beyond; for after this there is not only no progress, but
what has been gained by previous training may even be lost. And, what
is more serious, the undue depletion of the nerve cell renders its
recovery extremely slow, and investigation has shown that school
children when overtaxed return to their studies day after day in a
fatigued condition, their energies not being fully restored until the
long vacation brings the needed rest.[33] Those who train athletes
realize that the fatigue limit must not be passed if possible, and
this law is recognized as well in the training of racing horses,[34]
One who has observed his experience in learning to ride the bicycle
must have discovered that practice pursued when in a condition of
exhaustion operates rather to retard than to promote facility. So in
matters of the mind activity carried to excess, which point is further
removed in some cases than in others, results in retardation of
growth, even though no more serious consequences ensue.
[Footnote 33: Educational Review, _op. cit._]
[Footnote 34: Bryan, Addresses and Proceedings of the National
Educational Association, 1897.]
II.
As might be readily inferred, even if we were lacking experimental
evidence, fatigue interferes with the normal activities alike of body
and mind. One of the earliest and most conspicuous effects may be
observed by any one in the people about him--a decrease in the
rapidity of physical action. The child depleted of nervous energy, for
whatever reason, will usually be slower than his fellows in performing
the various activities of home or school. If observed during gymnastic
exercises it may be noticed that his execution of the various commands
is delayed; in responding to signals he is behind his comrades whose
nervous capital is not so largely spent. And what is here said of the
child is, of course, equally true in principle of the adult; the
effect of fatigue in his case will be revealed in less lively,
vivacious, and vigorous conduct in the affairs of business or of
society. Mosso,[35] Burgerstein,[36] Scripture,[37] Bryan,[38] and
others have been able to confirm by scientific experiment what people
have thus long been conscious of in a way--that cerebral fatigue
renders one slower, more lethargic in his activities. It seems clear,
to hazard an explanation, that when nerve cells become depleted up to
the point of fatigue Nature designs that they should be released from
service in order that repair may take place. This rhythm of action and
repose seems to be common to all forms of life. The phenomenon of
sleep is an expression of this principle, and is characterized by
almost entire absence of activity.
[Footnote 35: Pedagogical Seminary, vol. ii, pp. 20 _et seq._]
[Footnote 36: Ibid., _op. cit._]
[Footnote 37: The New Psychology, pp. 128-132.]
[Footnote 38: The Development of Voluntary Motor Ability, p. 76.]
Again, fatigue disturbs the power of accurate and sustained bodily
co-ordinations, particularly of the peripheral muscles, or those
engaged in the control of the more delicate movements of the body, as
of the fingers. Every one must have had the experience that consequent
upon a period of exacting labor (physical or mental), or worry, the
hand becomes unsteady, as revealed in writing or other fine work, the
voice is not so perfectly controlled as at other times, and perhaps
involuntary twitchings or _tics_ make their appearance in the face or
elsewhere. Ordinarily people regard these phenomena as evidences
simply of "nervousness," but, as commonly used, this term does not
take account of the neural conditions responsible for these abnormal
manifestations. Warner[39] points out that nerve cells in a state of
fatigue become impulsive or spasmodic in their action; there is not
such perfect balance as usually exists between them when in a normal,
rested condition, and this results in lessened power of inhibition.
Scripture[40] and others have shown by experiments in the laboratory
that fatigue renders co-ordination less sustained and accurate. If,
now, one observes a group of people, young or old, in which some or
all have passed the fatigue limit, he can see the cause of many of
those occurrences which give the teacher in the school, for example,
continual trouble. The children will doubtless be moving incessantly
in their seats, books and pencils may be dropping upon the floor, and
various signals are responded to slowly and in a disorderly manner.
The restlessness is probably due for the most part to the effort of
the pupils to relieve the tension of muscles induced by overstrain,
while inability to accurately co-ordinate the muscles employed in
holding pencils and books causes objects to slip out of the pupils'
hands upon the floor. One has but to observe his own experience, and
he will soon realize that when nervously exhausted he is not so
certain of retaining securely small objects which he handles. This
accounts for what is sometimes regarded as carelessness in school
children as well as in adults, exhibited in slovenly writing, in
breaking dishes, and in similar occurrences. Any task demanding
delicate and sustained adjustment of the finer muscles on the part of
one fatigued will be liable to be performed in a careless manner, as
we are apt to feel. Often more than not the term carelessness probably
denotes impaired neural conditions, as well as consequent mental
dispersion, if one may so speak, leading to inaccurate and
intermittent mental and physical adjustments to duties in hand.
[Footnote 39: Mental Faculty, pp. 76, 77.]
[Footnote 40: The New Psychology, pp. 236-248.]
Cowles[41] observes that the first prominent and serious mental
concomitant of nervous depletion is revealed in the inability to
direct the attention continuously upon any given subject; and James
has said that when one is fatigued the mind wanders in various
directions, snatching at everything which promises relief from the
object of immediate attention. Experiments in the laboratory upon the
keenness of sense discrimination of data appealing to sight, hearing,
touch, and the other senses, show that there is lessened ability in
conditions of fatigue;[42] and this is accounted for probably by the
waning power of attention. The mind can be held to one thing,
excluding irrelevant matters. This phenomenon is further illustrated
in the following simple experiment: The pupils in a large graded
school in Buffalo, N. Y., were required upon three successive days, at
half past nine o'clock and again at half past eleven in the morning,
to trisect a line three inches long. The results, calculated for one
hundred and fifty children, show that on the average they were several
millimetres nearer correct in the morning trisections than in those
just before the midday recess.[43] It seems that this test measured
the degree of attention which pupils were able to exert at different
hours during the day, and it confirmed what must in a way be known to
every one--that a day's work in school reduces the energy of
attention. Doubtless every instructor has remarked how much more
difficult it is at half past eleven than at ten to hold the thoughts
of students to the subject in hand, and if recitations in intricate
studies occur late in the forenoon, progress will be slower and more
errors will be made, simply because pupils are unable to attend so
critically.
[Footnote 41: _Op. cit._, p. 47.]
[Footnote 42: See Educational Review, _op. cit._; Galton, Journal
of the Anthropological Institute, 1888, pp. 153 _et seq._]
[Footnote 43: Since this article was written extensive
investigations on school-room fatigue have been made in the
schools of Madison, Wis., under the writer's direction, and the
general principles here mentioned have been corroborated.]
The significance of this latter effect of fatigue must be apparent
when it is realized that attention is at the basis of all the
intellectual processes. If one can not attend vitally, he can not
perceive readily or accurately; he will be unable to recall fully or
speedily what has formerly been thoroughly mastered; and, most serious
of all, he can not so well compare objects or ideas to discover their
relationships--that is, he is not so ready or accurate in reason. In
fatigue, then, one really becomes stupid. Suppose a fatigued pupil in
school working over his spelling lesson, for instance; he will be
liable to make errors both in copying from the board and in
reproducing what he already knows. In recitations in history, memory
will be halting; what has apparently been made secure some time before
now seems to be out of reach. In those studies requiring reflection,
as arithmetic, grammar, geography, and the like, the reasoner will be
unable to hold his thoughts continuously to the matters under
consideration, and so will be unable to detect relationships between
them readily and accurately. When one considers, in view of what is
here set forth, that many persons, adults as well as students, are for
one cause or another in a constant state of fatigue, he can see the
explanation of the stupid type of individual, in some instances at any
rate.
The effects upon the emotional activities, while not so easily
detected by experimentation, may yet be readily observed in one's own
experiences and in the conduct of persons in his environment.
Cowles,[44] Beard,[45] and others assure us as physicians that
neurasthenia gives rise to irritability, gloominess, despondency, and
sets free a brood of fears and other kindred more or less abnormal
feelings. Wey,[46] in his studies upon the physical condition of young
criminals, has found that in the majority of instances there appears
to be some neural defect or deficiency, mostly of the nature of
depletion, which he believes contributes to alienate the moral
feelings of the individual. There is little doubt that viciousness has
a physiological basis. It is probable that in such a case the highest
cerebral regions, through which are transmitted the spiritual
activities last developed in the race, becoming incapacitated first by
fatigue, are rendered incapable of inhibiting impulses from the lower
regions, which manifest themselves in an antisocial way.
[Footnote 44: _Op. cit._, pp. 47 _et seq._]
[Footnote 45: _Op. cit._, pp. 36-117.]
[Footnote 46: Papers in Penology, 1891, pp. 57-69; _cf._ Collin,
also in same, pp. 27, 28; Wright, American Journal of Neurology
and Psychiatry, vols. ii and iii, pp. 135 _et seq._]
III.
It follows from what has gone before that cerebral fatigue is a most
important matter to be reckoned with in all the affairs of life, but
especially in education, where the foundations for nervous vigor or
weakness are being permanently established, and where relatively
little can be accomplished in either intellectual or moral training
unless the physical instrument of mind be kept in good repair. It
needs no argument to beget the conviction that we should if possible
ascertain what circumstances produce fatigue most frequently in the
schoolroom, so that they may be ameliorated and their injurious
consequences thus avoided. What, then, are the most important causes?
It is well to appreciate at the outset that every individual has a
certain amount of nervous capital which, when expended, leaves him a
bankrupt, and it is of supreme import to him that something should
always be kept on the credit side of his account. If we would deal
most wisely with a pupil, then, whose activities we are able to
direct, we should know just what demands we could make upon his
energies without fatiguing him. But we can not hope at the present
time and under present conditions to discover with accuracy the
fatigue point of each individual, and even if we were able to do so,
we would doubtless find it next to impossible to observe it at all
times in our teaching, especially in our large graded schools. But we
can at any rate adjust our requirements with some degree of accuracy
to the average capacity of the whole.
Regarding the number of hours of mental application per day which may
be safely expected of a pupil in school, investigations have tended to
show that there is a danger of requiring too many. When pupils return
to school morning after morning without having recovered from the
previous day's labors, it is evident that too heavy draughts are being
made upon their nervous capital. It may be said in reply that many
factors conspire to produce this depleted condition, as insufficient
sleep, inadequate nutrition, and outside duties; but the answer is
that under such unfavorable circumstances less work may be demanded.
As the curriculum is planned in many places, alike in graded and
ungraded schools, the pupil is expected to be employed in the school
for five or six hours a day no matter what may be his age, and to this
work should be added studies at home for the older students. Now, as
Kraeplin[47] has justly observed, Nature ordains that a young child
should not give six hours' daily concentrated attention in the
schoolroom, but, rather, she has taken pains to implant deeply within
him a profound instinct to preserve his mental health by refusing to
attend to hard work for such a long period. Consequently, in such an
educational _régime_, the mind of the pupil continually wanders from
the duties in hand. The most serious aspect of this is apparent, that
when attention is constantly demanded and not given, or when a pupil
is pretending or attempting to keep his thoughts turned in a given
direction, yet allows them to drift aimlessly because he is
practically unable to control them, he is acquiring an unfortunate
habit of mental dissipation. It seems certain that healthful and
efficient mental activity requires that a child apply himself in a
maximum degree for a relatively short period, the duration differing
with the age of the individual and the balance of nervous energy to
his credit; and then he should relax, attention being released for a
time.
[Footnote 47: A Measure of Mental Capacity, Popular Science
Monthly, vol. xlix, p. 758.]
Experiments conducted by Burgerstein[48] and at Leland Stanford Junior
University[49] emphasize a particular phase of this principle--that
too long continued mental application without relaxation induces
fatigue more readily than when there are comparatively short periods
of effort, followed by intermissions of rest. Thus when pupils (and
the younger they are the more is this true) have a given amount of
work to do requiring their attention say for an hour and a half they
will accomplish most with least waste of energy by breaking up this
long stretch into several parts, interspersing a few minutes of free
play. With adults application may profitably continue for longer
periods, but even here the rhythm of concentration and relaxation must
be observed in order that effort may have the most fruitful issue.
There would assuredly be less dullness, carelessness, and disorder in
our schools, high and low, and in our homes, if this law were observed
in the arrangement of the activities of daily life. The writer knows
of a normal school where the work begins at half past eight in the
morning and continues until one o'clock, with a pause of only ten
minutes in the middle of the session. During the passage of classes
from room to room at the close of recitations, monitors are placed in
the halls to prevent any exhibition of freedom in communicating with
one another or in the movements of the body. Here there is little if
any relief to the attention, since pupils are under practically the
same constraint as when reciting in Latin, Greek, or geometry. This
enthronement of discipline, which we all seem natively to think
necessary that we may prevent the reversionary tendencies of youth, is
sure to breed in some measure the very maladies--stupidity and
disorder--which various agencies in society are striving to cure by
all sorts of formulæ.
[Footnote 48: _Op. cit._]
[Footnote 49: Pedagogical Seminary, vol. iii, pp. 213 _et seq._]
In the normal, well-organized adult brain the various areas are
closely knit together by association pathways or fibers,[50] which
renders it possible to employ in particular direction the energies
generated over large regions. But this development comes relatively
late and is not fully completed under about thirty-three years of age,
it is now believed. It is in a measure, then, impossible for the young
child to utilize the energies produced in one part of the brain in
activities involving remote sections. One who observes little children
in their spontaneous activities can not fail to note evidences in
plenty in illustration of this principle. It should be apparent, then,
why a school programme so arranged that a lesson in writing is
followed by one in written language, this by written number, and this
in turn by written spelling, or possibly by a written reproduction of
a lesson in Nature or literature, is admirably suited to exhaust the
overused areas of pupils' brains, whereupon the mental and physical
effects of fatigue make their appearance. In one of the large cities
of our country the amount of time spent in writing was calculated for
all the grades in the schools, and it was found that at least one hour
was required of the children in every grade, and in the fourth and
fifth grades they were engaged for two hundred minutes every day in
writing in some form or other.
[Footnote 50: Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain, chapters ix to
xiii.]
Doubtless every one has observed how readily he becomes fatigued when
he is engaged in activities demanding very delicate muscular
adjustments--threading a needle, for instance. Work of this character
involves particularly the higher co-ordinating areas of the brain,
those controlling the more precise and elaborate adjustments of the
body, and this work makes large demands upon one's nervous energy.
This seems to be pre-eminently true of the child, in whose brain the
highest regions are yet comparatively undeveloped, so that much
exercise of them leads quickly to exhaustion. Those activities, then,
which compel a great amount of exact co-ordination of young children
will easily fatigue them. The writer has for some time been observing
the effect of various sorts of playthings upon the activities,
particularly upon the emotions, of two young children. He has noticed
that those plays requiring most accurate co-ordination, as stringing
kindergarten beads with small openings or writing with a hard lead
pencil, will quickly produce fatigue, shown in irritability,
discontent, and lack of control; while those plays which employ the
larger muscles, as working in sand or drawing a cart, are more
enduring in their interest and are not attended by such disagreeable
after effects. It is customary, however, in many homes and schools to
require of the youngest children the finest work in the management of
the smallest tools and materials, such, for instance, as writing on
very narrow spaced paper, greater freedom being permitted in this
respect as the pupil grows older--an inversion of the natural order.
The mode of development of the nervous system indicates unmistakably
that in all training the individual should proceed gradually from the
acquirement of _strength_ and _force_ in large, coarse, and relatively
inexact movements to the acquisition of _skill_ in precisely
co-ordinated activities.
Any reference to the remediable causes of mental fatigue would be
incomplete without allusion to the harmful influence of certain
personal characteristics in the people with whom we associate. By
virtue of a great law of our being, that of suggestion, the importance
of which we are appreciating more fully from day to day, we tend ever
to reproduce within ourselves the activities of the things in our
environment.[51] Now, when we are forced to remain in the presence of
one fatigued, as pupils too frequently are in the school and children
in the home, and this fatigue manifests itself in irritability,
impatience, tension of voice, and constraint of face and body--in such
an environment we become overstimulated ourselves and rapidly waste
our energies. Especially true is this of children, who are more
suggestible than adults; and, in view of this, one can appreciate the
necessity of placing in our schoolrooms, and if we could in our homes,
persons possessing an endowment of nervous energy adequate for the
demands to be made upon it without inducing too readily fatigue with
all its train of evils.
[Footnote 51: _Cf._ Sidis, The Psychology of Suggestion; and
Vernon Lee and C. A. Thompson, Beauty and Ugliness, Contemporary
Review, vol. lxxii, pp. 544-569 and 669-688.]
BEST METHODS OF TAXATION.
BY THE LATE HON. DAVID A. WELLS.
PART II.