"The provocation to experimental investigation of mental fatigue in school children is due to Sikorsky and Burgerstein, especially the latter. Since then articles and volumes on the subject have been published by Kraepelin, Laser, Hopfner, and Zimmermann. Sikorsky bases his conclusions on 1,500 dictation tests. Burgerstein occupied four classes of children, 11 and 12 years old, each ten minutes, with the solution of a large number of simple examples in addition and multiplication. After a pause of five minutes a new set of examples was begun. The hour was thus divided into four periods, in order to study the signs of fatigue as a function of the working time. Kraepelin examined the increase and decrease of mental energy, and paid especial attention to the factor 'practice,' and skill gained by repetition, which Burgerstein neglected to consider. Laser did not follow the example of Burgerstein in testing the fatigue at the close of an hour, but investigated whether children flagged during five hours of a forenoon session. He tried classes of boys and girls of the fourth and fifth school year, at the beginning of each of the five hours, with arithmetical tasks similar to those given by Burgerstein, and to which he likewise devoted only ten minutes each time. Hoepfner assigned a two hours' dictation to 46 9-year old boys, and then studied the 'fault line.' For two years Ziminermann has instructed his pupils of the third school year in half-hour lessons, or even shorter periods, so that he easily gives five or six different lessons in three forenoon hours. He has made the noteworthy observation that more is gained by six half-hour lessons in arithmetic than in four whole-hour lessons per week; that pupils advance farther in six half-hour than in four whole-hour periods in reading, and that six half-hour lessons correspond exactly to four whole-hour lessons in religion.

"The other deductions from examinations are as follows:

"Sikorsky finds 'the essential difference between morning work and that performed after four or five hours' instruction to average exactly 33 per cent.'

"Burgerstein affirms that children make the most mistakes and work out the smallest number of examples during the third period, or third quarter of an hour. In the fourth quarter of the hour the enervation preceding is followed by a revival of energy. This energy, however, does not come up to that displayed at the beginning of the hour.

"Kraepelin draws the conclusion from his investigations that, according to all examinations and tests so far made, the fact is undeniable that schools exact more from pupils than their intellectual ability admits.'

"Laser deduces the following: (1) Mental vigor is lowest during the first hour. (2) It increases during the second and third hours, and declines after that. (3) Errors increase in number until the fourth hour and decrease in the fifth. (4) Tho number of corrections made by the pupil increases until the fifth hour. (5) The boys counted fewer figures than the girls. (6) The boys made more corrections than the girls. (7) The number of errors is about the same with boys and girls. (8) The number of those who made no mistakes in calculating decreases from the first to the fifth hour.

"Hoepfner learned that errors averaged 2.7 to every 100 letters. 'In the first five sentences, namely, in the work done within the first half hour, the percentage, averaging on the whole less than 1, showed a tendency to decline; in the sixth sentence it jumped to over 2, and continued to rise with few vacillations.'

"Only Burgerstein, Kraepelin, and Zimmermann, draw practical conclusions from their observations. Burgerstein advocates periods not longer than three-quarters of an hour. Kraepelin opposes all the claims of school in toto. Zimmermann advances the proposition of giving half-hour lessons only, and says: 'If we arrange to give in ten morning hours (or two per day) thirty to thirty-two brief lessons, the afternoons will be free for gymnastics, singing, recreation, nature lessons out of doors, female handiwork, and boys' manual training.' Zimmermann published ‘A reformed course of study for pupils of the third school year,' which found the

approval of Professor Preyer. Preyer advocates that, from the beginning of the school course to its end, children should never be held down to continued mental effort for longer than ten, fifteen, twenty, or at the highest, twenty-five minutes. "Observations and investigations of the psychic action and ability of exercise in children, the effect of habit and practice, conditions, duration and return of fatigue, and the alternation of exercise and relaxation, etc., are certainly of great hygienic importance. The question of 'how long a healthy brain of a child can hold out,' is worth investigating. It only remains to be seen whether the experiments and experiences made are adapted or sufficient to set criteria for educational methods. I do not incline to concede the significance generally attributed to the experiments of Burgerstein, and those similar to his. In the first place, it is self-evident that uniform, uninteresting, mechanical, and lengthy work tires children; and in the second place, no normal lesson presents such conditions. The conclusion on the present mode of teaching is therefore altogether wrong. The only deduction to be made is that continuous and monotonous tasks, such as Burgerstein's methods in arithmetic and Hoepfner's two hours' dictation, are to be avoided. The facts so far observed do not permit a conclusive opinion on the length of period or the daily and weekly school or study hours of children. In my estimation, the chief value of these experiments, and what should be the chief end in view, is the possibility of determining, observing, and judging actual appearances of fatigue.

"A thorough knowledge of the physiological and psychological conditions and processes in their effects and first appearances, on which the phenomena of fatigue are founded, is of great importance for school, so far as it may influence the management, occupation, and treatment of the individual child. This individual momentum, so to speak, is much more important than the conclusions on general school management and methods. Burgerstein keeps this almost wholly in the background. Kraepelin, Laser, and, especially, Hoepfner do more in this direction. The observations of Hoepfner are of greater importance for the psychology of teaching than for the question regarding the length of periods. As a matter of course, it is to be understood that much must be allowed for what is not fatigue; for instance, effects of inattention, carelessness, over-zealousness, all kinds of psychic and physiologic accidents, etc.

"Independent of the desirable general observation and investigation of phenomena, it is necessary to examine the course and differences of mental ability in children individually and generally. To this end more extensive examinations should be made of the experiments started by Burgerstein. According to my experience the results obtained have no general significance.

"In my class of 24 pupils, averaging 12 years of age, I have made three kinds of experiments for testing the given conclusions: (1) Those of Burgerstein; (2) those of Laser with the difference of giving the ten-minute examination at the close of each lesson, and (3) an experiment with whole and half hour uniform instruction. The tasks given out were those of Burgerstein. More repetitions (eight in number) were undertaken in order to make allowance for the 'factor of practice.' I made the following observations:

"(1) Four repetitions of the experiment allowing for the 'factor of practice' did not prove that the 'line of vigor' drops in the third quarter of the hour; this was true in only one individual. In the other cases, energy declined in the second quarter of the hour, rose again in the third, and remained almost stationary in the fourth. "(2) Ability, or skill in performing, attained its highest point in the third and fifth hour after the first twenty, and sometimes after the first ten, minutes. "(3) Whole hour lessons had better results than two half hours. "More important for school hygiene than the experiments concerning overtaxation or overpressure are the recent, more clearly defined efforts at obtaining a standard for the selection, regulation, and thorough treatment of the branches of study by means of observations which refer to the manner of development of per

ception and interest, as well as thought and speech of children. Such efforts! require the greatest precaution and circumspection, but are likely to lead to better results. The study of the normal child is likely to be more successful than that of the abnormal, there being much more material at hand to judge from.

"Lastly, the comprehensive development of pedagogical pathology belongs to the purely educational measures under discussion in the field of hygiene. In this case repeated exact observations and investigations of the intellectual growth of children in view of existing faults give us an insight into the world of the coming generation; in pursuance of the science of pathology, the thoughtful teacher investigates the conditions under which he can best serve his pupils with reference to their mental and physical health, and in doing so benefits his country. The problems that present themselves in this direction, namely, to determine mental faults in children and classify them according to their psychologic meaning, to trace their causes, to define the healthy juvenile mind, and to care for children by correcting | and preventing their faults such problems invite the most zealous educational labor. Their solution aims at the foundation of salutary pedagogical school hygiene, supported by thorough empiric, psychologic, and physiologic knowledge.

"The medical science is hindered in all these directions from exerting any noticeable influence on education or on the control of educational methods. It is called upon only to cooperate in cases of such physical and mental phenomena in children as are beyond the teacher's professional experience and opinion. Even then medicine can not act independently, for the sciences of anatomy, physiology, pathology, therapeutics, and dietetics for children can not aid the teacher in their purely medical character, as has in some instances been claimed; such knowledge must be turned to account specifically from pedagogical points of view, which means, in a manner conformable to the peculiar psychic development of children."

As the writers quoted in the foregoing pages indicate, the question of mental fatigue is closely allied with the movement in favor of child study. Indeed, it may be asserted that the investigations into the manifestations of fatigue have led some physiologists and psychologists to a more comprehensive study of children. It is therefore not astonishing to notice that medical men begin to bestow attention on the new movement of child study, as will be seen from the following extract from an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which says editorially in its number of February 22, 1896:

"While the leading idea of such study is undoubtedly psychologic, the subject is cuggestive in a medical point of view, and may well be worth an editorial comment in a journal that only deals with psychologic questions in their specially medical aspects and bearings.

"There is no period of life when mental and physical development is as rapid as in childhood, and therefore there is none more interesting in a physiologic as well as in a psychologic point of view. Physicians have studied children in their pathologic peculiarities; pediatrics is a recognized medical specialty, but it is a reasonable question whether it might not be as well to widen its scope and take into it some attention to the unfolding of the intellectual life in its beginnings. The skilled medical practitioner can better than anyone else first take note of and point out the way of correcting the morbid traits and tendencies that lead to physical and mental degeneracy; he can study and estimate the hereditary influences and advise how they are to be met, and can instruct the mother in what should be the most fascinating pursuit of her life-the proper method of studying the development of her offspring. These are the possibilities of the profession; we do not say they are generally or even often realized.

"Considering, however, only the physical side of the question of child study, it is not a credit to our profession that while the studies of the growth and the physical data of childhood are being taken up by laymen and educators, it should be in any degree behind them in the same line of investigation. While physiologists were ahead

of psychologists in recognizing the value of knowledge of the earliest developmental processes and conditions in the study of functions, it seems now that the newer school of psychologists, enlightened by the data of physiology, may in their turn put practical medicine under obligations for important facts and deductions. Sometimes they may be on the wrong track, or on one that is uncertain, but they are always suggestive and instructive in their modern methods.

"The practical value of child study should be evident to anyone. The old saying that 'as the twig is bent the tree is inclined,' so often quoted with a moral application, has a physical and intellectual appropriateness as well. Hence every real acquisition of fact or legitimate theory in regard to the bodily or mental development of children has its value, and there is an ample store of such facts yet to be acquired. At the present time we may take, for example, the theories of mental and bodily degeneracy that are just now so much to the fore, and it is easy to see that they can only be proven or disproven by taking into consideration the earlier conditions of the individual and the influences that affected his development. The question as to the existence of such a type as the 'born criminal' is, as might be inferred from the term itself, one that can only be settled by the study of the development and beginnings as well as the finished type; in short, by a study of the morbid tendencies and moral development of the child.

"As an almost purely medical line of investigation, and not the least important, may be mentioned that of heredity in children, which can hardly be studied by anyone so well as by the general practitioner-the family physician. Galton has laid down a plan for this line of research in his 'Natural Inheritance' that is at least worthy of some consideration. The amount of valuable facts and statistics that could be obtained from a general interest in this study in the medical profession can hardly be overestimated. Other interesting questions are some of those of the origin of insanity, especially those forms that seem to be more or less dependent upon errors of education and training and management of developmental periods, and here the well-directed attention to the facts of early life will be found to be productive of valuable results. It is not meant to be understood that these questions are neglected by physicians, but more systematic study of all the stages of early human development is needed to fully elucidate them,"

CHAPTER XXIV.

HOW AGRICULTURE IS TAUGHT IN PRUSSIA AND FRANCE.

CONTENTS.-Introduction; Course of study for agricultural schools in Prussia; Official course of study in agriculture in elementary schools in France; Comments and pedagogical considerations; Elementary, intermediate, and superior courses.

ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION IN AGRICULTURE IN RURAL SCHOOLS IN

PRUSSIA.

It is essential to point out a particular difference between the schools of monarchical Germany and republican France. New ideas, new needs, new currents of thought or action appeal in France, as well as in America, directly to the common schools, while in Germany the minister of education holds his protecting hand over these schools, and points out to the reformers that new things and new methods may first prove their power to live by being applied in private, continuation and supplementary, technical, professional, indústrial, and agricultural schools. These are all schools which take the pupils after they have gone through the elementary schools, i. e., after the fourteenth year of age. Hence we find no specific agricultural instruction in elementary schools in Germany, though we find physics, natural history, and not infrequently gardening taught in the upper grades of the elementary or people's school. It is of more than passing interest to compare the subjoined courses of study for lessons in agriculture in German and French rural schools.

A memorial presented to the Prussian Diet by the royal department of agriculture, in January, 1897, shows that for rural districts in Prussia not much is done in preparing the rural population for their vocation, certainly not as much as is done in preparing artisans in cities. The industrial schools far outnumber the agricultural schools. The authors of the memorial say that the number of boys from 14 to 18 years of age in rural districts of the Kingdom is 828,000, but the number of students in agricultural continuation or supplementary schools is only 13,317, while that of industrial and technical and trade schools is over 200,000. The department asks for more liberal appropriations for agricultural schools, and submits a course of study for such schools of an elementary grade, which course has been in successful operation in the school at Rybnik. It contains only the technical studies, besides which the ordinary common-school branches are taught with application to the conditions of

rural life.

COURSE OF STUDY FOR AGRICULTURAL EVENING SCHOOLS.

NATURAL SCIENCE AND AGRICULTURE-FIRST WINTER.

I. Physics.-General properties of matter. Attraction, gravitation. Sources of heat and its carriers. Thermometer. Processes of water: Melting, steaming, boiling, fog, dew, rain, ice. Circulation of water. Phenomena of heat in the atmosphere.

11. Chemistry. The most important inorganic compounds. (1) Oxygen and some of its simple compounds, carbonic, sulphuric, phosphoric, silicic acids; (2) nitrogen