Part 8

More than two thousand years ago Aristotle pointed out that physical health was the basis of mental health, and the importance of a sound physical development as an essential condition of successful education. “First the body must be trained and _then_ the understanding,” declared the great Stagirite. The “new spirit” of modern education is admirably expressed in the Aristotelian maxim. This new spirit is a protest against the practice, futile from the standpoint of society, and brutal from the standpoint of the child, of attempting to educate hungry, physically weak, and ill-developed children who are unfitted to bear the strain and effort involved in the educational process. No one who has studied the matter at all can doubt that the physical deterioration which accompanies the impoverishment of the workers is of tremendous significance educationally. All the evidence gathered upon the subject in Europe and this country tends to the conclusion that physical weakness and underdevelopment account for a very large percentage of our educational failures. The studies of Porter, in St. Louis, Smedley and Christopher, in Chicago, and of Professor Beyer, who is perhaps our greatest authority, all tend to confirm the results of European investigations, that children of superior physique make the best pupils. Dull, backward pupils are generally inferior in physical development.[65]

The number of dull and backward children in our public schools is so great that a study from this physiological point of view would seem to be quite as desirable and important as the many exhaustive and valuable psychological studies with which the literature of Child Study abounds. For many years special tutorial methods and institutions have existed for idiot and feeble-minded children and such other classes of distinctly defective children as epileptics, the blind, the deaf, and the dumb. But it is only in recent years that any effort has been made to deal with that far larger class of children distinguished equally from these distinctly defective classes and from normal, typical children. These pseudo-atypical children, as Dr. Groszmann terms them, are much more numerous than is generally supposed. Professor Monroe, of Stanford University, gathered particulars relating to 10,000 children in the public schools of California and found that 3 per cent of the children were feeble-minded and not less than 10 per cent backward and mentally dull, needing special care and attention.[66] These children who “skirt the borderland of abnormity” cannot properly be dealt with in the ordinary classes, and it has been found necessary in most cities to establish special classes for their benefit. While some of these classes have children whose backwardness is more apparent than real, the children of foreign immigrants, for example, whose difficulties with the language cause them to be placed in grades with much younger children, the problem is still serious when all possible allowance has been made for these. In districts where the number of foreign-born children is very small the percentage of backward children is very great. The percentage found in the schools of California by Professor Monroe is probably not too high for the country as a whole. In a general way it corroborates the findings of European investigators, and a number of educators to whom I submitted the question have given estimates based upon their personal observations ranging from 10 to 15 per cent.

If we accept the California figures and apply them to the whole country, we get a total of about 1,500,000 such children enrolled in the public schools, for not more than one-fourth of whom has any special provision been made or attempted. The seriousness of this aspect of the problem will be apparent to teachers and others familiar with school work who know how seriously 1 or 2 such children in a class of 40 or 50 will impair the efficiency of the teacher’s efforts. By reason of their dulness and slow mental action such children absorb too much of the teacher’s time, which might more profitably be spent upon other children, and thus act as a drag upon all the members of the class.

Moreover, they become discouraged by their failures, and, hardened by constant rebuke and the taunts of their brighter companions, finally careless, defiant, and altogether incorrigible. In many cases they leave school before they are of the legal age, their leaving welcomed, and often suggested, by the teachers, who not unnaturally tire of the hindrance to their work. Yet they are the very children who can least of all afford to miss whatever education they are capable of. They, more than any others, need the training and development of their minds to fit them for the battle of life. How can they otherwise be expected to earn their daily bread in the competitive labor market, where dulness of brain must inevitably prove a serious handicap? And unless they can stand the test of that competition, they must become paupers. Many of these children are taken away from school and sent to work, because, their parents say, “they can’t learn and are better helping to pay the rent than wasting their time in school.” In connection with the movement for the prevention of child labor, we have come across hundreds of instances of this kind. Factory inspectors and physicians in industrial centres where child labor is prevalent have frequently pointed out that a very large number of child workers are quite unfit for work. They were sick and backward in school, and instead of that special care being given them which their condition demanded in order that they might be equipped for the struggle for existence, they were removed altogether from the school’s influences and subjected to conditions which tend to further deterioration, physical, mental, and moral.[67]

So that the problem is not merely one of economic waste represented by a fruitless and vain expenditure for the education of children who are not capable of benefiting by it. It is not merely a question of economic waste added to educational failure and the peril to society which that failure must involve in the crime which ignorance breeds and fosters. All these things are involved, and, in addition to them, is involved the terrible fact that we turn them adrift in the world, unfit for its service and unable to adjust themselves to its needs. In the very nature of things, because they are ill developed of body and mind, they must become industrially inefficient. They sink from depth to depth in the industrial abyss,

“To endure wrongs darker than death or night.”

Where giant machines, inventors’ brains, and ambitious immigrants in countless numbers all conspire to narrow the labor market, they are ruthlessly thrust aside. They are not only unemployed but unemployable. They become paupers, driven into the morass of pauperism by forces that are practically, for them, irresistible. Thus is the problem of pauperism perpetuating itself. And to the economic waste represented by the expenditure upon them in the schools must be added the further cost of their support as dependants and paupers. It is a vicious circle.

X

That these same conditions are a fruitful source of criminality is unquestionable. All our studies of juvenile delinquency point to the fact that a very large proportion of the children who become truants, moral perverts, and criminals are drawn from this same class of physically degenerate children. It is commonplace nowadays to say that many of our criminals are not really criminals at all, but the victims of physical or mental abnormalities, often directly traceable to low nutrition. In observing a number of juvenile delinquents the proportion of ill-developed children is generally noticeable. Professor G. Stanley Hall says, “Juvenile criminals, as a class, are inferior in body and mind to normal children, and ... their social environment is no less inferior.”[68] Professor Dawson found among boys and girls in reformatory institutions a tendency to lighter weight, shorter stature, and less strength of grip; 16 per cent of them being “clearly sufferers from low nutrition.”[69] Professor Kline has shown the same general condition in a striking study, and concludes that “low nutrition breeds discontent and a tendency to run away.”[70] A mass of very similar testimony might be cited from the records of the most competent investigators in this and other countries. It is the universal experience that a low standard of physical development is almost invariably associated with low mental and moral standards.

It is no mere coincidence that inferiority of physique should be thus universally and inseparably associated with inferiority of economic condition. It is not a mere coincidence that superiority of physique should be generally associated with mental superiority. Nor will the suggestion of coincidence suffice to explain the universal association of low physical and mental development with criminal propensities. These facts possess a very definite, and very obvious, relation as cause and effect. The three main divisions of degeneracy, physical, mental, and moral, are inseparable and spring from the same causes. From the investigations which have been made in this country and from the voluminous literature upon the subject which similar investigations in European countries have produced, I am satisfied that poor, defective nutrition lies at the root of the physical degeneration of the poor; and _a priori_ reasoning would justify the conclusion that the mental degeneracy evidenced by the enormous number of backward children, educational failures, and the moral degeneracy evidenced by increasing juvenile delinquency and crime, are due to the same fundamental cause. From those data alone we might, with ample justification, adopt the words of a famous authority and say, “Defective nutrition lies at the base of all forms of degeneracy.”[71] We need not, however, rely upon this method, for there is no lack of direct testimony to show that low nutrition is the prime and most fruitful cause of mental dulness and its attendant evils.

I do not wish to be understood as contending that physical, mental, or moral defects never exist except as a result of defective nutrition, or that malnutrition never exists except as a result of poverty. I know, for instance, that a great many children are backward in their studies because they are handicapped by defects of vision or hearing, adenoid growths, and the like. These are often easily curable, and the fitting of proper glasses, or the removal of adenoid growths by slight surgical operations, suffice to bring such children up to the standard of normality. In an examination of over 7000 children in New York public schools one-third were found to have “defects of vision, interfering with the proper pursuit of their studies.”[72] In such cases malnutrition may or may not be the initial cause. That defective vision is often attributable to low and improper nutrition is beyond question. My contention is that the vast majority of dull and backward children, whose number makes a serious pedagogical problem, and a still more serious social problem in that so many of them become either inefficient and dependent, or criminal, are dull and backward as a result of physical inferiority directly traceable to poor and inadequate feeding.

A striking evidence of the association of underfeeding and mental dulness is afforded by the coincidence of numbers in the two classes wherever careful, expert investigations have been made. More than twenty years ago, as a result of some discussion upon the subject in the House of Commons, Dr. Crichton-Browne, the famous English authority upon mental diseases, prepared, at the request of the then vice-president of the Committee of Council on Education, Mr. Mundella, a report upon the physical and mental condition of the children in the elementary schools of London.[73] In that report Dr. Crichton-Browne pointed out that dulness, “sudden failure of intellect and languor of manner,” so prevalent among poorer children, were generally associated with hunger and semi-starvation. Later, the British Medical Association appointed a committee consisting of Drs. Hack Tuke, D. E. Shuttleworth, Fletcher Beach, and Francis Warner. They visited 14 schools scattered over a wide area and having a total enrolment of about 5000 children. For the purposes of examination 809 children were selected, of which number 231 were classed in the report as being mentally dull, and 184 as showing evident signs of defective nutrition. The report adds, “We do not suppose that we noted defective nutrition in all cases in which it may have been present.” Very often the conditions noted are coexistent, so a careful analysis of the figures was made, with the result that of the cases of mental dulness 28.50 per cent were found to be among those reported as suffering from defective nutrition, and the same proportion of mentally dull included in the cases of defective nutrition.[74] In the examination of the 7000 New York public school children already referred to, Dr. Cronin found 650 cases of “bad mentality” and 632 cases of “bad nutrition.” Similar investigations in several European cities, notably Turin, Christiania, and Paris, show very similar results.

More conclusive still is the testimony of experience in cases where school meals have been introduced. In 1883 Mr. Mundella, M.P., introducing the education estimates in the House of Commons, described an experiment which was being carried on in the elementary schools at Rousden by Sir Henry Peek in the way of providing a cheap, wholesome, and nutritious midday meal for the children. The cost of the meals was, according to Mr. Mundella, who spoke from a statement furnished by Sir Henry Peek himself, less than two and a half cents per meal, five meals costing twelve cents. The school inspectors testified that the results had been eminently satisfactory “both from a physical and educational point of view.” The meals proved to be an incentive to more regular attendance and, by providing the children with the requisite stamina, increased their mental efficiency, the result being an increased average of passes in the government examination upon which the governmental grants-in-aid were based.[75] In the following year, 1884, Mr. Jonathan Taylor, a prominent member of the Social Democratic Federation, induced the Sheffield School Board to introduce a system of providing cheap school dinners. It was found that a good, substantial meal, which Mr. Taylor describes as “sufficient in quantity and excellent in quality, and forming such a dinner as satisfies myself, and which the teachers in the schools are in the habit of partaking of along with the children,” could be provided at a cost of less than two cents per capita, that sum including the cost of fuel, cook’s wages, and other working expenses. While, as the committee in charge reported to the school board, it was soon found that there were a large number of children who could not afford even two cents for a meal, the results of the experiment speedily manifested themselves in a marked physical and mental improvement in the children. It was particularly demonstrated that children who were formerly dull and backward showed much improvement in their work after they had partaken regularly of the school dinners for a short time.[76] During the twenty years which have elapsed since these initial experiments were made, many similar schemes have been introduced in British schools, and in every case so far as I have been able to ascertain the facts, there has been a marked improvement in the physical and mental condition of the children affected.

Mrs. Humphry Ward has given a most interesting account of an experiment in a “Special School for Defectives” at Tavistock Place, London, the pioneer school of its kind in London. That it is a special school for physically defective children does not detract from the importance of the results noted. For some time there had been an arrangement whereby the children were provided with a midday meal for which their parents were charged three cents a day, the deficit being met by the managers from the school fund. Complaint was made by some of the visitors interested in the experiment that the meals were not good enough, not sufficiently nourishing for children of that class, and the managers were prevailed upon to improve the dietary to a considerable extent. Mrs. Ward says: “The experiment of a more liberal and varied diet was tried. More hot meat, more eggs, milk, cream, vegetables, and fruit were given. In consequence the children’s appetites largely increased, and the expense naturally increased with them. The children’s pence in May amounted to £3 13_s._ 6_d._ ($17.64), and the cost of the food was £4 7_s._ 2_d._ ($20.92); in June, after the more liberal scale had been adopted, the children’s payments were still £3 13_s._ 10_d._ ($17.72), but the expenses had risen to £5 7_s._ 8_d._ ($25.84). Meanwhile the physical and mental results of the increased expenditure are already unmistakable. Partially paralyzed children have been recovering strength in hands and limbs with greater rapidity than before.... The effect, indeed, is startling to those who have watched the experiment. Meanwhile, the teachers have entered in the log-book of the school their testimony to the increased power of work that the children have been showing since the new feeding has been adopted. Hardly any child now wants to lie down during school time, whereas applications to lie down used to be common; and the children _both learn and remember better_.”[77]

In Birmingham, England, a voluntary organization started by the chairman of the School Board, Mr. George Dixon, provides meals during the winter months for something like 2500 children. This committee provides a dinner, absolutely free of cost to the child, consisting principally of lentil soup and bread and jam. The cost to the organization, according to Dr. Airy, H.M.I., who gave testimony before the Inter-Departmental Committee,[78] is less than one cent per meal inclusive, the manager’s present salary being $500 per year. Formerly it was $750, but he voluntarily accepted the reduction to $500 when subscriptions began to fall off. Dr. Airy explained to the committee that the 2500 children thus fed by this charity constitute about 2½ per cent of the child population of the entire city. No attempt whatever is made to deal with any children except those who are known to be “practically starving,” the far larger number of children who, while being underfed and seriously so, still get some sort of food, enough to keep them from absolute destitution, being in no way provided for. One reason for the low standard of meals given is the desire of the committee to make them as unattractive as possible, so that few children will eat the dinners except absolutely forced by sheer hunger. Another reason I give in full from the “minutes of evidence” because of its bearing upon a phase of the problem already noted. Dr. Airy was asked concerning the lentil soup, “Is there any animal stock in it?” and replied: “Yes, there is a certain amount, but not very much. It has been found by incessant experiment—because this is an experimental business year by year—that lentil soup was the best. _A starving child cannot take anything good; its stomach rejects it at once. We gave far too good soup at first. It had to be found out by experiment what they would stand._”[79] There is another charity in Birmingham which provides breakfasts of bread and cocoa and milk to practically the same class of destitute children. Several teachers and others connected with educational work in Birmingham have, in response to my inquiries, assured me that notwithstanding the fact that the quality of meals given is so poor, and that only the very lowest class of children is touched by the charity, there has been a marked improvement in the mental capacity of the children. One of the teachers, in a personal letter, says: “Of course, I have no means of proving it statistically for you; our facilities for child study do not include any system of individual record books, by which method alone, it seems to me, could statistical data be gathered. But I know personally several children who have been in my own class in whom the mental improvement consequent upon their improved diet has been most marked. If observation counts for anything at all, and I suppose it does, I have no hesitation in saying that the mental improvement in a large number of children has been simply marvellous.”

In Norway it has been for several years the custom of the school authorities in several municipalities to provide, free of charge, a good dinner for all school children who care to avail themselves of it. The dinners are prepared in a central kitchen-station and sent out in boxes to the various schools, special appliances being used to keep the meals hot. The dinners consist usually of soup, porridge, meat, vegetables, and bread for the ordinary children, and a special dietary for weak, sick, or defective children.[80] This system of free dinners was introduced as a result of a series of experiments made in Christiania. It was found that the number of backward, dull children who came from the poorer districts was much higher than elsewhere, and that they were, as a rule, inferior in physical development. So great was the progress made by the children in several classes in which the experiment of giving them one good meal each day was tried that the school authorities were induced to introduce the system generally into the schools. A member of the Municipal Council of Trondhjem says, speaking of the free school dinner system, “Norway now interprets civilization to mean that society must conspire to save its children from the hostile forces of unequal economic conditions, and to secure for them equal opportunities and helpful conditions for the development of their highest and best gifts.”

As a result of a careful study of the problem of how best to deal with the backward child, and a comparison of her own observations with those of teachers and others in Norway and France (where the _cantines scolaires_ have been attended with results very similar to those attained in Norway), a New York teacher in charge of a large class of such children decided to try the experiment of feeding them.[81] “To build up their intellects is the task we have to accomplish,” she said to the writer, “and I have found that that can best be done through building up their bodies first and so securing a decent physical basis to work upon.” The children contribute a cent each per day to a fund administered by the teacher, who provides each child with a cup of warm milk every morning in the middle of the session. Should any child for any reason be unable to contribute its share, it is not deprived of the milk on that account, the small deficit being made up out of the teacher’s own purse. In addition to the milk the children get such of the products of the cooking classes as are suitable for them, three days a week. It is a small experiment, too small indeed to justify any sweeping generalization from it, but it is nevertheless important in that it confirms fully the experience of foreign investigators that a very large proportion of the children who are mentally dull need only to be properly fed in order to enable their minds to develop normally.