hout the air blowing on
some child's back. "You could cut the air with a knife" was a
description given by one sensible professor who had taken his sturdy
girl of seven away from the school, because he feared that in this
environment she would become like the other little puny, pale,
undersized children of that school.

The University of Pennsylvania has instituted a psychological clinic.
Parents and teachers are invited to bring any deviation from the usual
or the expected to the attention of this clinic. Every month a bulletin
is published called the _Psychological Clinic_, which will be found of
great service in dealing with the abnormally bright as well as with the
abnormally dull. Naturally the well-to-do and the rich are the first to
take advantage of these special facilities for ascertaining just what
work should be done by a precocious child or by the mentally and
morally retarded.

Abnormal brightness means power to be happy and to be serviceable that
is above the average. Every school can be a miniature psychological
clinic. While every teacher cannot be an expert, national and state
superintendents can constantly remind teachers that the abnormally
bright are also abnormally apt to neglect physical welfare and to
endanger future mental power.

CHAPTER XI

NERVOUSNESS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL

Nervousness of teacher and pupil deserves special mention. So universal
is this physical defect that we take it for granted, especially for
teachers. Teachers themselves feel that they need not even apologize
for nervousness, in fact they too frequently use it as an excuse for
impatience, ugly temper, discourtesy, and unfairness. Children, slates,
papers, parents, blackboards "get on their nerves." Nervousness of
teacher causes nervousness of pupils and adds to the evil results of
mouth breathing, bad teeth, eye strain, and malnutrition. These
conditions, added to bad ventilation, bad light, and an overcrowded
schoolroom, render the atmosphere thoroughly charged with
electricity--nerves--toward the end of the day. Lack of oxygen to
breathe as well as inability to breathe it; lack of well-printed books
and good light, as well as lack of the power to use them; toothache,
earache, headache, deplete the vitality of both teacher and pupil.

Most of the disturbances at school are but outward signs of unwholesome
physical conditions. If the teacher attempts to treat these causes by
crushing the child, she makes conf