Chapter 2

SUPPLEMENTAL STUDIES

MAN'S PARTNERSHIP WITH NATURE[1]

_Dr. John M. Tyler_

_Nature will bear our burdens for us, if we will obey her laws and heed her suggestions_.

[Footnote 1: These supplemental studies are based on lectures by Dr. John M. Tyler, given before the Utah Educational Association, by whose permission they are used. Parents will find Dr. Tyler's book on Growth in Education of great interest. It is listed with other books at the close of this volume.]

How has all the material progress of the nineteenth century come about? I think we shall find that it was due to man's intelligently and carefully and scrupulously going into partnership with Nature by obeying her laws. Not so very many years ago messages were sent across this continent by pony-riders; it was a slow process and a very expensive one. Now I step into an office here and I say, "I wish to send a message to my wife way out yonder in Massachusetts." The man touches a button and says, "Your message is in Massachusetts, sir." It is a miracle. The lightning has run with my message. Electricity not only carries our messages, it lights our houses; it turns many a wheel of machinery; it serves us beneficiently just as long as we obey the laws of electricity; but when we offend against these laws, it thwarts us or very likely destroys us. "Obey, and I will do anything for you in the world," says Nature, "disobey and you cannot move me one single inch." Coal hurries our great locomotives and long trains of merchandise and carries men and women across this continent without any great amount of human labor. The engineer and the brakeman do not get behind and push those great palace cars of ours; it is Nature which drives the train as if it were sport. Man guides and directs the water pouring down our hillsides, turning wheels of countless factories. A few ounces of gasoline send the automobile down the street, polluting the air and endangering our lives. The power of Nature is absolutely irresistible and unlimited; and furthermore, she is always working towards some great and good end.

When I was a child I used to hear that Nature was bad, and we used to have sermons to the natural man. They were excellent sermons, too, but they ought to have been preached to the unnatural man. The natural child was considered a child of wrath, and, having that reputation, he quite frequently lived up to it; but Nature is beneficient, as long as we let her be so, and she is always working toward great and grand ends. She has been working towards a higher and nobler and a better race of men than you and I are to-day. She is working for a race of men and women who shall tower above us as the sages and prophets in Athens and Jerusalem towered above their slaves. Can we not trust her just a little?

Did you ever think that it is the most marvelous thing in the world that such a thing as a chicken ever comes out of such a thing as an egg? If only one chicken were hatched in a century, we would go from here to the Himalaya mountains to see the miracle of that chicken coming out of that egg. You put an egg under a very stupid old hen, and all the hen does is to keep that egg warm, and leave it alone; after twenty days there comes out a chicken. How in the world did that chicken ever frame that body? How did it build the skeleton and string the muscles, and spin the nerves? If every nerve in that body did not make just the right connection, that chicken would be paralyzed. If you could watch the development of that chicken in the egg, your hair would stand on end. Isn't it Nature that makes those chickens? You and I can't make them. Nature puts a shell around the egg with the express purpose that we are to keep our fingers out and let her alone. She says: "I am on very important business now and I am going to do some strange things; if you could watch me you would interfere with me, and if you interfere with me, you will ruin me or ruin the chicken, so I want you to stand to one side and leave me entirely alone; and while I might do a good many things that you don't like, I shall bring a chicken out of that egg;" and she does; she has been making them for thousands of years in that same old stupid way, but she brings the chicken out all right.

Sometimes she seems to blunder still worse. She takes an egg which we suppose is going to turn into a frog, and she brings out of it a tadpole--neither fish, flesh nor fowl nor anything else. After a while the tadpole gets legs and has a long tail; it must lose that tail in order to become a frog. A benevolent zoologist one day started in to help the tadpole by snipping off the tadpole's tail; he made a frog of him in a hurry, but the strange thing was that that frog never was able to leap properly. Nature had been relying on the material that was in the tail. She was going to shift it forward and put it in the hind legs, but when the zoologist cut it off, she couldn't build the hind legs right after that.

A good deal of our education seems to me like trying to make frogs in a hurry by cutting off their tails. Nature can make chickens; she can make frogs. She can make bugs that will eat up everything which human ingenuity ever tried to raise. She will make weeds which you and I can't possibly kill even though we fight against them all summer long. We can trust Nature to form these things; isn't it fair to trust her with the children for a little while at least? Wouldn't it be well--I never heard of this experiment being tried, but I should like to see it tried very much indeed--I do wish that sometime somebody would leave a baby alone for twenty minutes and see what it would do if it were left to itself.

What is the great characteristic of all living things? It is that they grow; we cannot make them grow, but they grow of themselves. The farmer plants his crop of corn. He doesn't get a jackscrew and put under every hill of corn, and go around every morning and give the screw a turn and a twist and hoist the hill up in the air. He prepares the soil as best he can. He puts in the seed; he keeps down the weeds; he keeps out things and living beings which will injure the crop as far as he can; then he leaves it alone to God and Nature to make that corn grow, and in time he gets a bountiful harvest.

I believe that education some day will be somewhat like raising a crop of corn. We shall learn to keep the child under the best condition possible. We shall learn to keep down harmful and injurious surroundings or forces so far as they can interfere with him. We shall stimulate growth in every possible way; that I grant you; and when we have done that, we shall leave the rest calmly to Nature and to the good Lord who made that child for some good purpose.

It is a grand thing to have the child learn to see for himself the glories of this magnificent world. I verily believe that when you and I go home, while the good Lord will be very merciful with us because of our sins, I don't see how he can forgive many of us for not having had a great deal better time in this glorious world in which He has put us. When you open the child's eyes to the beauties and the glories of Nature you have done a great thing for it. But, after all, that is not the grandest thing to my mind. The grandest part is that every wave of vibration that goes in through the eyes as the child looks at Nature, and pours into the brain, stimulates that brain to a larger growth than it would otherwise possibly have attained, and the child is a larger and a grander child for that Nature study.

We believe in manual training because it gives us skilled fingers and enables us to do deftly and well a great many things which we otherwise could not do at all, and which most of us men have to go to our wives and ask them to do for us. But that is not the grandest part of manual training; the grandest part is the reaction from the finger upon the brain, stimulating the brain to realize all its ideals, and stimulating it so that whenever it sees good work of any kind in this world it shall appreciate it heartily and enjoy it with the joy of the artist.

We speak of physical training and physical training is brain training in the end, it is training in growth. It is very evident, however, that the growth and development of a baby is something different from the growth and development of a child; and the growth in the child is very different from that in the youth and that of the youth from that of the adult. In the baby the vital organs are growing faster. In the young child the muscular system is coming to the front, and he runs and plays and through the stimulus of that muscular exercise he brings out every organ in the body and gains that magnificent health which he so much needs.

Then, after a time, the brain comes to the front and grows and develops more rapidly than any other part of the body. Our business as teachers is always so to stimulate, by proper exercise, the growing organs that they shall grow faster and further than they ever could without our aid. We are not to always hasten it. This is one thing we must bear in mind: precocity is the worst foe of a sound education. It is the boy and the girl who mature slowly but mature surely that in the end possess the earth. We must not hasten the process, but when we find the organ is ready to grow and develop, then we must give it adequate stimulus. In other words, the stimulus must be of the right kind, and there must be just enough of it, just enough blood to stimulate the muscles, just as much study as will best stimulate the growing and very immature intellectual centers in the brain. Then we will increase the stimulus as the power increases and demands the stronger exercise, and so stimulating the growing parts by adequate exercise, we bring one part after another up to such development that we have one harmonious whole of perfect health.

You remember that when the old deacon in Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem started in to build the one-horse shay, he said, "Every shay that has ever been made has broken down, because there was always a weakest spot in it; now I am going to make a shay that never will break down, because I am going to make the weakest part just as strong as the rest." We cannot always do that, but if we can make that part somewhere near as strong as the rest, we are past masters in education.

If we obey Nature's laws, all of her powers will be on our side; and with all her powers on our side and the very stars in their courses fighting for us, we cannot possibly fail, there is absolutely nothing which is impossible to us. We must be strong and of good courage, if we are to guide these little people into the land sworn unto their fathers before them.

LESSON I

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What is meant by the expression, "Man's partnership with Nature?" Illustrate how man makes Nature serve him.

2. In what way can man enter into a partnership with Nature regarding his own body?

3. What can man do best when it comes to making things grow?

4. What do you think of the "hurry" methods in education?

5. What is the most we can do in providing for the education of the child?

6. How does Nature help us in the training process?

7. What does Nature try to make sure of first in the child?

8. When does the brain of the child begin to develop rapidly?

9. What advice would you give about precocity in children? Why?

10. What should we study in our children to give them a strong and even development?

CONSERVATION OF THE CHILD

_By Dr. J.M. Tyler_

When the good Lord sets out to develop a child, the first organ with which He starts is the stomach. The stomach is the foundation of all greatness. It is a matter of daily observation if not of experience that a man can get along very well with very few brains, but a man can't get along at all without a good digestive system. The digestive system furnishes all the material for growth and the fuel which is continually burned or consumed in our nerves and muscles. Now, any furnace requires besides fuel, a good draught. When we burn the fuel, by uniting it with the oxygen thus brought in, we get the energy which draws our locomotives and our great ships. Similarly in our bodies, our lungs bring in the oxygen and the heart and blood-vessels carry the fuel and the oxygen to every part of the body. But every furnace requires a smoke-stack to carry off the waste, and, similarly, we must have in our bodies an excretory system to remove the waste of the burned-up material and of the used-up tissue of the heart, muscles and nerves. This constitutes the digestive system; the lungs, the excretory system and the circulatory system are absolutely necessary to support the combustion which is going on in nerve and muscle and without which energy is impossible.

All productive labor manifests itself through the muscles. Our muscles directly write the book, speak the word, build the railroads, do the deeds. Our muscles are of very different ages. In the child the trunk muscles are developed first; the shoulder muscles next; the arm muscles next; the finger muscles last of all. The heavy muscles of trunk, shoulder and thigh require but a small amount of nervous impulse or control, and they react strongly on all the vital organs, as is shown every time that we take a walk. The finest and youngest muscles of the fingers require a very large amount of nervous control for a very small output of muscular energy and their exercise stimulates the very highest centers in the brain, and this is the great argument for physical training, that through one muscle or another you can stimulate and develop as you choose either any vital organ or the highest center in the brain.

Never forget the maxim of the old German physiologist that "Health comes in through the muscles and flows out through the nerves." The nervous system was created for good and wise ends, but in many people it has become a nuisance. Its use is to insure that every stimulus from the external world shall call forth a response suited to the emergency. A fly lights upon my face; I wave my hand and drive him away. The fly has tickled my face; there is the external stimulus. A sensory impulse travels to the brain or to some other center and a motor impulse goes from there to a certain muscle in my arm which moves my hand and drives away the fly. The impulse has called out a response suited to that emergency. You watch a cat walk across the lawn; you will think that fool cat is going to fall down, it is going so slowly and it can hardly raise one foot above the other, but watch it when it sees its prey; every muscle seems to turn to steel; it is ready for the spring. When that spring is made there is no energy wasted. After that the cat does not move for two hours; no wasting energy there. Wasting of energy is a sin.

I awaken in the morning, and the first horrible emergency of the day confronts me at once, I have to get up. How I get up I have no idea. Professor James once said that when a man thinks about it he never does get up, and that's right; but I find myself in the middle of the floor and that is all I know, and then the cold air or the sight of my clothes or something reminds me to start dressing, and the putting on of one garment leads to the putting on of another. The pangs of hunger call me to the breakfast table; the bell calls me to work; and so all day long response follows stimulus; the day's work is a success or a failure according to the response which I make to the stimuli which I receive.

There is a marvelous picture given in the scripture in the parable of the poor man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and getting wounded and left by the road-side. Three men pass that way. They all see the same thing. The light is reflected from the poor sufferer into the eyes of these passers-by; a flood of vibration passes on to the brain and then the motor impulses go out to the muscles. In the case of the good Samaritan, the impulse went from the brain or the spinal nerve to the arms and he stooped down and picked the poor fellow up and carried him off; while in the priest and the Levite the impulses all went down into the legs and the cowards hustled off for Jericho.

A healthy nervous system is the rarest thing in this wide world. I have one illustration in mind, which I always like to think of, which I am going to give you of a perfectly healthy and normal nervous system. It was possessed by a good old negro minister. He had been preaching to his congregation for a long time on the subject of meekness and it had not produced the desired effect; so he said to them one morning: "Brethren, I'se gwine to give you the illustration of meekness for a week now and show you what it is," and the old man did. His congregation naturally rose to the occasion: They insulted his wife; they abused his children; they stoned his dog; they stole his chickens; they did everything under the heaven to break down the meekness of that man; but he went on through the week and came into church the next Sunday and began to preach. The congregation recognized that their time was short and they redoubled their efforts, but all in vain. Finally, about five minutes before the closing of the service, he turned to the congregation and said: "Brethren, I think I ought to denounce to this congregation that my week of meekness is just about up, and when the clock in yonder steeple strikes twelve, I'se gwine to quit preachin', close this blessed Bible, go down from this pulpit, and then, Brethren, Judgment day and hell is gwine to break loose on some of you." Now, that old colored minister had an ideal nervous system. There had not been one single response all that week long, and not one single stimulus which had come in from the outside had been lost either, but it was all waiting to leap into that good right arm when the emergency was to be met, in the fullness of time, and I commend you to go and do likewise.

It is only a step, thank fortune, from the ridiculous to the sublime, just as it is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous. Another illustration of a perfect nervous system: You remember how our Lord spent a whole day in preaching, in healing, working deeds of kindness, in pouring out sympathy and comfort, the strain of which on a man's nervous energy is worse than anything else in the world, and how at the close of the day He went into the little boat, took the hard cushion on which the steersman sat, threw it down in the bottom of the boat, and laid Himself down with His head on that hard cushion and slept like a child through the rocking of the boat and the roaring of the storm, until His disciples came to Him saying, "Lord, save us: we perish." There is not one man in a thousand who could do that work or could put out one-tenth part of that nervous energy and then sleep like that. Anybody who thinks that the Prophet of Nazareth was a weak or a feeble man has made the mistake of his life. He was perfect physically or He never could have done His work.

All this work of developing a steady nerve, of developing the vital organs for the use of the muscles, has been going on until the child is nine or ten years old. It has been going on very rapidly, and in as much as the exercise has been suitable, as his digestion has been good, his growth has been very rapid. During the first three years of its life the child increases its weight more than three-fold. During the next three years it adds over forty per cent. to this amount and between six and nine adds over thirty per cent. more; and when the boy is about eleven years old, or the girl is about ten, then the growth almost stops that year. It drops to a minimum. I call your attention to this thought: the minimum growth is more in a girl than in a boy. A girl is always more precocious than a boy. She is a year older than he at nine or ten, and when she is fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, she is two years older than the boy. When the girl is ten and the boy eleven, growth drops to the minimum. Why is that? Nature is economizing her material and husbanding her resources against the trying years which are to come.

You remember the story of the time when Pharoah in his dream saw the seven fat kine followed and devoured by the seven lean kine; he was told that his dream signified seven years of plenty, to be followed by seven years of famine, and was advised to store up the harvests of the good years against the hard times to follow. This is a picture of the child's life. The first seven years of the child's life are years of plenty, when it is storing up material for the years of hard trial, the years of famine, which are close at hand.

I am going to talk most of the girl because she needs more attention than the boy. Growth is a very expensive process. It begins in the bone. When the bones lengthen out, then every muscle, every nerve has to be lengthened out to suit that extra length, and that means a great deal of waste for that rebuilding, but it is something worse than that. You know perfectly well that out of the butterfly egg there comes the caterpillar, and that caterpillar goes into a cocoon, and during the life of the cocoon every organ is changed there and it comes out a butterfly. That is what we call a metamorphosis.

The girl between ten and sixteen is undergoing a metamorphosis just as sure as that caterpillar is undergoing a metamorphosis. If you leave town for a few years and come back, you know all the old men and women haven't changed any, except to die off. The babies have grown some; but the boy and the girl seem to be grown all over again. That is, the girl whom you left at nine years old and on coming back find her sixteen, has dropped down her skirts, has drawn up her hair, and that is the butterfly cocoon, and it is a mighty pretty butterfly cocoon. That is waste again. It is waste, waste, on all sides and all of that waste is going into the blood, no other place to put it; it ought to be got out at once. But there is another thing about it; all the food must be digested, and so oxygen must be gained and waste must be eliminated. All the organs in the trunk between those ages of ten and fourteen are relatively both larger and smaller in girls than at any other period of life.

It looks as though Nature was making a bad blunder, but she is really making the best of a very bad bargain, doing the best she can under hard circumstances. With these small vital organs and this tremendous draught on the body for new material and the large amount of waste to be eliminated, you are sure to have trouble. That trouble is going to manifest itself first of all in the blood. The blood is going to be poor blood during those years, unless you remedy it. Poor blood, first of all, depresses the nervous system, and the girl feels gloomy and good for nothing; she hates to go out into the cold air because she chills; yet that cold air is what she needs more than anything else in the world. She hates to make an effort and won't take the exercise she needs if she can possibly help it. The exercise she must have. Her appetite has gone all wrong. She likes to live on caramels, pickles, and all such things as that. Now, my friends, I want to tell you, when anything goes wrong with the appetite, then the whole system goes wrong, remember that. Observations were made some years ago in Sweden of a number of the bodily disorders that occur between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. These examiners found that there was one disorder which attacked, put in general numbers, sixty per cent. of the girls in the Swedish schools between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, and, indeed, it never fell below sixty per cent. and was usually a great deal more. In Denmark, the examination was made in the field where the children are healthier, and then the figures gave forty per cent. The troubles usually show themselves in the form of pallor; the girl is pale. They frequently break out in the form of headache, loss of appetite, resistance to marked effort and sometimes with a cold. Now, if the seat of the cold is in the blood, because it is loaded with waste and ought to be removed, there is one thing sure, that waste never will be removed until it is thoroughly oxidized. That is the first thing to do, oxidize it. The only way to oxidize the blood is to get the lungs full of good, pure air.

The girl wants just as much lung capacity as she can possibly get. We find that the girl during those years is a little taller and a little heavier than the boy, and she needs more oxygen to every pound of waste in the body than the boy does, because the waste is going on faster. The average girl has about three-fourths as much lung capacity for every pound of the waste in the body, as has the average boy. What the girl needs is more lung capacity to get in more oxygen. How is she going to get the lung capacity sitting in the house? How is she going to get it when she is tied down in the grammar school room with a book before her eyes?

The worst of it all is that the girl leaves off playing games in the open air just about the time when she needs them the most, and not having the open air play and the open air games, she can't get the lung capacity and the oxygen. Another thing that hinders the girl is this: there is no place for her to play where she can do all she wants to and not have people looking over the fence and finding fault with her for having a good time. Every girl ought to have a place where she can play in the open air and not be bothered and we ought to get more and more games for girls of that age. Another thing, the exercise should not be too severe. Don't kill a girl with physical training; because you can kill her that way just as you can kill her with books. Some of our physical training is too severe for a girl of that age. She must have plenty of the right kinds of games and they should be in the open air, and they should be such as she will enjoy and love; if they are not of that kind it won't help a great deal. If you can build up lung capacity in that way then you are drawing in the oxygen; then you are getting out the waste, and you will find the girl will come out all right in nine cases out of ten.

It is a fact, proved by physical examination, that all during this period the better scholars have the larger lung capacity. Those of you who have taught in the grammar schools year after year will know that a bright girl, one that has been very bright, will have a year when she will come to you and will be absolutely stupid and can't learn. "What ails the girl?" you wonder. She will tell you, "I don't know what ails me; I can't learn anything. I have become a fool and I was not always one." The trouble is with the lung capacity; it isn't with the brain; the brain is all right. If you tell that girl to wake up in order to make up that lack of mental ability by studying harder, you are doing the unpardonable sin. I am telling it to you straight. That is not the remedy. The remedy is more play in the open air, then you will find that that girl's brain will clear up. Many a poor girl has been put in poor condition by being urged to study hard, when the fault was that nobody knew enough to turn her out into the fresh air which the Lord intended she should have.

We ought to have in every school five minutes, it would be better to have ten minutes, between school exercises, when the girls can walk up and down, chat with one another and get the blood out of the overloaded head and down into the cold feet. Better still, turn them out in the open air and let them run; that would be another blessing. Don't keep the girls sitting too long at that period. Don't let them sit with wet feet or skirts. That is just about as bad as getting smallpox. Teach them some of the sense which you ought to have if you haven't.

I haven't said a word for the boy, for this good reason: you can't kill him if you try, thank the Lord. You can't kill him if you try, not because he is so very tough; boys are not as tough as girls, physically; but you can't kill them; because they won't let you; but I am sorry to say, some few women teachers are killing off the future women. Again and again I have heard it said by the girls: "We can get along all right with Mr. So and So; we can get on the blind side of him all the time; we can fool him, but when we try to get around Miss So and So she puts it to us awfully, and in the neatest way, to get the work done." Now, why the women can't have a little mercy on the younger people is something I cannot understand at all.

And yet, while I haven't said a word for the boy, ought we not to regard him a little? Now and then there is the ambitious boy, and then again there is your studious boy; there is your bookish boy; there is your shy boy who does not get into the games. He is the boy you should watch all the time. There is the boy who has become delicate and finicky, because he has been doddled at home. I hope you haven't got so many of them here as we have in the East, but he is here and you must watch him, because his parents are doing everything in the world to spoil him. You must stand on the Lord's side of him if you can, for these boys need your help. If you give a little excess of mercy, a little bit more physical vigor gained by this regime of open-air exercise and exercise between the school periods, you simply will be erring on the safe side and doing good to that girl and such boys, because on these years of metamorphosis depend the life and the happiness of the girl and the boy.

Perhaps you are getting ready for examinations. I want to tell you Nature has her examinations just as well as you do. Does not she examine the baby and see that baby can't go on, and many babies do not go on. Then the death rate sinks; at eleven and twelve it is very low, very low, indeed, only perhaps two or three in a thousand, in many countries. Nature is giving them a chance to see whether they will get ready for the second examination. Right after or during puberty the death rate rises. At eighteen, nineteen and twenty, it has gone up. That is Nature's second examination, to see whether that boy or girl is fit to send out into the world to take part in the great drama of life, and if she is conditioned at this time, then it means invalidism for two, three, four, five years, and if she is badly conditioned, it may mean death. When you are preparing those girls for the examination, do not forget your own examination, because it is coming on very fast.

I have talked very plainly this morning and I hope you will forgive me. You may say, "We don't need that talk now." I hope you don't. You will need it in a generation or two; I don't care how strong that pioneer blood was which has come down to your first generation here, we had just as good in Massachusetts a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, but we are getting rid of it just as fast as we can, the Lord forgive us; and you will do that here if you don't look out. If you have strong, red blood, hold on to it; because that is the grandest gift of God to man; it is a treasure which must be handed down unimpaired from generation to generation, that our boys and girls may be strong and efficient for the work of life which lies before them.

LESSON II

(General Subject: "Conservation of the Child," read carefully the foregoing lecture by Dr. Tyler.)

_The Body as an Instrument of the Soul_

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What are the teachings of the Latter-day Saints regarding the relation of the body to the soul?

2. In the light of these teachings, what is demanded of every Latter-day Saint as to the treatment of his body? How are we living up to these teachings?

3. What are the four essential things we must do to keep the body engine described by Dr. Tyler, in perfect condition?

4. What would you think of an engineer who fed his engine dirt with his coal, or let his draughts and flues clog with soot, or failed to remove the clinkers, or let his engine get dusty and rusty? In what similar ways are people neglecting their bodies?

5. Discuss this as a health maxim: Clean food, clean air, clean water, clean thoughts, and clean consciences.

6. What was the Savior's constant command to the sick?

7. Give one practical suggestion as to training children to take proper care of their God-given bodies--of keeping them clean, both inside and out.

LESSON III

_The Foundation of Health_

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

_Reference_: The foregoing lecture by Dr. Tyler.

1. Discuss Dr. Tyler's remark: "The stomach is the foundation of all greatness."

2. Name three home habits which, in your opinion, are doing most to ruin the stomachs, especially of children?

3. Discuss the "piecing habit," the "sweetmeat craze," irregularity of meals, and the "hurrying habit," as applied to disorders of the stomach.

4. Someone said recently that people are paying more to-day to cure their stomachs from ills brought on by bad habits in eating than they are to build churches, schools and all other public improvements put together. Discuss the assertion.

5. How can parents save money now being wasted on stomach troubles, and at the same time lay the foundation for good health in their children and themselves? Give at least one way.

LESSON IV

"_Nerve Leaks_"

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

_Reference_: The foregoing lecture by Dr. Tyler.

1. What are two good evidences of a perfectly healthy nervous system?

2. Physicians tell us that nerve diseases are increasing at an alarming rate in our country. What is the greatest cause for this increase?

3. What home habits have you noticed that lead to nervousness? Discuss here the effects of scolding, hurrying, talking, noise, lack of system, as "nerve leaks."

4. What practical suggestion would you offer to parents to help them to bring control, calm and harmony into their daily lives--to make their homes more places of rest and peace?

5. What ways can we take to conserve and strengthen the nerves of our children? Through what habits of life are we helping to wreck their nerves?

LESSON V

_Child Growth_

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Discuss the varying stages of child growth, their rapidity, the critical periods, etc.

2. Growth means waste. By what means does the body get rid of the waste that comes with growth and change?

3. What are some of the ill effects of keeping this waste in the system? Give your experiences and observations with children.

4. When is the child's blood likely to be most loaded with the waste caused by growth? How can we best help the boy or girl to clear the system of this waste? What mistakes are we making in this vital matter?

5. What practical suggestions would you give to our parents, teachers, and communities to help them safeguard their children during dangerous periods, and keep their pioneer blood clean and pure?

THE ADOLESCENT BOY AND GIRL

GROWTH DURING THE HIGH SCHOOL AGE

_Dr. John M. Tyler_

The boy and the girl during adolescence have now attained their full height and practically their full weight, although the boy has a little to gain still; they are pretty well grown by this time. If I had to choose between two questions, the first might be, "Have you a good appetite?" but the second question I would ask is, "What is your lung capacity?" The lungs have increased very rapidly at fourteen to sixteen in the boy; in the girl the increase has been smaller and quite irregular. It ought to be more regular than it is, I am convinced. The heart has gained greatly in capacity. The arteries have expanded much less than the heart, and the result is that there is a much higher blood pressure than there has been at any time before. The brain has attained practically full size and weight. The addition now will be mainly in the very highest area, where the addition of fibres might make all the difference between the possibility of genius and the possibility of mediocrity. The sensory and the nervous areas are fully matured. The higher mental area and the higher mental power are now coming on to stay.

The boy, you will notice, at this stage begins to argue a great deal more than he ever did before. He wants to argue nearly every question. He likes the debating society. His idea of heaven, it seems to me, is a place where debating is indulged in. A goodly amount of exercise for those psychological and mental powers will do him no harm.

The mortality, or the death rate, is low, but the morbidity is increasing at this time, in the boy at least. Vigorous physical exercise is now needed. Ordinary play is not enough. Gymnastics also for the development and training of the hand and the wrist, training in quickness and precision of movement are all excellent exercise, all the finer muscles should be trained now, and probably less training should be given to the heavy fundamental muscles which are all important in childhood.

Athletics are exceedingly useful. They should be, however, for all, and not merely for a few who join the teams, who need them the very least of all. I think our modern college athletics will some day be looked upon as one of the most ridiculous habits of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That twenty-two men should engage in mortal combat, with anywhere from one to twenty thousand on the side lines,--if you can get anything more ridiculous than that, I should like to know where you can find it. Athletics should not be too severe, however, yet, the boy ought not to have century runs and long halves of football, especially if the heart is still weak. The tissues of the body have not yet gained the toughness that they will gain at a later time. Every commander in the field dreads to have boys of eighteen, nineteen, or twenty sent to him, because, as Napoleon said of his young recruits, "they die off like flies." The hard bed, with light covering, the cold room, the cold bath will now aid in toughening the boy, provided he is healthy; but under no circumstances begin that until the pubertal period is fully by.

The danger of over-pressure in the high school, especially after the first year, is to my mind not very great. The boy and the girl now both stand a good deal of work; but the greatest danger for the boy and the girl in the high school is that they will take too much social enjoyment. An evening theatre party, followed by a supper, a late dance, will take more strength out of a boy and girl than three days of study. There is nothing that is so wearing. If you can keep down the social over-pressure, I do not believe the over-pressure from study will do any great harm in high schools.

The larger bodies, the large heart and lungs, well oxygenated blood, and fresh vitality of every artery and tissue, gives a buoyance, a strength and a courage, a source of power and sense of it too, a longing for complete freedom, a revolt against all control, which the boy will never feel later; if he does not feel it now. I am describing, perhaps, rather the college boy than the high school boy; but bear this in mind, that I am describing what your boys in the high school will be a year or two later if they are not that now, and it is for this stage you must prepare them, even, if they have not already entered upon it.

A new, wide world, just as fresh as on the morning of creation, a new fire, a life of boundless opportunity, which is endless in scope and time, are opening out before the boy and the girl. They see the parents and the teachers drag around, understanding, as they think, neither them nor life itself; and they are right to a certain extent. There is no doubt about that; we do not hold on to the vision of glory of this world and of this life which we had in youth as we ought to and as it is our duty to do. The boy and the girl criticize us fairly, when they think that we don't appreciate this magnificent world in which we live.

When a man gets to be my age, while I suppose he probably has more humility, he comes to know and he comes to have a very cheerful, optimistic view of the world. He has made up his mind that the Lord does not intend to change the world a great deal anyhow, and, on the whole, he is very much content to leave it the way it is. That is not so with young people at all. The boy and the girl must learn and know all about it. That is one thing they are determined to do at the outset. The boy girds up his loins and he goes whither he will. He must taste of every experience for himself. He will meet joy and sorrow with the same frolicking, welcoming spirit. He has never been saddened by experience nor disillusioned by disappointment and failure. He will try all the knowledge of good and evil if it costs him Paradise.

Nature is loosening every leading string now and is getting him free to complete his own individual development and to forge his own character. We cannot stop him if we would. It is very lucky that we cannot. It is better that we should not stop him even if we could; nevertheless, he has very little self-knowledge and still less self-control. Impulses well up from changes going on within him or from stimuli which come to him from without. He does not understand them. He does not know where they come from. He does not know what they mean. He is ill-prepared to face them, and now he goes one way and now the other. He has just about as clear a conception of the value of time as a child has. He has not outgrown childhood in that respect. He cannot possibly play a waiting game. That is the last thing that he can do. If the sun shines to-day it is always going to be bright weather. If the maiden of his adoration frowns to-day, the sun will never shine again. He is either on the Delectable Mountain or in the Valley of Humiliation, and he is far more frequently in the latter than we think. He is rarely between the two, and he is not going to tell us when he is in the Valley of Humiliation, nor when he is on the top of the Delectable Mountain.

There is a reticence about him at this time which we should learn to respect and to reverence. I told you at the first meeting that Nature put the shell around the egg so we would keep our fingers out of it, and Nature puts that shell of reticence around the boy and the girl at that time so we will keep our blundering fingers out and leave them to solve their problems with their help and that of the good Lord who is watching over them.

Authority has little hold over him at this time, traditions none at all. The influence of early training which have rooted themselves in his very life are very powerful and they will hold him, and the Lord have mercy on the boy whose early traditions do not hold him at that time. Remember it is not his fault; that is a sad thought for us parents. We must take the responsibility for these defects in the early training of our children.

The boy is led by class and group feeling at this time. You take him at eight or ten and he is an admirable little fellow in many respects. He wants to play fair, and if the other fellow does not play fair he will smite him, just as Samson smote the Philistines, if he can, and that is the occasion of much friction. After a time there is danger that he will not play as fair as he did when he was younger, for a time at least, because he is swallowed up in the team, or the society, or the group, or the gang, whatever it may be, to which he belongs, and he will give himself body and soul to help that team to win. This has its bad side, a very bad side, I grant you. If you would understand the boy, every now and then you must study the psychology of the mob. But there is a very good side also, because he is generous to a fault. Now is the time in his life when he will go down with the team, and in order for the team to win he will make a play when you and I would hesitate to make it. We had better respect the boy. He is loyal to his leader and to his friends. It is the epoch of the heart, and out of the heart, remember, are the issues of life. He has a great deal more heart than he has head knowledge at this time, and I confess I rather like him for it.

You remember what Paul says to those knowledge-worshiping Corinthians as to knowledge: "It will vanish away; for we know in part." Those of us who have lived more than half a century have seen nine-tenths of our knowledge vanish away in just that fashion because we knew in part. But, says Paul, there are some things that abide, and one of them is faith. That is never done away with; another is hope, and the third and sure abiding thing is love, which is three-thirds in the heart, and out of the heart are the issues of life; the heart is often wiser than the head. Do not under-value and never despise the value of the greatness of heart in the boy; for Great Heart is the only champion who ever killed Giant Despair.

The boy at this age is seeking for a king. He is very likely to be like old St. Christopher, he will serve the strongest if he can find him. Tides of religious feeling are sweeping in on him now; but if you want to convert him you must hold up before him no mediaeval example, but the great, magnificent, athletic life of that Divine Master who has been so often misrepresented to us.

He is a very lovable being, that boy is, at times. Oh, you are reverencing him to-day; well, then bear in mind that probably about the same time tomorrow morning you will be gripping for the scruff of his neck, and when you grip him, grip him hard, it is no time for half-way measures. Never hit a boy at that age with a switch. If you do you are lost. Either don't hit at all or hit hard.

A great deal of the child still remains in him, his instability, for instance. He might well say of himself, "my name is legion." In the remainder of his young life everything that is trifling and worthless all comes to the surface, just as it does in the fermenting liquor, the strong and sweet are all hidden below the froth. You cannot see it. You can very easily do him injustice. You must sympathize with him. Remember your own foolish youth when you were his age; remember your own blunders and then you will have a great patience with him and great admiration for him, because these blunders are not a great deal worse than they are. If you can't do this, then leave him to Nature, for you cannot help him.

We found, during the years of puberty, a physical metamorphosis, when the body was all made over, and now, during those years of adolescence we have a mental metamorphosis that is just as complete as the physical metamorphosis. All things are becoming new. They have not become new yet, but they are becoming new; hence it must be a time of instability, of self-education, of the strange mixture of the very new and the very old, the bad and the good, of that which is passing away and which has passed away long ago, and that which has not yet come. Look a little deeper into him; you will find he has a pretty good primitive system of morality; it is a very primitive one, consisting mainly of loyalty to his friends. Treat him "square," as he says, and fairly, and then you may purr and curb him just as you will.

Remember that tides of religious power and influence have been sweeping through him. The first one came probably at twelve, if we may trust our statistics; the second stronger, at fourteen, and then the third--perhaps a good many don't feel the first one or second--the third perhaps at sixteen. The one which comes over him at sixteen will affect heart and intellect and will, and everything, and he will stay converted probably. If you convert him at twelve, he probably will fall from grace before he is fifteen. It is rather interesting to notice that those periods when his experiences are likely to be very deep and very strong, are the years when his chest girth is expanding the most rapidly. A very good bit of physiology or psychology or of anything else you choose to call it, to learn is this:

If you want to convert a man to religion, get plenty of good, fresh air into his body; you never can do it in an ill-ventilated room.

It is a period of seeing visions and of dreaming dreams; you know that, if you remember your boyhood and girlhood. Those dreams and visions are the most substantial things there are in his life or in yours or mine; for "where there is no vision the people perish." Wendell Phillips used to say that "the power which overthrew slavery and hurled it to the ground was young men and young women dreaming dreams by patriots' graves." There is a good deal more than rhetoric in that statement. Endless possibilities are in these dreams and visions. It is a period of promise, of magnificent promise, which you and I as teachers are privileged to see afar off before they are even glimpsed by his parents and many of his friends.

The great question now is, Will the promise and the vision ever be realized, or will they fade out and disappear and leave him a Philistine? And lucky if he is not a brute, for the only brute in this world, my friends, is a degenerate man. When you hear a man say that he has cut his eye-teeth, and he has got rid of his dreams and his visions, then may the Lord have mercy on the soul of that man, because he is dead. The all-important question now is, Can you get that dream and that vision so burned into his memory, so blazing before his eyes, that he will never forget it and never lose sight of it, and win it if it costs him his life? Then you have educated him.

These visions are far more important than all of the science, even the biology, that a man can learn in college. It is the business of the parent and teacher at this time to bring to birth and to sturdy growth high aims, purposes, ideals, the whole spiritual life. Your business in early childhood is with the physical, because that is the important thing at that time, if you can build a very healthy little animal, you have done well; but during the high school age you must build the spiritual. If you don't feel this, I cannot explain it to you; and if you don't feel this within you, if it is all meaningless and mere noise, don't you dare teach a high school, for you are not big enough nor deep enough to do that.

The great question, after all, is not how much learning have you been able to put into him, but how much of the finer ambitions, how much power, how deeply and strongly they hunger for the very best. An ounce of inspiration at this time is worth more than a pound or a ton of learning; I am no foe of learning, either. The high school is and will remain the people's college. It is the only college that a great part of the people ever will know. Do not neglect that great fraction who are never going to get anything higher and beyond in order to put your time on those who are going on to colleges and universities. You must be the people's support, and you may well thank fortune that it doesn't seem to be nine-tenths of your business out here in the West to fit boys and girls for a college examination. If that ever threatens to become your business, then you withstand it and face it to the death, for there is nothing will ruin education faster than that; I know sorrowfully whereof I speak.

You remember in "Pilgrim's Progress" that when Christian had left the Interpreter's House, he strayed away and went down into the Valley of Humiliation, where he walked between the snares and was in danger of falling into many a pitfall; there he wandered through darkness; there he could not see the Delectable Mountains any more, and there he fought with Giant Apollyon for his life; but when Christian passed that way he did not find it half so bad by any means. He had a companion by the name of Great Heart, remember, and Great Heart said to him, "Do you know that the soil of this valley is probably the most fertile that the crow flies over?"

The Valley of Humiliation, my friends, stretches sharp and clear athwart the life of every man and woman between the Interpreter's House of his early education and of his dreams and visions, and the Delectable Mountains, and we all have to depart to it whether we will or no, and it is the most fertile soil that the crow flies over, for in that Valley of Humiliation men's muscles and nerves become steel, and man becomes the shadow of the great rock in the Weary Land, and through heartaches the man and the woman are made the soldiers and the choice heroes of Jehovah Himself. It is into that Valley of Humiliation that the boy and the girl are going to go from school after they leave you, and you must fit them for it; many of you know well enough what it is and know what help they need.

You have read, all of you, a good many times probably, this marvelous passage from Isaiah: "They that trust in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." I never thought what that meant until one morning in college chapel our president turned to us and said: "Most of you think that is an anti-climax," and we would say: "Why, of course, for a man cannot fly like the eagle. He can walk down hill, what is the use talking about that walking down hill." The old man shook his head and said: "No, no. Anybody can fly like an eagle in his imagination; when we are beginning any new work or any new study or anything new, we fly; but after a time we cannot fly any more, we come down to a run; and the man who wins out is not the man who can run, but the man who can 'walk and not faint,' for that man has the endurance that we want."

There was a time some years ago--that has gone by too, thank fortune--when we used to paraphrase things; that is, turn very good English into very bad English. You wish to have a boy or girl catch the spirit of the poem, do you not, to find in it inspiration and power, to find a beauty in life that never was on sea nor land? A sweet voice is a very excellent thing in a woman, and a very unusual thing in a man. The eye is not the grandest sense organ we have; the ear is the path-way to the heart, and that is what you want to understand. Did you ever try reading a beautiful poem or story aloud to your children at your fireside or to the class and put your very life's blood into it? I remember some things that a little girl teacher in Massachusetts read to me a great many years ago, and there is a dent in my old heart still. Try it some day. They cannot understand the poem, but they feel it. It has gone deeper than the intellect. It has gone into the heart and through the heart, it has got hold of the will and it has transfigured the spirit and the whole being. In this way you are certainly teaching literature; nobody can deny that. You have awakened a new interest. You lead and inspire the adolescent to share your very best and highest enthusiasm. After you have done that a few times your pupils will demand the best; they won't be content with anything poor.

The highest human thing in the end is character, and character is formed very early, very shortly before the boy leaves the high school. Just how it is formed I do not know, but I know one thing, that while I cannot tell anything about how successful a man will be intellectually in life from what he does in college, or, sometimes, I cannot tell very much about how large he will grow mentally, I know that boy will not rise very much higher morally than he stands in college when you send him there. If, then, he has secured a moral training and influence, I firmly believe he will stay so. If he does not come to us in that shape the probability is that he never will change for the good, but if he is filthy he will remain filthy still. His character is made very largely in the high school.

How can you reach it? I think you can reach it a good deal through literature. I do not see how anybody can read Mr. Hawthorne or Mr. Emerson, and not long to be a gentleman, and feel as if he would like to be worthy to kiss the hem of the garment of those literary gentlemen. You can read history. You can make history a dreary chronicle. You can learn of kings who never ought to have been born, and when they died, when they ought to have been dead fifty years before, and all the long list of battles fought which never ought to have been fought. You can make it just such a weary chronicle. You do not, nowadays, thank fortune; I have seen teachers that