Spontaneous Activity in Education Part 5

It would be so simple to allow children, when tired of sitting, to rise, and when tired of writing, to desist, and then their bones would not be twisted. Who can look on unmoved at the spectacle of children whose vertebral column is being deformed by using desks, just as in the Middle Ages the instep was deformed by the torture of the boot.

And on what grounds is this odious torture judged to be necessary?

Because a man has subst.i.tuted himself for G.o.d, desiring to form the minds of children in his own image and likeness; and this cannot be done without subjecting a free creature to torture. This is the only reason.

We will now quote the remedies by means of which a so-called science proposes to counteract spinal curvature in school-children. It has determined the exact position in which a child may remain seated and at work for a long period of time without injury to the vertebrae.

"The child, seated at the table, should have his feet planted flat upon the ground, or upon a foot-rest. The legs should be at right-angles to the thighs, as should the thighs be to the trunk, save for a slight inclination of the bench itself. The trunk should be in such a position that there will be no lateral inclination of the vertebral column, the arms should be parallel with the sides of the body, the thorax should not be interfered with by the front edge of the table, the pelvic basin should be symmetrically supported, the head slightly bent forward at a distance of thirty centimeters from the level of the table; the axis of the eyes, remaining parallel with the front edge of the table, should be horizontal; the forearms, two-thirds of which should be laid on the table, should rest on it, but without leaning upon it."

To realize all these conditions, it is necessary that the desk should be _exactly fitted_ to the proportions of the child; its const.i.tuent parts should agree with those of the body and limbs of the scholar.

The following are the measurements which Dufessel considered indispensable in the fas.h.i.+oning of a desk suitable for children:

1. Height.

2. The length of the leg, taken from below the knee, when the child is seated with the legs at right-angles to the thighs, and the feet flat on the ground. This measurement gives the required height of the seat from the foot-rest.

3. The diameter of the body from front to back, taken from the sternum; this, with five centimeters added to it, gives the proper distance from the reading-desk to the back of the seat.

4. The length of the femur, two-thirds of which represent the depth of the seat.

5. Finally, the height of the epigastric cavity above the seat, augmented by a few centimeters, indicates the height of the reading-desk.

We may add that in view of the rapid growth of the child, these measurements should be taken twice in the course of the school year, and children should be made to change places in accordance with these measurements.

There is a little crustacean which, coming naked into the world, chooses an empty sh.e.l.l and adapts itself thereto; when it grows larger and the sh.e.l.l becomes too tight, it sallies forth and takes up its abode in a larger one. This the creature does of its own accord, without a savant to measure it or a teacher to choose a new sh.e.l.l for it. But to us and to scientists, a child is inferior to this lowly invertebrate!

The difficulty of keeping forty or fifty children motionless for hours in the prescribed hygienic att.i.tude, and of finding desks exactly adapted to these growing bodies, makes this remedy impracticable, so hunchbacks continue among us. The problem remains unsolved.

Hence it has been deemed more practical to establish a kind of orthopaedic inst.i.tution within the building itself in certain model schools in Rome. It consists of a costly and elaborate apparatus, to which the pupils come in turn to be suspended by the head after the method adopted in medicine to combat spinal curvature in Pott's disease (tuberculosis of the vertebral column) and rickets.

Healthy children, as well as the unsound, suffer by these applications; but on the other hand, the results afford encouraging statistics. If this hanging treatment be initiated regularly at the age of six years it strikes a perfect balance with the injury caused by prolonged deterioration induced by school desks, and children are delivered from spinal disease.

=Discoveries of experimental psychology: overwork; nervous exhaustion=.--Hygiene, making its way into the school, discovered scholar's spinal curvature and scholar's myopia; experimental psychology discovered the exhaustion due to overwork, and studied the _fatigue_ of the scholar. It followed in the beaten track of medicine--that is to say, it sought to alleviate the ills it had diagnosed, and inst.i.tuted a branch of science the t.i.tle of which is not very clearly defined as yet, for some call it experimental psychology applied to the school, others Scientific Pedagogy.

It is necessary to remember that experimental psychology was established in 1860 by Fechner, who was a physicist accustomed to experiment on _things_, not on living creatures, and who merely adapted the methods employed in physics to psychical measurements, thus founding psycho-physics. The instruments specially invented for esthesiometric measurements were of extreme precision; but the results obtained showed such variations that by mathematical law they could not be attributed to "errors of measurement," but were obviously due to "errors of method." Indeed, for the measurement of liquids it is necessary to have an instrument different from that which we use in measuring solids, although we are still in the domain of physics; we cannot measure a stuff by the quart, nor wine by the yard; how much more then must the methods of measuring physical substances and spiritual energy differ?

After psycho-physics, psycho-physiology was introduced by Wundt.

Wundt, being a physiologist, applied the methods of study proper to physiological functions to psychical study. He did not make the exact metrical instrument his aim; but he measured nervous reactions exactly in _time_. Fechner's primitive researches made it possible to produce instruments so exact that they can measure the sound made by a drop of water falling from the height of a meter, while Wundt's researches have resulted in chronometers which can measure the thousandth part of a second. But the spirit did not correspond to the exactness of research--the results showed by their oscillations that nothing was being measured--that the object to be measured escaped. It will suffice to mention that in measuring the nervous currents in rate of transmission of impulse along the nerves and also in the ganglion cells of the spinal marrow, Exner arrived at a rapidity of eight meters, and Bloch at a rapidity of 194 meters, in the same unit of time.

In spite of this startling contrast between the precision of the means of research and the huge variations in the results, which were shown by mathematical law to be absurd, experimental psychology carried on extensive studies, under the illusion that it rested upon a mathematical basis.

It is from this science that a branch has been detached with which to penetrate into the school, for the purpose of giving spiritual help to the scholar, and fresh vigor to pedagogy.

Methods of research are no longer merely those antiquated psycho-physical and psycho-physiological methods formerly in favor; experimental psychology, henceforth emanc.i.p.ated from its origins, has developed independently. It now relies on purely psychological tests for its researches, and although it does not exclude the methods adopted in the laboratory, and the use of such accurate and trustworthy instruments as the esthesiometer and the ergograph, the school itself has become the chief field of experiment.

For example: one of the most familiar tests of attention is to give a printed page to be read over, with directions to strike out every _a_ on the page; the time taken to complete this task is measured by chronometer.

Counting aloud from one to a hundred, and at the same time carrying on arithmetical operations in writing, is a measure of the distribution of the attention, provided the time taken be calculated by the chronometer, and all errors be noted. To make several persons perform similar exercises at the same time enables us to study comparative individual activities. In schools, exercises in dictation which have been previously determined, may be given to a group of scholars, care being taken to note the time occupied in performing the exercise and to compare the errors. This is also an easy and practical means of obtaining collective results.

These experiments all psychologists agree should be carried out without interrupting the usual routine of the school. They are to be regarded as an addition, an _extra_, and may be summed up as a means of scientific research, throwing light upon the regular psychical conditions of school studies.

The princ.i.p.al results of such experiments have been: the multiplicity of mistakes made, and the difficulty of fixing attention; that is to say, they reveal the weariness, the degree of fatigue, in children.

This gave the alarm! Old-fas.h.i.+oned pedagogy was concerned solely with what children ought to do. The idea that their nervous energies might be impaired was first called into being by the warning note of science.

Researches into the causes of fatigue became more and more frequent, and coupled with such researches was the less immediate enquiry as to how fatigue could be "combated" or "alleviated." All the factors relating to the question were studied: age, s.e.x, the degree of intelligence, the type of individual, the influence of the seasons, the influence of the various times of the day, of the various days of the week, of habit, intervals of relaxation, interest, variety of work, the position of the body, and, finally, position in reference to the cardinal points.

=Science is confronted by a ma.s.s of unsolved problems=.--The outcome of all these researches is a growing ma.s.s of unsolved problems. It has not been established whether males are more easily fatigued than females; whether the intelligent are more subject to fatigue than the unintelligent. With regard to the individual type, Tissie's conclusion seems to be the most noteworthy: "Each individual becomes fatigued or not according to his degree of will." In connection with the seasons it appears that fatigue increases from the first to the last day of school, but it is uncertain whether this is due to the influence of the seasons, or whether, as Schuyten affirms, the scholar's gradual exhaustion is due to the scholastic system. With regard to the time of day, "it is still a question whether the fatigue produced is less when the pupil works spontaneously, but this problem is a difficult one to solve." The days of the week when fatigue is least evident are Monday and Friday, but researches made in this connection are not definitive; as to habit, intervals of rest, interest: "in connection with these factors which are antagonistic to fatigue, it has been questioned whether they actually diminish fatigue, or merely cloak it, but no decision has been reached." A great variety of interesting researches have been made into the question of change of work with identical results--namely, that frequent change of work causes greater fatigue than continuous work of one kind, and that a sudden interruption is more fatiguing than persistence. The following experiment (quoted by Claparede) was made by Schultze: one day the girls were required to add up figures for twenty-five minutes, and then to copy out pa.s.sages for another twenty-five minutes. Another day they performed the same work, but it was differently divided; they had to add for fifty minutes and to copy for another fifty minutes. Now these last tests gave results infinitely superior to the first. And yet it is well known that, in spite of such results, constant interruption and change of work are commonly practised in schools, as part of a scientific plan for combating fatigue.

One of the researches directly relating to schools is that of the ponogenic co-efficient of the various subjects of instruction, that is to say, of the degrees of fatigue induced by these. Wagner is of opinion _a priori_ that one hundred, the maximum co-efficient, must be a.s.signed to mathematics; in this case, we should get the following ponogenic co-efficients in schools, for each subject:

Mathematics 100 Latin 91 Greek 90 Gymnastics 90 History and Geography 85 French and German 82 Natural History 80 Drawing, Religion 77

We may note the arbitrary and surprising manner in which such results are established; nevertheless, in the name of "experimental science"

it is possible to make such deductions as the following:

"It would be interesting to enquire if the order of the ponogenic co-efficients varies with the age of the children, which would enable us to know on the one hand when the brain is best fitted for the study of any particular subject and when therefore it would be most judicious to make it predominate in the program; on the other hand, it would help us in the arrangement of the daily time-table; we should take, if possible, the most fatiguing subjects at the beginning of the day" (Claparede, _op. cit._).

Another order of recent researches is that made into the toxines produced by fatigue; Weichardt succeeded in isolating these toxines, and in fabricating anti-toxines with which he experimented successfully on rats. The experiments were also repeated in a clinic.

With regard to the appearance of the toxines, it was found that they were abundantly produced during the performance of "wearisome" work, whereas there were only traces of them to be found when the work was "interesting."

Throughout this science so packed with researches which give as their result unsolved problems, we perceive that not one of the factors taken into consideration can alleviate fatigue; interruption and change of work merely aggravate it. The one means by which _surmenage_ (exhaustion due to overwork) can be eliminated is to make work pleasant and interesting, to give joy in work rather than pain.

"The necessity of making education and instruction attractive has been propounded by all pedagogists worthy of the name, such as Fenelon, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Spencer,"

says Claparede, "but it is still unrecognized in the everyday practise of the schools" (_op. cit._).

"By common consent, the first duty of the educator is that of doing no harm: first do no harm, a precept also accepted in the practise of medicine. To obey it to the letter is, indeed, _impossible, because every method of scholastic education is in some way prejudicial to the normal development of the child_. But the educator will seek to _alleviate the injury which instruction necessarily entails_"

(_op. cit._).

This is indeed cold comfort, after all these studies and researches! A confession that problems have arisen at every step, and that not a single one has been solved! Indeed, underlying all this is the _problem of problems_: how to make that place attractive and joyous where hitherto the body has been tortured and contorted, and the blood poisoned by weariness! It is impossible to educate without doing harm; but we must do harm that will give pleasure! This is truly an embarra.s.sing position! And this is why an interminable string of notes of interrogation serves as the decorative motive of this new science, which might be more appropriately styled: _ignorabimus_.

And it is for this reason that the considerations indicated by hygiene and psychology now tend to do away altogether with the sum total of irreparable evils, "commuting the sentence," that is to say, abbreviating hours of study, cutting down the curriculum, avoiding written exercises. Thus a new specter, that of ignorance, and henceforth the abandonment of the child for the greater part of the day, present themselves as a subst.i.tute for the specter of destruction. Meanwhile our epoch demands an intensive care of the new generation, and the preparation of a culture ever vaster and more complex.

True, it would appear that to-day a way of escape may be offered by the discovery of the anti-toxine for fatigue. "Just think!" exclaims Claparede, "a serum against fatigue. How valuable this would be!" From this point of view, I should say that the ponogenic co-efficients might find a more practical and rational application than that of the revelation of "programs"; indeed these co-efficients indicating the production of toxines would appear destined to determine the dose of anti-toxine necessary to nullify the evil effects resulting from each different subject of instruction. In the not far distant future, when these auxiliary sciences of the school and pedagogy shall have made due progress, we shall perhaps see, side by side with the orthopaedic ward, a physio-chemical clinic, where every evening the pupils, as they leave the beneficent suspensory apparatus which counteracts injury to their skeletons, may enter with a kind of ponogenic prescription regulated by the teaching they have undergone, and receive an injection which will deliver them from the poisonous effects of fatigue!

This reads like an irony of the worst kind, perhaps; but this is not the case. Where the orthopaedic inst.i.tution is already an accomplished fact, we may very soon see the chemical clinic established. If a problem of liberty is to be solved with machines, and if a problem of justice is to be regarded from the chemical point of view, similar consequences will be the logical end of sciences developed upon such errors.

It is obvious that a real experimental science, which shall guide education and deliver the child from slavery, is not yet born; when it appears, it will be to the so-called "sciences" that have sprung up in connection with the diseases of martyred childhood as chemistry to alchemy, and as positive medicine to the empirical medicine of bygone centuries.

I think it will be of interest here to record the impressions of a person who, leaving the field of mathematics, entered upon the study of biology and experimental psychology.

It is an account of a young English engineer, who had evidently mistaken his vocation, and who, after studying my method for two years, returned to the universities of his own great country as a student of biology.