Margaret McMillan

“ It is possible in a garden to get to know what to expect at different seasons. So it is possible in the school garden to get some notion of the kind of thing to expect at any period, to know, for example, when the dexterity should appear that will one day become intelligence, and when to look for that kind of practical gift that will by-and-bye flower—it may be in late days—into a power of abstraction. ”

“ THE idea that manual work has a good effect on the whole body is certainly not new. Teachers saw the improvement long ago as a thing that could hardly be overlooked; and so when systems of work were drawn up for schools the delicate and defective children were not forgotten. There are special classes in woodwork arranged for these in various cities.
For years, then, before there was any talk of school doctors, teachers observed the good effect of some kinds of work; but they also noted the evil—the stunting effect of other kinds of labour. ”

“ And the organism, in a sense, knows when the upward movement is checked, when the future that was won is lost. No spring will revive the ambition of the finished hooligan. It seems that Nature has fixed the seasons of human growth as she has fixed the seasons of animal growth, that it takes longer to become a man than a beast, and longer to become a civilized man than a savage (besides which the savage has more time freely given him) . ”

“ Yet the teachers report that from the very first day that he enters the mill the half-timer begins to lose all interest in school-work. A subtle change comes over him which it is really very hard to define. One would say that the organism is disappointed. It was in full career, as it were, yesterday, making for a bright goal, and lo! suddenly it is stopped. This is not a fanciful rendering of the facts; it is a statement borne out by the position which the children hold in the school before and after the date of beginning the mill labour, as well as their general behaviour and appearance. ”

“ He began by making an examination of some thousands of children (unemployed children, that is non-wage-earning, and attending school regularly) so as to get figures which would serve as a standard of comparison when he began to examine wage-earning children of the same age. To be sure neither section of children, wage-earning, nor non-wage-earning can be said to have much or varied free hand labour, for even in schools the hand is still apt to be rather severely snubbed. ”

“ From fibre to fibre, as Luys has shown, from sensitive element to sensitive element our whole organism is sensitive, and the sum of feeling, rich or poor, that makes a sentient person, is conducted as a series of isolated currents into the general receiving centre of the Brain. ”

“ The movement of life in civilized human beings of normal type and unchecked energy, should swing upward as time goes on into a higher order of activity, into an activity that cannot be followed, measured, and analyzed, not because it is slower, but because it is incalculably more rapid than the careering of animals or the flowing of rivers. ”

“ There is a strange tenacity of the new life as regards all it has received or conquered. The brain at almost any period can store up impressions, as some kinds of metallic plates store solar rays, but in childhood the hold on these is all the surer because they are swung, as it were, into the general and rapid movement of a growing, energizing organ. ”

“ The conditions of factory life have been vastly improved in recent years, so from the point of view of sanitariness and humane treatment there is really nothing, as a rule, to complain of in the ordinary factory. ”

“ The adolescent in whom it takes place cannot find any antidote for it in what is said to him, as a rule. He is as helpless to use words as a cure as he would be to use a peroration to turn back a threatened attack of influenza. ”

“ At the outermost parts of the nervous systems some vibrations are quickly dispersed, and die away without waking any consciousness. Yet from first to last the nervous system is a conductor, a condenser, a transformer, and a detector. ”

“ For though a doffer or factory child does use his hand all day long, it is but a very small group of muscles that is brought into activity. ↑ Thus the boys of New Guinea, for example, are not hindered from making things. ”

“ Thomas, "that this out of school work is a wanton dissipation of the children's powers, the chief national capital, and that the evil effect falls on the best of the children." It is seen to be a waste because the school work of the wage-earner deteriorates at once. It is so in London. It is so in Yorkshire. The bright eager boy who wanted to earn the rent and could learn fast becomes stupid and indifferent. Out of 330 wage-earning boys Dr. ”