lete recovery; for when
persons remain several hours a day in a vitiated atmosphere, for weeks
and months together, both mind and body become permanently diseased. It
is well known to every person who has given attention to the subject,
that hitherto this has been the condition of _public schools_,
generally, in every part of the United States, and throughout the
civilized world. This has, perhaps, tended more than all other causes
combined, to render the profession of teaching disreputable, and to
constitute the very name of schoolmaster, or pedagogue, a hissing and a
by-word. And why is this? I can account for it in but one way. The
school teacher is subject to the _same organic laws as other men_; and,
either on account of the ignorance or parsimony of his employers, he has
been shut up with _their_ children several hours a day, in narrow and
ill-ventilated apartments, where, whatever else they may have done,
their principal business has of necessity been _to poison one another to
death_. And, as if not satisfied with this, when the teacher has ruined
his health in our employment, and become a mere wreck, physically and
mentally, _we despise him_. This is a double injustice, and _is_ adding
insult to injury. And the consequences are hardly less fatal to the
children. The situation of the majority of our schools, when viewed in
connection with the physiological laws already explained, sufficiently
accounts for that irritability, listlessness, and languor which have
been so often observed in both teachers and pupils. Both irritability of
the nervous system and dullness of the intellect are unquestionably the
direct and necessary result of a want of pure air. The vital energies of
the pupils are thus prostrated, and they become not only restless and
_indisposed to study_, but absolutely _incapable of studying_. Their
minds hence wander, and they unavoidably seek relief in mischievous and
disorderly conduct. This doubly provokes the already exasperated
teacher, who can hardly look with complaisance upon good behavior, and
who, from a like cause, is in the same irritable condition of both body
and mind with themselves. He, too, must needs give vent to his irascible
feelings some how. And what way is more natural, under such
circumstances, than to resort to the use of the ferule, the rod, and the
strap! We have already referred to a case, in which formerly fever
constantly prevailed, but where disease disappeared altogether