Amid a round of amusements lessons must go to the wall, no child can
stand the demands of both at a time. All that can be asked of them is
that they should live through the excitement without too much weariness
or serious damage. The place to consider this is in London at the
children's hour for riding in the park, contrasting the prime condition
of the ponies with the "illustrious pallor" of so many of their riders.
They have courage enough left to sit up straight in their saddles, but
it would take a heart of stone to think of lesson books. This extreme of
artificial life is of course the portion of the few. Those few, however,
are very important people, influential in the future for good or evil,
but a protest from a distance would not reach their schoolrooms, any
more than legislation for the protection of children; they may be
protected from work, but not from amusement. The conditions of simple
living which are favourable for children have been so often enumerated
that it is unnecessary to go over them again; they may even be procured
in tabular form or graphical representation for those to whom these
figures and curves carry conviction.
But a point that is of more practical interest to children and teachers,
struggling together in the business of education, and one that is often
overlooked, is that children do not know how to learn lessons when the
books are before them, and that there is a great waste of good power,
and a great deal of unnecessary weariness from this cause.
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