Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
If children are delicate, they should not be put into a schoolroom with
thirty or forty other children. Keep such children outdoors when the
weather permits and allow them to become strong. The education will take
care of itself later. There is nothing to be gained by overtaxing a
delicate child in the schoolroom, which too often is poorly ventilated,
and having a funeral a little later.
Children should be taught the few simple fundamental rules of nutrition
until they are second nature. A thorough knowledge of the fact that it
is very injurious to eat when there is bodily or mental discomfort is
worth ten thousand times as much to a child as the ability to extract
cube root or glibly recite, "Arma virumque cano Trojae," etc. The
realization that underchewing and overeating will cause mental and
physical degeneration is much more valuable than the ability to
demonstrate that a straight line is the shortest distance between two
points. This knowledge can be given so unobtrusively that the child does
not realize that it is learning, for there are many opportunities.
When a child gets sick and is old enough to understand, instead of
sympathizing with it explain how the illness came about, and please
remember that in explaining you can leave the germs out of the question,
for diseases of childhood are almost entirely due to improper feeding.
The value of education like that is beyond any price, for it is a form
of health insurance. Reforming the race, means that we must begin with
the children.
In parts of Europe cultured people have a working knowledge of two or
three languages. This is certainly convenient. Those who wish their
children to know one or two tongues beside English should remember that
in infancy two tongues are learned as readily as one, if they are
spoken. Those who can use three languages when they are four years old
are not infant prodigies. They have had the opportunity to learn, and
languages are simply absorbed. The language teaching in the public
schools is a joke. After taking several years of French or German the
school children can not speak about the common things of life in those
tongues, though they may know more about the grammar than the natives.
In other words, they know the science of the language, but not the
language itself.
A time comes when the child wants to know about the origin of life. If
the parents have been companions, they can impart this knowledge better
than anyone else. If they are unable to explain, the family doctor
should be able to impart the knowledge with delicacy. I do not believe
that such knowledge should be imparted to mixed classes in the public
schools, as advocated by some. If the parents do their duty, there will
be no need of public education in sex hygiene.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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