Part 4 (2/2)
As a pendant to this old-fashi+oned lesson witnessed by Tolstoy in an ele lesson recently set forth by a distinguished French pedagogist and philosopher, whose text-books are classics in the schools of his own country and in those of n lands, and are also in use in the teachers' training colleges in Italy As the sub-title on the title-page inforned to mold teachers and citizens who shall be conscious of their duties, and useful to families, to their fatherland, and to humanity” [5] We are therefore in the ambit of secondary schools The lesson we cite is a practical application of the principle of giving lessons by ation (Socratic hts
[Footnote 5: F Alengry, _Education based upon Psychology and Morality_]
”You boys have never mistaken your companion Paul for this table or this tree?--Oh, no!--Why?--Because the table and the tree are inanimate and insensible, whereas Paul lives and feels--Good If you strike the table it will feel nothing and you will not hurt it; but have you any right to destroy it?--No, we should be destroying so to others--Then what is it you respect in the table? the inanimate and insensible wood, or the property of the person to whos--Have you any right to strike Paul?--No, because we should hurt him and he would suffer--What is it you respect in him? the property of another, or Paul himself?--Paul himself--Then you cannot strike him, nor shut him up, nor deprive him of food?--No The police would arrest us if we did--Ah! ah! you are afraid of the police But is it only this which prevents you fro Paul?--Oh! no, Sir It is because we love Paul and do not want to ht to do so--You think then that you owe respect to Paul in his life and his feelings, because life and feeling are things to respect?--Yes, sir
Are these all you have to respect in Paul? Let us enquire; think well--His books, his clothes, his satchel, the luncheon in it--Well What do you mean?--We must not tear his books, soil his clothes or his satchel, or eat his luncheon--Why?--Because these things are his and we have no right to take things belonging to others--What is the act of taking things that belong to others called?--Theft--Why is theft forbidden?--Because if we steal we shall go to prison--Fear of the police again! But is this the chief reason e ht to respect the property as well as the persons of others--Very good Property is an extension of human personality and must be respected as such
And is this all? Is there nothing more to respect in Paul than his body, his books and his copy-books? Do you not see anything else? Can you not think of anything ive you a hint: Paul is an industrious pupil, an honest, good-natured companion; you are all fond of him, and he deserves your affection What do we call the esteeood opinion we have of him?--Honor
reputation--Well, this honor, this reputation, Paul acquired by good conduct and goodto hiood; but what do we call this kind of theft, that is, the theft of honor and reputation? And first of all, how can we steal them? Can we take them and put them in our pockets?--No, but we can speak evil of him--How?--We could say that he had done harm to one of his co orchardthat he had spoken ill of another--That is so But how could you rob hi thus?--Sir, people would no longer believe him if they had a bad opinion of him; he would be beaten, scolded, and left to himself--Then if you speak evil of Paul, and what you say is false, do you give him pleasure?--No, Sir, we should cause hi, which would be very odious and wicked of us--Yes, boys, this lying with intent to injure would be odious and wicked, and it is called calu differs from calumny or slander in that what is said is not untrue, and I will point out the terrible consequences of evil speaking and slander
Now let us su and sensitive creature We ought not to cause hiht to respect hihts, and ation laid upon us to respect these rights is called _duty_ The obligation and the duty of respecting the rights of others is also called _justice_
_Justice_ is derived fro: to keep oneself in the right
The duties of justice enumerated by us are to be sunot to stealnot to slander Always reflect upon the words you say in which ”Not” is followed by a verb in the iation, a coation of respectthe co Howno evil_”
=Positive science makes its appearance in the schools=--Positive science was invited to enter into schools as into a chaos where it was necessary to separate light from darkness, a place of disaster where prompt succor was essential
=Discoveries of medicine: distortions and diseases=--The first science, indeed, to penetrate into the school was iene for the occasion, a kind of Red Cross service The iene that penetrates into schools was that which diagnosed and described the ”diseases of school children,”
that is to say, the maladies contracted solely as a result of study in school The most prevalent of these maladies are spinal curvature and , and by the injurious position of the shoulders in writing The second arises from the fact that in the spot where the child has to reht for him to see clearly; or this spot is too far from the blackboard, or froed effort of accoeneralized anic debility so widely diffused that hygiene prescribed as an ideal treatratuitous distribution of cod-liver oil or of reconstituent reeneral to all pupils Anemia, liver complaints, and neurasthenia were also studied as school diseases
Thus a new field was opened to hygiene in connection with theand writing were carefully studied in relation to pedagogical methods, and in relation to spinal curvature and defective refraction of the eyes
The figure of the child, that victim of unsuitable and disproportionate work, was not hereby brought into strong relief, as ht have been expected, by the aid ofIt was, indeed, medicine which drew attention to the diseases and deaths of the victims in orphan asylu, in conjunction et nursing; it was medicine which passed in review one by one all those individual cases which proclaihts Medicine now entered into another sphere where the victienerality, the child-population in its entirety; and now it is the law itself which imposes duties upon them, and condemns them _en masse_ to labor for many years in a al medicine has arisen in connection with criminals, how is it that none should ever have arisen in connection with the innocent?
=Science has not fulfilled its s with children=--Medicine has confined itself to the treatnosed a cause of disease and left this cause undisturbed, contenta multitude of victireat and dignified role of ”protector” of life; it haswar, to heal the wounded and alleviate the condition of the suffering; it has not considered that the authority it enjoys as the guardian of health would enable it to utter the supreerous, unjust, and inhuainst lorious of victories over death, so, fighting directly against the causes of the iht have aspired to bear the banner of protector of posterity Instead of this, it confined itself to the elaboration of a branch of study thatitself the accolance into a recent treatise of school hygiene, which e:
”We will briefly indicate the conditions favorable to the develope when the malady usually appears is that of second infancy, hence its name of spinal curvature of the adolescent; spinal curvature caused by rickets, which appears in early childhood, is rarer, and is of less direct interest to us here The commonest cause, and that on which our attention should be primarily concentrated, is the vicious attitude adopted by thetheir school work; this cause is so universal that we may call spinal curvature the professional disease of the pupil Doctor Legendre, in a forh unhappily it is only too well-founded, said of our schools that they are factories for the production of the deformed and the myopic
”The main cause of myopia is to be found in the very conditions under which children are gathered together in schools: insufficiency of light, the over-small type common in school-books, the frequent use of the blackboard, on which the teacher is not always careful to make the size of the characters he traces proportionate to the distance at which they have to be read, are so ue
The visual keenness of a given eye, says Doctor Leprince, decreases rapidly when the intensity of the light falls below a certain liht, repairs the defective keenness of which this is the cause, by increasing the visual angle under which the details of the object he is looking at appear to his that object inordinately close to hiiven letter increases greatly, when the limit of visual acuteness has been reached
Therefore, insufficient light would tend to make work slower, unless the pupil increased acuteness by approaching the object more closely Thus myopia constitutes a positive adaptation to the defective conditions of work, enabling the pupil to work more rapidly” [6]
[Footnote 6: Bronardet and Mosny, _Hygiene Scolaire_ Boilliere, Paris, 1914, pp 142, 143, 430, 496]
It would seem therefore natural to say: let the child find hihted place; if the blackboard is at some distance froht retards his work, let hio s as changing a place, advancing a step or two, taking a few er over a task--what tyrant on earth would deny such a small favor, and condemn the suppliant to blindness?
Such a tyrant is the teacher, who aspires to win the affection of his victims by means of moral exhortations