Home lessons after school hours / by Sir Joseph Fayrer.

  • Joseph Fayrer
Date:
[1884]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Home lessons after school hours / by Sir Joseph Fayrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    * Preparation ; ’ and if the further question be put, ‘ When do you do your preparation ? ’ the almost invariable answer is, ‘ In the evening.’ This is a state of matters that is to be condemned from a medical and from an economical point of view. The most severe brain effort that the child is called on to perform, that which involves most strain and concentration of attention, that opening up of new ground on which progress must greatly depend, is reserved for the period when brain function is almost at its lowest ebb, and when all the vital powers are exhausted by the exertions of the day. The most severe and important intellectual labour is undertaken just when it is sure to be most injurious and least remunerative. Evening preparation of lessons, il faithfully performed, must be prejudicial to the fatigued brain, and is not even rendered innocuous by a long interval of recreation between it and school work. It often induces sleeplessness and a long train of attendant evils, and contributes largely to the nervousness and debility which are becoming so common amongst school children, particularly in towns, while it fails in securing advance- ment at all equal to what might be got from a much less strenuous and protracted study earlier in the day. “ The most arduous mental work required of a child ought to be imposed on it when its mind and body are in their prime vigour, between 9 A.M. and noon, and nothing but the lightest work should devolve upon it after 5 P.M. To the medical eye preparation seems to be peculiarly the work which should be carried on in school, with the constant assistance of the master, whose special mission it is to explain difficulties, to remove obstacles, evoke interest, and stimulate endeavour. It is, perhaps, because some masters do not take this view of their office, but fancy that their duty is performed when they prescribe tasks, listen to the repetition of them, scatter over them a few critical remarks, and diffuse around them that magnificent moral influence, which is not, after all, a good substitute for hard work, that tutors and evening governesses have so often to help boys and girls with
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