Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/543

Rh come by our knowledge through, experience, and in what manner experience acts upon our nervous system.

It is, therefore, the nervous system which we have to do with in every system of education. It will go with the saying that the better the condition of health in the nervous system, the better will it be for the plans of education. One of the fundamental laws that must govern all methods of education is the care of the health of those who are being taught. A normal condition of the conducting nerves and perceptive centers is necessary to a normal type of the perceptions gained by experience. In all schools and colleges sanitary principles ought to have the most thorough consideration. Impure air, either from bad ventilation or drainage, may do more harm to a number of children than the most eminent teacher can do good. If the brain is not well supplied with an abundance of nourishing and pure blood, its functions can not be well performed. It is a poor waste of time to teach a child, unless what is taught is imparted under such circumstances as to be remembered; and how can impressions made upon the brain become fixed and retained unless it is in a fit condition of health, activity, nutrition, and rest? Mens sana in corpore sano is now and always will be true.

Granting that the school or college is in a sanitary condition, and that there is a proper mixture of recreation in the hours of study, the individual characteristics of each pupil deserve to be taken into account. No teacher does his duty who does not make each pupil placed under his charge a careful character study. It is true this takes much time and requires much judgment; but it is far more than repaid by the greater progress that can afterward be made by the teacher with such a pupil. Some children who may be naturally truthful are, nevertheless, extremely sensitive to pain, and as a consequence will lie to escape punishment. Others, again, are instinctively prevaricators; while some are so constituted as to have no fear of corporal punishment. The hope of reward will stimulate one child to diligence; but no such result is produced in a second. One will study from a love of the work; whereas another looks upon all study as a useless waste of time, and a weary drudgery. Individualism should therefore play an important role in the management of every school. The teacher must ever fall far short of true success who does not or who can not become familiar with the many differences thus to be found in the mental and ethical qualities of his class.

Prenatal and postnatal influences may have seriously impaired the child's health, and especially that of its nervous system. Nature has done much to protect her works from the destructive and injurious effects of their environments. But, in spite of this, the conditions of life and development may have