ong the
desks in order to prevent him from receiving any help, his companions
may make signs to him, perhaps by means of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet.
Then we find the teacher using the blackboard as a pretext for turning
the pupil with his face to the wall, the while she keeps her burning
eyes fixed on the class. Thus the patient is isolated. "Nothing
escapes" a clever teacher; she is capable of surprising a rolled-up
note slipped by one child under the desk of another; and of
confiscating a piece of blotting-paper which two children interchange
on the pretext of using it, when they have written upon it.

For this reason properly constructed desks should be open in front,
because otherwise it is so easy to pass things under them; whereas
with desks which are not only hygienic but "moral," such subterfuges
would be difficult to carry out.

"Indeed, these desks which are open in front also facilitate
surveillance of the scholars from the moral point of view;
because, always seated, placed side by side without any
possibility of spiritual communion, their heads dazed by the
continuous vociferation of the teacher, these children very
often contract vicious habits, such as onanism, which
originate in the school itself. These are less openly
discussed than spinal curvature, myopia, and exhaustion from
overwork, but the evil has long been recognized, even before
science entered upon the scene to make a study of the
maladies engendered by school conditions. The sedentary habit
impedes circulation in the pelvic basin, and induces
stagnation of the blood; moreover, what other outlet is
provided for the nervous energies? And the evil spreads in an
alarming manner.

"But open desks make subterfuges impossible. All moral
devices for combating abuses flourish in the school. In the
schools in Rome, for example, order and surveillance are so
perfect that children are not even allowed to go to the
lavatory. It is well known what disorder was caused by this
'question of the lavatory.' If a child became tired of
sitting still or listening to the teacher, he asked leave to
go out: he was capable of remaining shut up in the lavatory
for a considerable time, in order to raise his spirits a
little in a place he preferred to that he had just left, for
pupils are not allowed to linger in the corridors; the
attendants are always on th