In this department there is much
instruction given that has no practical value, and children are often
permitted to live in daily and uniform neglect of the most essential
truths of science and the facts of human experience. Neither physiology
nor hygiene can be of much value in the schools, as a study, unless
there is an application of what is taught. Great proficiency cannot be
made in these branches in the brief period of school life; but a
competent teacher may induce the pupils to put in practice the lessons
that are applicable to childhood and youth. If, however, as is sometimes
the case, pupils are undermining the physical constitution in their
efforts to know how they are made, the loss is, unquestionably, more
than the gain. Physical health and growth depend, first, upon
opportunity; and hence it happens that, where physical life is most
defective, there the greatest difficulties in the way of its improvement
are found. Boys born in the country, living upon farms, accustomed
continually to outdoor labors and sports, walking a mile or more every
day to school, have but little use, in their own persons, for the
science or facts of physiology; and it is a very rare thing, where such
conditions have existed, that any teacher is able to exact an amount of
intellectual service that proves in any perceptible degree injurious.
But these opportunities are not so generally enjoyed by girls, and the
mass of children in cities are wholly deprived of them.
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