But these are rare exceptions. Parents, as a class,
not only help on, but create the pressure to which teachers yield, and
children are sacrificed. The whole responsibility is really theirs. They
have in their hands the power to regulate the whole school routine to
which their children are to be subjected. This is plain, when we once
consider what would be the immediate effect in any community, large or
small, if a majority of parents took action together, and persistently
refused to allow any child under fourteen to be confined in school more
than four hours out of the twenty-four, more than one hour at a time, or
to do more than five hours' brain-work in a day. The law of supply and
demand is a first principle. In three months the schools in that community
would be entirely reorganized, to accord with the parents' wishes; in
three years the improved average health of the children in that community
would bear its own witness in ruddy bloom along the streets; and perhaps
even in one generation so great gain of vigor might be made that the
melancholy statistics of burial would no longer have to record the death
under twelve years of age of more than two-fifths of the children who are
born.
Pages:
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72