It is difficult for the unskilled person to trace a large variety of ailments to a common place of either origin or development such as the school room, unless he is impressed with the idea that the body is, as a piece of machinery, one of the parts of which being out of order, the whole is deranged. So, upon any one school room evil, there may be a variety of consequents, through the child's peculiar weakness and special susceptibility.

The prominent evils of the school room may be divided into three classes, named from the diseases they promote, namely: 1. The pulmonary, including the stooped posture, impure air, drafts and sudden changes of temperature. 2. Intestinal, involving irregular meals, hasty eating and hurried stools. 3. Brain and nervous, including over-mental strain, monotonous, or cramped positions, want of sufficient physical exercise and improper light. Now, if we turn to the recent annual report of our Bureau of Vital Statistics, and to the Cyclopædia of the Practice of Medicine, we find the following: Total deaths from certain specified diseases in the State of New Jersey, for the year ending July 1st, 1881, 17,539. Of these, belonging to the pulmonary, are 5,197, or nearly one-third; to the intestinal, 3,943, or about one-quarter; to the brain and nervous, 3,144, or about one-fifth. Total amount belonging to these three classes, 12,284, out of the entire number, 17,539. Add to these figures the fact that, between the ages of six and twenty-one, near-sightedness is increased from 3.5 to 26.78 per cent. in this country, and far more in other countries; and still further add, that the schools have charge of the children at the period when they are most susceptible to these diseases, and we have evidence sufficiently startling to impress us that much must be done, and that right early.

I shall now pursue a course dangerously susceptible to criticism because characterized by specific applications of general principles; but in my judgment specific applications of general principles with criticism are preferable to the practice of some of our writers of using generalities so broad as to be susceptible of greater errors in their application than in their absence. I recently read in one of our leading magazines, three long articles urging the necessity of plenty of physical exercise and not cramming. Now, teachers may have many faults, but I never heard of their opposing physical exercise or favoring cramming. The question is, what is sufficient exercise, or what a proper apportionment of work? It is in answering this question that the mistakes are made.

I wish to prepare some material out of which to construct the main features of a model school room, and to mention in connection therewith some of the special qualifications of an appropriate teacher with a suitable curriculum, and then compare these with what some of us have. I propose that my model structure shall not be merely ideal, but practical, requiring rather increased intelligence than increased expenditure of money.

First, as to ventilation: Each person at each respiration displaces one cubic inch of oxygen by about the same amount of carbonic acid gas and vapor. To admit of this atmospheric change without detriment to health, each person must be supplied with forty cubic feet of air per minute. A room 20x30, with a ceiling twelve feet high, contains 7,200 cubic feet of air. Allowing twelve square feet of floor space per pupil, it will seat fifty pupils and grant each one hundred and forty-four cubic feet of air. Allowing each pupil to use forty cubic feet per minute, it will require 3.6 minutes to use the air of the room. To meet this demand 2,000 cubic feet of fresh air per minute must be admitted into the room. To do this without draft and conistent with maintaining a proper temperature the air should be first warmed and then filtered into the room through ten square feet of aperture, if possible divided into several different mouths, at or near the floor. An equal amount of equally guarded space should be allowed for the exit of impure air. The above figures are a medium between the maximum and minimum as laid down by the best authorities.

The light of the school room should receive careful attention. The following statistics are significant: 62 per cent. of those who graduate from the public schools of Germany are near-sighted; 26.5 per cent. of those who graduate from the public schools of America suffer a like affiction. Between the ages of six and twenty-one this near-sightedDe is increased in Germany from 11 to 62 per cent., in America from 5 to 26.5 per cent., showing a greater ratio of increase in America than in Germany. Cohn found that of his pupils who studied out of hool two hours, 17 per cent. were near-sighted; of those who studied Sur hours, 29 per cent.; of those who studied six hours, over 40 per rent. were thus afflicted. The eye is probably the most delicate instrument of the nervous system, and as such will most readily sympathize with any bodily deterioration. Of the various causes which aggravate nearsightedness, bad light is doubtless the most serious, and hence should receive most careful attention. The light should be admitted through

plain glass windows near the ceiling, on the left side, and equaling in their entire surface at least one-sixth of the floor space.

Let us next turn our attention to a curriculum. I fear this subject has not hitherto occupied as important a place among our questions of hygiene as the strong sympathy between mind and body, above referred to, would seem to demand. The astonishing fact that everywhere increased study is accompanied by increased physical debility seems to admit of an explanation in one of two ways; either in the increased work or in the manner of doing that work. While I am willing to concede that the hurly-burly, on-rushing, fevered haste in fortune-seeking, quantity-versus-quality standard, as tendencies of this new American age in which we live, greatly constrains us to an overestimation of the amount of work that should be done, yet I incline to the view that we are to find much greater evils in the how than in the how much.

I believe that the courses of study now ordinarily laid down by the more experienced of our high school teachers, are necessary for conformity to the requirements of our most approved definitions of education. These include such a development of the useful faculties of the child as will enable him to go on developing and adapting himself to his environment, and such as are also necessary to meet the actual and just demands of the day. Let us glance at their contents: spelling, reading, writing, grammar, geography, arithmetic, United States history, a brief outline of general history, book-keeping, algebra, geometry, botany, natural philosophy and a foreign language. These units, subjected to a little variation or substitution, as the special case or local circumstances may require, constitute about the usual course.

Here

Now, when we consider the requirements of the average citizen, including as they do a knowledge of such first principles of engineering, drainage, hygiene and civil government as are necessary, through which of the above studies would you draw the pen? But can they be accomplished consistently with the child's time, allowing for sufficient recreation and physical exercise? I believe they can. are fourteen branches, the fundamental principles of which are to be acquired, on an average, between the ages of five and sixteen; that is. in eleven years. For some of them more time is allowed, for others less, as the needs may be. Let us glance at arithmetic, acknowledged as one of the most important as well as one of the most difficult. To this branch is given, counting from the lowest primary exercises, a

period each day for from seven to nine years; that is, from 1,400 to 1,800 days. Now, in Robinson's Practical Arithmetic there are about seventy-five different features; thus we have a new feature, on an average, from every eighteen to twenty-four days. Does this seem to be cramming, allowing a proportionately long time to each of the other thirteen branches? I think not, when we remember that our best authorities concede to us time for study and recitation, as follows: During the years from five to seven, two and one-half hours daily; from seven to ten, three and one-half hours; from ten to twelve, four hours, and from twelve to seventeen, five or six hours.

But may not the effects of cramming be produced in a way to which our best educated teachers are most tempted? Is it not best in coming before a pupil or class to impress a new principle, to leave everything else out and present the new principle in the simplest and most forcible manner, holding it before the mind until grasped, and then entirely relax the attention? Not a few prepare the way for the introduction of the new principle by the statement of many conditions or supplementary facts which tend so greatly to detract from distinctness, as not only to produce uncertainty, but also to overload the mental stomach. There is thus a two-fold evil, continuous application instead of relaxation. The mind is overstrained and the nervous system deteriorated, not by how much, but by how.

Again, it is too common to admit to the profession of teaching persons with no knowledge whatever of the natural laws of mental growth. The child is called upon to grapple at once with principles which are the result of the mature thought of our best minds, instead of gradually approaching those principles from the concrete, and thus being prepared for the abstract. The results of all this overloading and overstraining are stunted growth and debilitation. As the same food which, bolted, is a source of great disorder, becomes a source of great strength when properly masticated, at proper intervals and with proper intervening exercise, so with knowledge. As in handling each subject we should proceed from the concrete to the abstract, so in the order of our subjects we should regard the same principle. As the closest application should be followed by the greatest relaxation, our most severe recitations should be followed by the longest recreation, and by those branches requiring least close application. On each page of our tutorial dogmas should be written, "not too much," but in bolder characters should appear, "but how well."

But the teacher is not alone responsible for the cramming effect of

the studies, much is due to the pupils' discipline at home. One of our pupils, who, while subject to the irregularities of home life, considered himself to be working hard, wrote in his first letter after entering upon the course at Annapolis, that he had never before known what work was. He soon, however, under his newly-established systematic habits, became accustomed to the work, did it with ease, and took high honors. The parent and teacher should coöperate in the establishment of systematic habits on the part of the pupil. But look how we disregard the above suggestions in our practice. Our pupils, generally, are kept in school the same amount of time, and given the same number of exercises, without regard to age, physical condition or sex.

Having indicated the proper amount of time to be spent in study and recitation at the respective ages, also the proper mode of teaching, I shall conclude by the statement of a few of the principal conditions of my model school room, and their comparison to what we have.

My model building must be located on a healthy site, and set so that its corners indicate the cardinal points of the compass; must not be set on a closed foundation near the ground, thus converting it into a suction-pump for the ground air, but must have either an open foundation or a cellar; must have the light admitted on the left side through plain glass windows near the ceiling, equaling in surface onesixth the floor space, and shielded from glare; for the exit of impure air must have sieves set in the wall near the ceiling, and corresponding with perforated bricks or weatherboards, with the perforations dipping down and out; must have the artificially admitted fresh air led through a tube opening above the ground, and, if the building is heated by steam, taken into a drum, surrounded by a coil of steam pipe, and warmed, and thence led into the room; if the building is heated by stoves, the air shall be first led into a sheet-iron drum surrounding the stove, and then filtered into the room. We must have a course of study arranged with reference to the age of the pupil, with pliable rules of absence for girls, and a teacher acquainted with the laws of hygiene and mental growth.

I will now institute a comparison, in four respects, with my model and a few of our leading schools from which I have received partial information: