Labour and childhood / by Margaret McMillan.

  • Margaret McMillan
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Labour and childhood / by Margaret McMillan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    are banished. As long as these refuse to use the schools, as it were, and choose to pay for their children’s schooling elsewhere, the raising of the status of the people’s schools is held back, to the sad loss of children of ALL classes. The Germans have understood this, and have taken such very energetic measures that their primary schools are safe places for all to a degree undreamed of by us. That there is no safety in mere exclusiveness the record of death and failure in the past in families of high rank amply proves. In “select” schools nothing new could be discovered—the vista was too small, and the eye of teacher and parent became indolent. (This does not apply, of course, when children are isolated or taken in small schools be¬ cause of some defect that makes ordinary work impossible, and when one of the objects of the teacher is close observation.) There is, over and above all these ailments and risks due to unhealthy conditions, a large group of diseases which all children are liable to, such as measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough. The first of these carries off an immense number every year; and as many children come to school even before the age of five, it is of course clear that school-going involves great risks for them. In some localities the
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