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Needed School Reforms.

infectious disease of the throat or lungs, would greatly endanger the little ones by kissing them as many are in the habit of doing. To carry out all the above suggestions would cause a good deal of additional care on the part of teachers, and some expense on the part of school boards, but it would save many weary vigils, many broken hearts, many dollars and cents to the patrons of the school, beside inculcating some valuable lessons to the pupils, teachers and patrons in sanitary science and hygiene that would be practical in character, and lead to more healthy homes. School boards. should bear in mind that they have in trust all that relates to the school. They should bear in mind the protection of life and health is a part of education, involving all the facilities for such. They should, by all possible means give the child a fair chance for health and usefulness. No one can do more for the welfare of the child in school, and in molding public sentiment than they.

To secure men and women with sound bodies, fitted for labor, with good character, and mental endowments sufficient for some useful vocation, school boards should plan generously and judiciously, that the commonwealth, for its expenditure of means, may be rewarded with good citizens, happy families, prosperous homes, and industries.

NEEDED SCHOOL REFORMS.*

As chairman of the State Board of Health Committee on Education and Schools, I submit to the Governor these reflections: I trust he will weigh them as particularly as their importance demands, and as it is customary with him to consider all questions; and then, that he will find it to be "very meet and proper" to recommend to our legislature in his annual message that the reforms herein proposed be made the law of the State.

These have the sanction of numerous professional educators of varied experience and ripe accomplishments, as well as of cultured medical men generally, for as much as they are based upon

By E. A. GUILBERT, A. M., M. D., LL.D., Chairman of the Committee on Education and Schools.

Needed School Reforms.

the unerring laws of physiology, one of the exact sciences, and at the same time harmonize with the practical spirit of these materialistic days.

THE SCHOOL AGE.

Considering that the brains of young children are immature, are, in other phrase, in a stage of transitional development, and are not capacitated to bear persistent study without more or less injury, it stands to reason that no child under the age of seven should be eligible to the public school.

If an infant must be sent to school, temporarily, to relieve some overworked mother of its proper care, let it be to the kindergarten, the coming infant school, where the little one's unfolding brain is amused, but not overtasked, by a judicious course of instructive games and easily grasped object lessons, simple gymnastic exercises, and the singing of childish songs.

The State law, I believe, establishes five years as the school age. In doing this it has unwittingly violated a known physiological law, to the disadvantage of the race. The increase in the population of the State has changed the conditions, which seemed, at the date of the enactment of our school law, to make infant schools of the public schools, and the time has come for such a change in the school age of children as will do honor to Iowa, and place her abreast of other commonwealths, in which loyalty to the physiological law is well illustrated.

It is known, as has been explained to me by an expert-that is to say, by the distinguished Prof. Edwards, the editor of the "Iowa Normal Monthly"-that in the early days of the State, when the foundations of our admirable public school system were laid broad, deep and enduring, the sparseness of the population made the establishment of five years as the school age a necessity, because the resultant increase in the maximum of the per capita allowance rendered possible the founding of schools in localities where, without such increase, they could not have been maintained. That per capita, which at first was about $1.08, has now, with the advance in school land values consequent upon the increase in population, together with the phenomenal development of means of intercommunication, reached the sum of $1.46, and still advances.

Needed School Reforms.

Of course, the financial aspect of the proposed reform, will influence many, and the question will be asked: "How will the present income of school districts, to which the school methods have been adapted, be effected in the event of the elimination of at least one-fourth of the beneficiaries from the aggregate, upon which aggregate the allowance to each district is based?"

The answer to this pertinent query seems to be found in the averment that it would be the duty of the legislature to couple with the statutory reform in the school age the proviso that nothing thus done should operate to reduce the allottment of monies to each district.

Under such a proviso, no enlarged drafts would be made upon the school fund, for it would simply increase the per capita allowance to the remaining three-fourths of the beneficiaries, and the aggregate expenditures would not be enhanced at all. Beside, the accomplished reform in thus enlarging the per capita, would place it in the power of each school district to expand its teaching facilities in the way of needed school paraphernalia, gymnastic and other. Above all, the reform would markedly reduce the strain to which our teachers are now subjected in the villages and cities of the commonwealth.

SCHOOL HOURS.

In connection with the foregoing, there should be a change made in the matter of the hours which children between the ages of seven and ten years are expected to spend in school.

Here, again, we find the physiological law to be worthy of study and obedience. Reflecting medical men, and educators of discernment and experience, unite in the opinion that the law aforesaid is widely broken, and broken to the hurt of the subject, if children between the ages of seven and ten years are imprisoned in school over three hours each day.

A child ten years old, with its immature brain; its feebler powers of application to books; its liability to injury from being held, unduly, to the performance of mental labor, should never be kept in school the same number of hours as one fifteen years of age, whose capacity for brain work is fifty per cent greater.

It is an inerrable physiological law that mental endeavor not in line with the powers of the human system, adds nothing to the

Needed School Reforms.

result. Hence, a child will accomplish as much in half-time at school, in the long run, as he would had he been kept at his desk the regulation six hours.

Experience fully substantiates this proposition, and indicates the

law.

It is no argument in favor of the full time heresy to say that a child under ten years of age must be kept six hours a day in school, because of a harassed mother's desire to be relieved of its disturbing company. And yet this plea for persistence in statutory tyranny will be gravely made by many of the lay public, who are blind to duty simply because they decline to see.

Childhood is the age of cyclonic changes of position and phenominally healthy lung power. To exploit these erratic muscular movements, and these "windy suspirations of forced breath" is as necessary to the healthy child, as is the air he breathes, or the food he eats. Within proper limitations the child should be granted his rights in this direction by the parent, as a means to the end of health. That parent who constantly represses these habitual, and often annoying, illustrations of his child's law of being, wrongs himself and his offspring, who is best governed in these matters when treated with a little wholesome neglect.

It follows, therefore, that to deprive an active child of these physiological helps to physical progress, for an undue length of time each day in school, is precise and un-American tyranny, and is a sad violation of hygienic laws.

Further, and to conclude: The change in the school age, beside the hygienic blessings conferred upon the child, would relieve in part the strain upon the self-sacrificing women teachers, which is now burthening so many homes with hopeless invalids.

Half-time for children between the ages of seven and ten, means to our cities, whose schools are always overcrowded, fifty per cent increase in their spheres of influence. The results achieved in England and some of our sister States (notably Massachusetts), where elaborate trials of the half-time system have been made, amply prove that the child learns as much under the three as under the six hour a day regulation. These facts admonish our legislators that the law of physiology, as applied to the proposed reforms, which law is one expression of the law of God, should not longer

Consumption.

be "more honored in the breach than the observance," in the Hawkeye State.

Our public men in the early days really "builded wiser than they knew," when they put into the State's organic statutes the enlightened and flexible school law. The seed then so thoroughly sown, has had a resultant, perennial harvest, whose value is beyond any powers of computation known to man, because that harvest is for eternity as well as time. But that school system, grand and effective as it is to-day, is instinct with the law of growth. It is capable of indefinite expansion like all the institutions of this free land. We should not, therefore, rest content with present achievements, noble as they are, but should be swift to embody in our educational polity any and all improvements which the unresting spirit of progress discovers and experience approves. Communities, as well as individuals, in this day of enlightenment, should not be satisfied with existing attainments, but rather should strive for greater results. Earnestly and effectively should this teaching be applied to our public school system, and especially so when, at this era in our history, ruthless hands are raised to pull down this citadel of freedom, this only platform on which, in our nation, the children of sires of diverse nationalities and creeds, can meet on liberty's level, and be blended and compacted into the full stature of American citizenship-a citizenship hostile to sectarian domination, or to any other unhallowed manipulation of our God-given rights.

CONSUMPTION.

Consumption, or as it is called, phthisis, or tuberculosis of the lungs, is the greatest destroyer of human life the world has known. The terrible ravages of all the plagues and epidemics that have swept over peoples and continents from time to time, form no comparison with the death pall that marks the insideous path of consumption. It respects neither age, sex nor condition. The rich, the poor, in the palace and in the hovel; the untutored Indian in

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