pupil leans back so far as to make his position absolutely insupportable without relaxation of the muscles. Too high a seat drags the lungs downward and produces a similar effect. A low desk encourages a stooping position in sitting.

Dr. Kellogg is convinced, from a careful study of the health of his cases, and I heartily approve of his views, that in the majority of instances the foundation of these defects is laid in childhood, during the school-going period. In sitting, he says, the seat of the chair should be at such a height that the soles of the feet can rest squarely upon the floor, and it should also be of the proper depth so that the hips can touch the back of the chair. The shoulders should rest against the upper part of the chair, but the center of the back should never touch the chair, unless the chair back has a strong forward curve. The chest should be held high, the chin drawn in, and the legs should never be crossed.

What has been done.

When we think of introducing something new in our schoolwork, perhaps the best method of introducing it is to find out what others have done, and profit by their experience. In Sweden, in all the schools of high grade, each teacher gives instruction in a certain branch for which he has fitted himself. He confines himself to that subject and to that alone. The free schools are conducted on a similar plan as in the United States, having for each room a teacher who instructs in all branches. They do not, however, attempt to give instruction in physical culture, unless they have received particular instruction in this branch themselves. They do not believe that "any exercise is better than none at all," for to teach physical culture without knowing how, or why, is dangerous, for the reason I have already explained. In large cities a special teacher goes through the school once a day and gives the exercises in each room, consisting of free movements. The exercises occupy about fifteen minutes daily, which is ample, and more real benefit is derived by tak ing a short period regularly than if the lesson extended to thirty or forty minutes and was given twice or three times a week.

In Germany, England, and many cities and towns in the United States about the same plan is followed, except that the teachers

themselves are obliged to give the exercises, they having no knowledge of the subject beyond what they have picked up in a general way from the special teacher, if such a person exists.

That the work is not a success is not to be wondered at, as the teachers have enough, and in a great many cases more than enough, to occupy their time in keeping up their other work without putting work on them that they are neither fitted for nor interested in.

The better way.

It occurs to me that the better and more economical method of introducing physical culture into the public schools of the state would be a plan already suggested in a letter to President Kellogg, of the University of California, by May L. Cheney, of the Pacific Coast Bureau of Education.

The plan is as follows: Since we have at the University of California a large number who expect to become teachers, let these students prepare themselves by taking proper courses under the direction of the Department of Phys ical Culture to become teachers of this important science. It would be necessary for such students to take courses in anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, in addition to the practical work done in the gymnasium. In my opinion, no student should graduate from a university without some knowledge of these important subjects. These courses would, of course, count toward a regular degree, and could be taken by students who expected to become teachers of science in high schools, or regular grade teachers in the lower schools.

The plan is to supply practical teachers of elementary physical training in sufficient nummers to have one teacher in each of the buildings who would give such instruction. This would materially lessen the cost to the schools. Such teachers could be paid extra money for their services in this line, while receiving the regular salary of the position held in the school. A beginning could be made with exercises that require no apparatus. Many freehand movements are used by the director of physical culture in the university, and these are among the most beneficial of the exercises. Then as interest becomes aroused it would be possible where new buildings were being constructed to get a room set apart for a gymnasium.

Let anyone who doubts the necessity of introducing scientific physical culture into our schools visit some of the classes where so-called calisthenics, or gymnastics, take the place of it. Teachers are guilty of such fundamental errors as having the children place the hands on the hips, or throw the shoulders back, allowing the abdomen to protrude. The majority of children habitually stand on one foot. To the growing child this is a practice which means serious consequences. When young men and women enter the university at seventeen or eighteen, it is often too late to correct faults which, if taken in time, might have been cured entirely. If it is worth while for the state to educate children at all, it is worth while to let them have a chanse to develop as healthy bodies as their heredity will permit.

A city supervisor.

In addition to the above I would suggest that there ought to be one man or woman in each city who was fitted to superintend or supervise the work, and always a graduate of some recognized school of physical culture. One who is not tied down to any particular system, and one who is capable of recognizing and applying the good in all systems. This man or woman ought to have some medical knowledge and should be held responsible for results. Then it would be an easy matter to make the work compulsory, unless the director declared otherwise, which he would do in case of deformity or organic disease, and where certain exercises were best omitted. To decide who should and who should not take exercise, a director of the proper sex should examine all the school children at the beginning of the school year, as is done at the University of California. I do not mean that the children

should be measured. As the growing child varies in size and shape from day to day, such measurements would be useless as a test of development.

A physician is not competent to prescribe exercises unless he has the necessary training in physical culture, any more than a recognized instructor in physical culture is competent to prescribe medicine without the necessary medical knowledge.

I will say the Department of Physical Culture, at the University of California, will give, commencing August, 1897, a two-years' course in physical training, and those who are interested in the subject can obtain detailed information concerning the course by applying to the record of the faculties.

The gospel of physical culture.

Every one, man or woman, who has charge of children in our public or private institutions of learning, ought to be a self-appointed missionary, preaching and teaching the gospel of physical culture, delivering them from the fetters of avoidable deformities and ill-health, and giving them their birthright which nature intended they should have, leading them to a higher and better life, all of which means so much for future generations. I sincerely hope the time is not far distant when physical culture will be placed where it belongs,-co-ordinate with the culture of the intellect, and that it will be no longer possible to say as Herbert Spencer did some twenty years ago, "that people take an interest in the rearing of the offspring of all creatures except themselves." WALTER E. MAGEE, Berkeley, Cal. Director Physical Culture, University of California.

Relation to child's whole nature.

O determine the benefits or harmfulness of recess, we must consider its relations to the physical, intellectual, and moral nature of the child. Whatever assists or hinders the growth of the moral nature is of supreme importance, for the moral nature is character, and it is better that the child should die you `g than to live to become a criminal. But we have

a hint from our new philosophy, that whatever is right and wise physiologically is also right morally. Let us hope this new hypothesis is sound, for if the implication is found to be truth it will solve at sight many problems in education, religion, and sociology. Recent discoveries.

There are certain facts, recently discovered in the science of fatigue, and also in regard to

the action of the brain cells, which, with the necessary inferences, settle conclusively the recess question. That the popular ideas, and many of the professional views, are as wrong as they can be, need not hinder one who is seeking the truth, and that alone, from accepting what experience must soon confirm.

It must be admitted that this age is one in which mere physical strength counts for little or nothing as an equipment for life's battle. The body has value in proportion as it is the servant of the soul, and not in proportion to its power to work the feats of a giant. The Spartans were models of physical strength and endurance, but they had neither thought-power nor morals. Modern prize fighters are in the same category. With this postulate of Christian civilization in view, we are ready to state the physiological facts bearing upon the question in hand.

Physical facts bearing on the subject.

1. Physical effort, whether it be play or work, produces not only muscular fatigue but mental fatigue as well. With the advent of fatigue, power to think, and what is of more importance, the power to perceive right and wrong, are paralyzed. Muscular movements load up the blood with various waste products, the presence of which interferes, both positively and negatively, with the nutrition of every brain cell. (I use for brevity the term brain cell, to designate only those which are called nucleated, or ganglionic, or psychie cells.)

2. The exercise of thought, on the other hand, reduces the muscular power very decidedly. A severe examination, for instance, leaves a man with less power to lift a weight by ten or fifteen per cent. Putting these two facts together, we can but see how fearful is the depression when one attempts to do mental and physical work at the same time, or to do first one and then the other, during the day. Both will be poorly done.

The popular view that the boy who plays with the most vigor will study with the most success, is as wrong as it can be. A tired person has far less mental power and conscience than one who is fresh.

3. In general, fatigue produced by muscular effort paralyzes the cells of highest function. first. For instance, a tired man, woman, or child is neither so bright, so conscientious, so

liberal, nor so amiable, nor so esthetic as a rested one. The same general law is true of the effects of narcotics.

Hygienic sins of recess.

Now, what takes place at the ordinary recess in city schools, and, indeed, in country schools as well? The children engage in violent play, become overheated, bathed in perspiration, and return to their seats feeling more like lying on a sofa than learning a lesson. Their blood is overcharged with waste products which the depurating organs cannot remove at once, and the brain cells which the soul uses in thinking are bathed in this impure blood, and their functions are seriously impaired. The half hour after recess is a period of stupidity. It is also the period in which the angel of death prepares his harvest. The reeking, overheated children are usually allowed to drink at this time, at the sink, or from pails, a proceeding under the circumstances so murderous, that he who should allow a heated horse to do the same would be instantly discharged by the owner. In Minnesota, and the northern states generally, the sending of children into the yard often means a change of temperature from sev enty above to from ten to thirty degrees below zero. To compel tender children to make this extreme change twice within fifteen minutes, twice a day, is a practice so deadly that words are almost too weak to characterize it. It has one merit which the Spartans would have delighted in. It kills off the weaker children. Evil effects of recess, physically, mentally, and morally.

Once upon a time, after recesses had been abolished for years, our school board ordered a return to this hobby of barbarism and igno

rance.

The teachers assisted me to supervise seven hundred and fifty children in a school yard. Their ages ranged from five to sixteen years. I asked the teachers to tell the pupils to refrain from shouting and boisterousness, because such conduct would disturb the people living near, and be in bad taste. I did not expect all to obey, but I wanted to know what kind of children disobeyed. The teachers told the children, also, that violent exercise impaired their ability to learn and would reduce their standing and lessen their chance of promotion. Had not this caution been given, I doubt not that a large majority of the pupils

would have joined the ranks of those whose brain cells, not under the control of their wills, discharged their energy with mob-like violence, so deeply rooted is the error that severe muscular effort is a stimulus to mental action. Why will people close their eyes to the facts, accessible to every one, disproving such an error? Long walks or rides in street cars by teachers, before school, sadly impair their ability to teach well.

And then the teachers and myself undertook some "child study," the result of which I must, for lack of space, give very briefly. Recess aggravates brain weakness.

The "yellers," as we called them, were our "abnormals,"-that is, those whose brains were unstable, uncertain, and erratic, and whose scholarship was the lowest. Those who were weak mentally, whose moral natures were weak or warped, and those who were subjects for the specialists in nervous diseases, those whose "mouth consciousness" showed an infantile stage of development, regardless of age, were our most violent players. This was so marked that we soon learned to diagnose new children as good or bad, smart or dull, by their propensity to yell and run. The more they did of these two, the less power to study, and less desire to do right was expected.

Those who were studious and dutiful in school walked leisurely about the yard or sat on the fences, and were glad to return to the room to resume their studies. The violent players returned with regret, and with even les sened power of application and reinforced tendency to disorder.

I was surprised one day to see a charming little girl racing and yelling, but, when a short time after she had an explosion of temper in the schoolroom, showed herself to be selfwilled and to have a nervous system which was sadly in need of medical treatment, I understood the symptom. Recess caused so great moral deterioration that the cases of discipline were nearly or quite doubled.

A superintendent's conversion, by experience. One year our superintendent ordered all primaries to pass to the basement, twice a day, whether they cared to or not. In a short time, In a short time, by his own observation, he became as violently opposed to this practice as he had been in favor of it, because it formed a habit which would embarrass the child very much when

he came to maturity. An occasional permission to leave the room is all the recess needed, and even this privilege is scarcely lessened by the forced basement recess.

Most of those who ask habitually to leave the room are our "yellers," our "racers," our "abnormals" of the recess epoch, and need not so much treatment for their digestive as for their nervous system.

Popular errors vs. facts of science.

It is asked, how shall the children get a proper amount of exercise? In the first place, the idea that they need a large amount of exercise during school hours is wholly erroneous. They should have some mild physical exercise for five or ten minutes at the middle of each session, in their own rooms. The German system, as I have seen and used it, is satisfactory. The Swedish is too severe, as it seems to aim to develop the body, as an end, rather than as a means to enable the mind to do its work better. Education, as it should be, is simply a development of the brain cell. Exercise carriage, promotes the flexibility of the joints, which equalizes the circulation, gives a proper keeps the chest in such shape that deep breathing is habitual, and does not overwork the heart, is the best. After school closes the child will feel a certain itching in those muscles which are at their "nascent periods," and spontaneously he will use them with his mates as much as they need.. But after the day's work in school he will not be apt to overstrain them and sleep will put his thinking cells in good shape for the morning's arithmetic. It is thought, not muscle, which wins in this century. Our athletes are poor students. We do not expect either morals or thought-power in a ing, all impair the functions of the higher prize fighter. Overwork, overplay, overtrainbrain cells and unfit one for the higher duties of life.

Some of the arguments used in the favor of recesses are wonderful indeed. If the room is not well ventilated, we are told to let the pupils go out of doors and get some fresh air. Exactly how much fresh air a child can carry into the house in his lungs, to use during the next hour, is a mystery, as a few expirations empty all the new air from the lungs. If men were like whales, which can take air enough to last a long time, the argument would have some weight.