Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/165

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
THE HYGIENE OF INSTRUCTION
139

physically by learning in the wrong way, and strengthened physically and morally by learning in the right one. Moreover, they "hated" the wrong movement, just as they would hate having their fingers twisted backward, but they enjoyed the right one, just as they enjoy walking and jumping.

Strangely enough, Britain, though tardy in going forward, has already sent out the school doctors who have more than others flung themselves into this higher order of work. They have begun to study the hygiene of instruction—a subject hardly mentioned by Continental doctors yet—and they are carrying it on with a good deal of ardour. And the teachers have not only helped them, but without the teachers' help it would have been impossible for the doctor to have attempted it.

It is common nowadays to map the brain off into three different levels, though there are, of course, no separate "levels" in fact. Still it is found convenient to speak of the "lower level," the "middle level," and the "higher level." In recent days even every one of these has suffered as the result of "schooling." The higher level is, as already stated, even to-day an unexplored country, more or less; but a good deal can be learned about it through the study of the lower and middle regions.