LB 1131 
 .(16 
 'Opy 1 
 
Q m^4^ 
 
 tyT^-mla eJejpiyiyL. 
 
 
 -'i4yi4/ <-^ 
 
 ' \ 1 
 
 a/A^ ^ 
 
 Male Uiim Iroi tlie Pliysioloiical StaipM, 
 
 A PAPER READ BEFORK THE 
 
 Butler County Medical Society, 
 
 HAMILTON, OHIO, OCTOBER i, 1885, 
 
 By dr. dan MILLIKIN. 
 

INFANTILE PEDAGOGY FROM THE 
 PHYSIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 
 
 By dr. dan MILLIKIN. 
 
 The little children in the two or three lowest grades of our public 
 schools are little more than infants, and to me it seems only fair that 
 we should lay down for them some special principles of pedagogy, 
 such as a physiologist might approve. They differ very much from 
 older children, and on that account they demand some special study. 
 The little creatures have one mental peculiarity which strongly at- 
 tracts my attention as I begin this discussion, and that is a result of 
 the fact that they begin their intellectual life simply by perceiving, 
 or simply by the passive reception of sensations, and only slowly and 
 tardily do they come to have some power of active, independent 
 thought. It is by such means that they learn their first lessons of 
 experience, and this mode of learning continues to be dominant for 
 years. I think, then, that, as a physiologist, seeking always the nor- 
 mal, which is the natural mode of activity, I do not speak extrava- 
 gantly when I say that the perceptive powers should be chiefly used, 
 and chiefly appealed to, in the early, infantile, and puerile years. If 
 this is the natural method of learnmg in these tender years, the argu- 
 ment might rest at this point of my discourse ; for, what better can 
 we do than to keep close to nature in such a matter .-' 
 
 Have we any anatomical explanation of the difference between the 
 intellection of young children and that of older persons .-' There is 
 a very clear structural difference that has been pointed out by Jacobi 
 and others : The cerebrum of the young child contains, relatively, a 
 great deal of water, and the cerebellum contains relatively little. 
 The cerebrum is comparatively soft, pulpy, and, as one may rightly 
 argue, is inefficient. The cerebrum of infancy is not yet ready for 
 the highest activity ; the cerebellum is ready. 
 
 1 Read before the Butler County Medical Society, at Hamilton, Ohio, October i, 1885. 
 
(4) 
 
 Aside from this difference of histological structure, there is a 
 marked peculiarity in the coarse anatomy of the infantile and puerile 
 brain that argues its functional inefficiency. The cerebrum of these 
 small fry conforms closely to that of mammals inferior to man. It 
 is like the cerebrum of an ape, and, in some regards, it is like the 
 cerebrum of a dog, or of some mammal of that order of perfection. 
 Owing to the great amount of water in the infantile cerebrum, its 
 tissues are very soft. Its convolutions are not deep, nor are they 
 tortuous in their pattern as in the adult brain. The important dis- 
 tinction between the white and gray matter is not well marked. The 
 ventricles are smooth. We know that these characters which the 
 baby's brain conspicuously lacks are the qualities which belong pre- 
 eminently to the thinking animals, and belong in their most exagger- 
 ated degree to those animals that think the most. What, then, is the 
 inference as to the baby's intellectual performances ? 
 
 Or, not confining our studies to the brain alone, take another fact 
 as to the infantile nervous system. Says Jacobi : " In the child the 
 peripheric nerves are comparatively larger than the centres, — the 
 sympathetic ganglia being the only exceptions to this rule. The 
 spinal cord predominates over the brain, the centres of motion and 
 circulation in the anterior horns over those of sensation, and there- 
 fore we find more vascular and reflex function, and less intellectual 
 capacity. The former are the direct results of early and complete 
 development ; the latter requires time for growth." 
 
 Or, recapitulating this and the last statement, the lower, inferior, 
 strictly animal parts of the nervous system preponderate in infancy ; 
 the nerves are disproportionately large as compared with the nerve- 
 centres ; the anterior horns of the spinal cord preponderate over the 
 posterior ; the cord itself is proportionately larger than the brain ; 
 and, in the brain, the cerebellum preponderates over the more intel- 
 lectual cerebrum. 
 
 Now where does this anatomical study lead us .-* Does it not lead 
 us to the educational system of Froebel, the kindergartner .'* Within 
 the kindergarten we notice, first, that the teacher is pursuing a nat- 
 ural and physiological method. The children in that school are chil- 
 dren. Mental fatigue is out of the question, and, for that reason 
 alone, the system is commendable from the physiological standpoint. 
 
 And then the character of the work — see how well it conforms to 
 what we know of the anatomy and physiology of the infantile nervous 
 system ! The perceptive powers are continually exercised, and pos- 
 sibly, in some cases and to some small extent, they are stimulated. 
 The study is of forms, and of colors, and patterns, and trades of men, 
 
 %4 
 
(5) 
 
 and the habits of animals. The school is dealing with things, not 
 with the abstractions which to us older people are the real entities, 
 but which are an affliction to the little ones. We have seen that the 
 child's brain is unfit for any intellectual work of the highest sort. 
 In accordance with this inexorable fact, the system of Froebel for- 
 bids anything like sustained ratiocination. I declare it to be, there- 
 fore, a natural and physiological method. 
 
 The infantile brain is not adapted, and cannot be adapted, to pro- 
 longed effort of any kind, and in the kindergarten this is a principle 
 carefully regarded, for there the exercises are always short, and are 
 frequently varied. The burdens laid upon the pulpy and undeveloped 
 brain, overbalanced as it is by the other parts of the nervous sys- 
 tem, are very light. 
 
 The kindergarten finds a physiological justification in this also. 
 The work is incessantly broken and varied not only by the greatest 
 variety of pursuits, so that the baby mind in its natural fickleness 
 may not be exhausted, but also by physical exercises, marches, songs, 
 pantomimes, and the like. So, while the system yields philosoph- 
 ically to the childish disposition to incessant motion, it yet guides and 
 controls that motion to the extent of making it harmonious. In this 
 is involved the idea of law and order and rhythm, and you who have 
 looked into the matter carefully and patiently will agree that, while 
 we cannot suppress the motion of children with safety, we can do the 
 next best thing, ^- we can fix their attention on their bodily move- 
 ments, and safely begin, at the most tender years, to bring their little 
 muscles under the control of their little wills, inducing that har- 
 monious action which we might command, but would command 
 in vain. 
 
 And now permit a little digression from the taught to the teachers. 
 While I am fully convinced that the first grade of our common 
 schools should be a kindergarten, I am equally convinced that the 
 kindergarten should be the earliest school for teachers. If t were 
 the autocrat of the universe (and every one is pleased to imagine 
 himself such), I would ask each candidate for a teacher's position : 
 " Where, and when, and with what success did you teach a kinder, 
 garten.^" The candidate not making a satisfactory answer to this 
 question should be dismissed with a very emphatic recommendation 
 to come no more until evidence could be brought that the principles 
 of Froebel had been mastered. If so disposed, the despot might 
 give reasons for his conduct. He might answer and say that the kin- 
 dergarten is of value to discourage and eliminate those who, by some 
 unfortunate defect of constitution, were unfit to teach. The teacher 
 
(6) 
 
 possessed of the idea that the teacher's first duty is to " preserve 
 order," as it is called in the cant of the schools, would be quickly- 
 disposed of by a course in the kindergarten where the orderly dis- 
 order prevails. The teacher who thinks, and by some vice of consti- 
 tution is obliged to think, that his chief function is to pump knowl- 
 edge into children, would soon be discouraged in the kindergarten ; 
 for this cramming process is not to be thought of in the kinder- 
 garten. Those who are endowed with the shrewish gift of scolding 
 would soon drop out of sight, — for, in the kindergarten, as at home, 
 this is the abomination of desolation. Among male candidates for 
 teachers' positions, the weeding would be most notable in the case of 
 those who have the cruel Napoleonic lust for power ; for to them the 
 kindergarten would seem to be the very crowning bloom of nonsense. 
 Within its walls the principle of self-government is in full activity, 
 and the teacher is little more than the president of the republic. 
 
 Besides being a sieve, to eliminate incompetent teachers and those 
 who have not the special gifts to adapt them to the office of teacher, 
 the kindergarten has the merit of being the best possible school for 
 teachers. It is in the kindergarten that teachers may learn what 
 they so hardly learn elsewhere, that children are not, as they are so 
 often called, so much plastic material to be stamped and pressed into 
 immutable molds ; but that they are living things, with immutable 
 laws of development, to which the molds must be adapted by the 
 wise, adroit, and alert teacher. A course in the kindergarten, if any- 
 thing, I should hope, would strip the teachers of the foolish notion 
 that children may be made into good or bad scholars, and would de- 
 velop the idea that they may be made to grow in good or bad direc- 
 tions. It is in the kindergarten, I should hope, that teachers might 
 be converted from the prevalent idea that they are manufacturers ; 
 that the school is a factory ; that the pupils are the raw material ; 
 that the graduates are the finished product. The methods of the 
 kindergarten are not the methods of the artisan, — they are the 
 methods of the horticulturist. 
 
 But, aside from all these questions, which are not strictly physio- 
 logical, there is one peculiarity of the kindergarten for which I would 
 plead with ten times my poor ability. I mean that it prescribes short 
 hours for short children. 
 
 For us to open the argument, is a concession. The man who pro- 
 poses to keep little children in the school-room for many hours in 
 each day is the man who should assume the omis p rob audi. To place 
 a small child in a crowded school-room is a procedure so artificial, so 
 deleterious, upon the very first aspect of the case, that there can 
 
(7) 
 
 hardly be any debate, pro and contra, until some reason for such a 
 course is brought forward. But let us waive all this, and attempt to 
 prove a negative. 
 
 We have already noted the difference between the infantile or 
 puerile brain and the adult brain, and from this have inferred that 
 the little child is not fit to perform the sort or the amount of work 
 that is easily possible for an older child approaching maturity. Now 
 turn from their brains to their bodies, and find them so different from 
 ours that another argument is presented for shortening their hours 
 of labor in school. Little children have, in fact, something to do 
 besides doing a full stint of work in school. Their vital powers need 
 to be exerted in other directions. They must accomplish so much in 
 the way of growth and in the building up of new cells that we, who 
 have merely to maintain the nutrition of cells already built up, should 
 blush to set them tasks that would be great enough for mature, har- 
 dened brains and bodies. 
 
 Reflect a moment on the enormous rapidity of their growth in the 
 early years of life. Scliadow says that a child destined to attain the 
 height of sixty-six inches will come into the world eighteen inches 
 in length. In the first year the little fellow, if healthy, will grow 
 about ten inches. In the second year it will grow four inches, and 
 nearly, or quite, as much in the third year. In the fourth year it 
 will grow three inches, or a little more. In the fifth year it will grow 
 three inches, or a little less. In the sixth year it will grow two 
 inches. In the next four years, carrying the child to the age of ten 
 years, it will grow about an inch per annum. During these last four 
 years, when the longitude of the child is increasing somewhat more 
 slowly, the latitude is increasing very rapidly, so that the child ceases 
 to be slender, and, oftentimes, seems to take on something of the 
 outlines that belong to maturity. During these same four years, 
 when the extremely rapid growth in length has somewhat diminished, 
 the eruption of the six-year molars is completed, and is followed by 
 the eruption of a number of the permanent teeth ; and, in these same 
 years, the child passes from a state of absolute dependence to one of 
 comparative independence ; and this means, as you will admit, a try- 
 ing revolution in the whole moral and mental nature. These last 
 four years before ten are years of enormously rapid growth, and of 
 the evolution of new faculties and powers. Is it proper that the 
 child should be, in any sense or to any degree, forced in its studies 
 at such times .-' 
 
 But let us come to figures. The question continually presents it- 
 self, How much can the average child stiuly ? Before we answer it 
 let us ask another : How much can the average young man study } 
 
(8) 
 
 " At West Point Military Academy," says Dr. Loring, " every- 
 thing is in favor of the utmost efificiency. The pupils are picked 
 young men, just past boyhood. They are excluded from dissipa- 
 tion and from general society ; and their active bodily exercises, 
 their regular diet and sleep, and the healthful climate of the place, 
 leave nothing to be desired. The daily time assigned to study and 
 recitations is about ten hours a day during the six cold months." 
 "At the Massachusetts Agricultural College the actual work amounts 
 to nearly ten hours, daily, besides six and one-fourth hours of mili- 
 tary drill and farm-work, weekly." 
 
 I consider this to indicate the proper amount of study and recita- 
 tion for mature, hearty, ambitious young men, who, at college, at 
 least, are anxious to crowd a few yeg.rs with the greatest possible 
 amount of work ; and who, oftentimes, have good reasons, financial 
 or otherwise, to strain their powers a little. In making comparisons 
 we should not forget that study at college is usually accomplished 
 under circumstances that permit far more freedom of motion, and far 
 more freedom of choice among studies, than there ever can be granted 
 to the child in the school-room. 
 
 For young people fit for the high school, between the years of 
 twelve and eighteen years, ten hours a day of study is not to be 
 thought of. If all the hours of study and of recitation, at school 
 and at heme, foot up seven or eight hours, it is enough. The child 
 that cannot make progress in these hours cannot make progress at 
 all. More than those seven or eight hours will simply overtax the 
 immature brains of the lads and lasses, and will inevitably lead to 
 dullness in routine work, and absolute dullness and failure when it 
 comes to original, creative work. 
 
 Below the age when puberty is impending and when a certain de- 
 gree of maturity has arrived, what shall be said of the hours of study ? 
 The hours of school should be continually diminished in proportion 
 to the immaturity of the little ones. If the first year of school were 
 a year of kindergarten (and from the bottom of my heart I wish it 
 were), children of six years, or even of five years, might safely be 
 kept at their play-work for three hours daily. If the first year of 
 school is to be our ordinary school-year, the children ought not, by 
 any means, to go to school for more than three hours, and it should 
 be forbidden to send children to school under the age of six and a 
 half years. 
 
 The other young innocents, a little older than the youngest, — that 
 is to say, between the ages of eight and ten years, — ought not, by Siuy 
 means, to be confined to the school-room more than three and a half 
 or four hours. 
 
(9) 
 
 What would be the results ? A short time ago my own little boy 
 was an attendant at a kindergarten, in his sixth year, and it was my 
 intention to take him out of the kindergarten after the expiration of 
 one year, and place him in the lowest class in the public schools. 
 But, upon the promise of his kindergarten teacher to procure a.n 
 assistant, and put him through the same course of instruction that 
 prevailed in the public schools, I consented to leave the little fellow 
 in the kindergarten through the second year. When the third year 
 arrived, I sent him to take his place in the second yeair's grade in the 
 public schools, with many misgivings whether he could keep his 
 place, and with regrets that he had not found his place by entering 
 the lowest grade the year before, according to my first plan. He had 
 five little companions, similarly educated in the kindergarten, and 
 transplanted at the same time into the public schools. Within a few 
 days, the fact leaked out that all these six children were remarkably 
 proficient in the studies of their new class, and, indeed, it was 
 seriously proposed to promote some of them at once to the third 
 year's grade in the schools. It should be recorded that they were not 
 preternaturally bright children, and that their teacher was at that 
 time only a novice, though she has since shown that she had the es- 
 sential gifts of a teacher by her work in the public schools. 
 
 By what amount of study was this result brought about ? This 
 little group of six children only attended the kindergarten for the 
 three hours of the ordinary morning session. Part of that three 
 hours was taken up with the safe stowing of a lunch, and with a run 
 out of doors in favorable weather. The singing, marching, and strict 
 kindergarten work occupied so much of the remainder of the morn- 
 ing that these little pupils of the advanced class only attended to 
 their reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic for forty minutes each 
 day. They were at that time competing, as you will remember, with 
 children in the public schools, who (poor little souls !) were com- 
 pelled to attend school more than four hours each day. These latter 
 sufferers addressed themselves strictly to academic work from the 
 start, without* any kindergarten nonsense ; and yet, in the year's race, 
 the children who worked four hours a day, under the tuition of an 
 experienced teacher, were ' fairly beaten by the children who worked 
 forty minutes a day under the tuition of an inexperienced teacher ! 
 
 In England the attempt has been made to educate the children of 
 the working classes on what is known as the " half-time " system. 
 Upon this admirable plan, children who are by stringent laws forbid- 
 den to work in the factories are permitted to work half the day, on 
 condition that they go to school the other half. Under these circum- 
 
(lO) 
 
 stances it has been found that the progress of the half-time scholars 
 is quite as rapid as that of children who attend longer daily sessions 
 of schools. Duly considering the coarse material that is furnished 
 these schools, and duly measuring the results, it is fair to say that 
 nothing better than the half-time system could be devised for all the 
 children in England. 
 
 The argument is strengthened by the great success of night 
 schools, — a success that is out of all proportion to the time em- 
 ployed. 
 
 The question of how much time children should spend in school is 
 much simplified for me by a firm conviction that children of well-to- 
 do parents should not study in school at all. They should ordinarily 
 study at home, and there, with their other lessons, should learn the 
 most precious lesson of all, — the lesson of self-control. They 
 should come to school with the results of study. They should come 
 to recite, to read aloud, to write, to hear lectures and see demonstra- 
 tions. I know right well that there are children with crowded, noisy, 
 or disorderly homes for whom this plan will not answer. These 
 children positively need the quiet of the school-room for the prepara- 
 tion of lessons. There are other scholars who possibly cannot study 
 without the support and control of the teacher. But it is eminently 
 desirable that recitations should be so arranged that those who choose 
 to do so may go away early in the day, leaving the more breathing 
 space, and the greater quiet, for those who may need to remain at 
 school for study. 
 
 And in that phrase, "breathing space," is found a good reason for 
 short hours at school. The air of school- rooms is bad, and always 
 must be. It is particularly bad in school-rooms where little children 
 are congregated. The best that money and skill can do is to make 
 it not too bad. It is not in the books, but it is true, that little chil- 
 dren need as much air as adults. In the first place, they are not so 
 cleanly as adults. Witness the odor of a room where little children 
 are assembled. Upon inquiry, I find that little children are not 
 bathed even once a week, in cool weather, as a rule. In many fami- 
 lies where there is a scrupulous cleanliness as to the house and rai- 
 ment, the little children are not bathed through the entire winter, 
 save when they are visibly dirty. In many families, where we would 
 expect better practices, there is so much boasting of the weekly bath 
 for little children that I know the bath is regarded as a very heroic 
 performance, not free from a very delightful spice of danger. Then, 
 in the second place, children need as much free air as do adults, be- 
 cause they have such swift vital processes going on within their little 
 
(11) 
 
 bodies, and such a great amount of excretory matter loading the ex- 
 pired air. In the third place, they need as much fresh air as adults, 
 because they have, notoriously, very poor powers of resistance to foul 
 air. 
 
 I, therefore, set it down as a fact that children, however small, 
 need one thousand cubic feet of air-space, within which space the air 
 should be wholly changed thrice in an hour. This allowance of space 
 and air they will not get in school. To the end of time, they will be 
 closely packed, because they are small. For this reason the air-space 
 will be always less than a thousand feet per pupil. Even if, under 
 exceptional circumstances, the little children have a sufficient amount 
 of space, the changing of the air will permit the escape of costly hot 
 air, and, at the same time, the influx of a quantity of disagreeable 
 cold air ; and so, from motives of economy and comfort, the children 
 will not have the one-fourth part of three thousand cubic feet of fresh 
 air per hour. Aside from all considerations of cerebral, or bodily, or 
 intellectual development, here is a good reason for getting children 
 out of the school-room as quickly as possible, and for keeping them 
 out. 
 
 The sins against physiological laws that I have pointed out, — foul 
 air, long hours, adult work for infantile brains, — all of this must in- 
 duce weariness and disgust in the little fellows. Upon this grows 
 indifference, absenteeism, truancy, and, last and worst of all, invalid- 
 ism. When a child, weary of school, has been long kept out of 
 school, on account of vague, incurable, and nameless maladies, which 
 it shrewdly pretends to have ; and more especially when it becomes 
 prematurely an honest hypochondriac, no more pitiful wreck can be 
 conceived, nor is there any patient more trying to the poor doctors, 
 nor is there any spectacle more disgraceful to the accumulated wis- 
 dom of this educating, educated, nineteenth century. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 EDUCATIONAL PA eTiTk^'ST 
 
 General Departments 
 
 In our Educational Publications, 
 
 JOUpAL OF EDDdi^TIOM. AJfEI^ICiAH Tl\^m\ EDDdJ^TIOfl. 
 
 Teachers and scliool officers of all grades Ti^ill find their wants met 
 in the discussion of 
 
 Principles, Nletlnods, and. Work. 
 
 JSEI»A.IS XlttEXTS. 
 
 The Kindergarten, 
 
 The Intermediate. 
 The High. 
 
 The Collegiate. 
 The Normal. 
 
 The Supervisory. 
 School-room Methods in Language. Mathematics 
 
 The Philosophy of Education. 
 The History of Education. 
 
 School Methods A3iJ> Management. 
 Theory and Practice. 
 
 Professional Training. 
 School Supervision. 
 History. Music. 
 
 Natural Science. Civil Government. Classics. 
 
 Etc. 
 
 THE 
 
 JOURNAL -^ EDUCATION 
 
 (Ne\v England and National) 
 
 Received the Highest Award at the Paris Exposition, 1878, as 
 the Leading Edi|cationaI Journal. 
 
 -^^ LARGEST WEEKLY EDUCATIONAL PAPER IN THE WORLD. 4-:^- 
 
 Editors, THOMAS W. BICKNELL, W. A. MOWRY, and A. D. MAYO. 
 
 An-iong its numerous contributors are many of the ablest educators 
 in tlie country. 
 
 Just the paper needed by teachers of eyerj- grade, and commended by the highest educators In 
 the country. Its ilepartments cover every part of educational work. 
 
 PRICE, $2.50 A YEAR. 
 
 Pres't Thos. Hunter, Norjtal Coll., N. Y. 
 — " Your .Journal is to me an invaluable aid in the 
 work of teaching, and 1 would not be without it 
 for twice its cost." 
 
 M. M. Fisher, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia, 
 Mo. — " Is universally conceded to be the best in 
 the land." 
 
 Aaron Gove, Sup't Schools, Denver, Col. 
 — " Nothing in our pedagogical literature is of 
 Buch practical value to me." 
 
 Robert Allyn, Pres't Southern Illinois 
 Normal Univ. — ' It is ' the best ' for me and our 
 professors, and Is read by our students in our 
 library nearly to pieces." 
 
 Alston Ellis, Ohio. — "It is the best educa. 
 tional paper published in this country." 
 
 A. Lysbr, Ed. of Pacific School Journal. 
 — "The representative educational journal of the 
 world."