What shall we teach?, or, Physiology in schools : being an attempt to advocate instruction in the laws of life as a branch of general education / by Edwin Lankester.

  • Lankester, Edwin, 1814-1874.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What shall we teach?, or, Physiology in schools : being an attempt to advocate instruction in the laws of life as a branch of general education / by Edwin Lankester. 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.

    57/64
    in water. The following week the mistress of the school received a severe reprimand from the mother of one of the young ladies, and begged that her daughter should not be required to attend any more “ dissections.” Although in this case the parent was the objector, it is not less frequently the case that the schoolmistress is the objector. Where women are conscious of their ignorance of the laws of lifer and where they have large establishments dependent on them for health, there is a kind of fear that to teach their pupils the danger of over-crowding, the nature of good food, the necessity of regular exercise in the open air, and other healthy ideas, would be to let in a flood of criticism upon the management of the school that might seriously damage their reputation., I have occasionally heard lessons given on the nature of pure air and its necessity for health in rooms so shockingly ventilated that, if the pupils believed what they were taught, they would have been justified in breaking loose from the schoolroom and rushing into the fresh air of the garden. 69. Quite independent of any benefits to be derived from special classes by a knowledge of the “ rudiments of physiology,” I might show that every individual, whatever may be his position, occupation, or employ- ment in life, would be benefited by such knowledge. In the first place, I might refer to the numerous instances where ignorance of the real nature of the laws of life is supplied by erroneous notions which,