On educational reform, school museums, and the feeding of school children : a lecture delivered in Clifford's Inn 1905 / by Jonathan Hutchinson.

  • Hutchinson, Jonathan, Sir, 1828-1913.
Date:
[1905?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On educational reform, school museums, and the feeding of school children : a lecture delivered in Clifford's Inn 1905 / by Jonathan Hutchinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    to be useful. These are amongst the minor and quite secondary uses ot museums, but they are still very real ones. Feeding of Children at Schools. I must now turn to my third topic, which concerns the fitting of the brain for the reception of instruction. It is obviously useless to expect from a pupil exhausted by want of food that attention which alone can originate memory. To attempt to exact it is cruelty. Nor is this the whole. The frequent recurrence of such exhaus- tion will tend in the long run to enfeeble the brain and retard its development. Yet further, it may be asserted, that certain articles, in daily use as accompaniments of food, exercise a very important influence in favouring mental effort. I allude of course to tea and coffee. Of alcohol it may be said that, excepting in the most minute quantities, it, for the time being, disables ; but of tea and coffee it is probably true that, with the rarest exceptions on the score of idiosyncrasy, they prevent headache, ward off the tendency to sleep, arouse, and at the same time calm the brain and fit it for exertion. Employed in moderation, there are probably no drawbacks whatever to their use. Nor can there probably be any better guarantee obtained for the temperate habits of future generations than an early acquired preference for the wholly inno- cent stimulation which tea and coffee afford. Neither the schoolmaster nor the moral-reformer can afford to neglect them. 1 venture upon these remarks on the present occasion not from any design to lay down rules for school dietary, but