and dogmatic teaching as to the effects of alcohol now provided for by the school laws of many States. It is only right, therefore, that we should assign our reasons for holding that this is not a case of the legitimate application of scientific truths to practical life. In the first place, it is an abuse of power on the part of the majority. In the "temperance" controversy as a distinct social issue we have no wish to interfere; but we can not ignore the fact that there is such a controversy, nor can we consent to believe, with the advocates of prohibitory legislation, that their opponents are necessarily persons devoid of all high motives and hardly to be distinguished from the criminal population. But if a minority in the State is to be respected so long as it is law-abiding, its opinions are also to be respected; and to seize hold of the school machinery of the State to inculcate opinions that are not accepted by the minority, and that tend to set the minority in a very unfavorable light, is not right nor just. If every triumphant party were to seize the public schools for the inculcation of doctrines favorable to its own party interests, there would soon be an end of our public-school system. It would always be easy to invoke the name of science. If it were desired to rear a race of protectionists, it would only be necessary to claim that you were teaching the truths of political economy. The proper text-books would be prepared, and teachers, on pain of dismissal, would have to enunciate the doctrines of Henry C. Carey and Horace Greeley; and so in the days of slavery, the science of ethnology might have been invoked either on the side of abolition or in defense of the slave system, according to the leaning of the majority. At this moment we have the president of a New England college recommending the majority in the several States to use their power to enforce the teaching of certain specific views of New Testament history which he is pleased to declare all competent critics have accepted. "But," say the advocates of the teaching to which we refer, "we only wish to inculcate the real results of scientific research in regard to alcohol." To which we rejoin that, in a community like this, it is too soon to inculcate the truth, supposing you have it, if the issue is still practically open, and if large numbers of your fellow-citizens are not persuaded that what you call the truth is the truth. Minorities have their rights even when they are in the wrong, and to use a school system which the minority support to teach opinions which the latter do not believe to be true is unfair. But there is another view of the matter. Are the advocates of such instruction prepared to have it communicated in a thoroughly nonpartisan spirit? Are they prepared to have the whole truth taught, or do they want only that part of the truth which is favorable to the specific end they have in view? Are they prepared, for example, to give any fair representation to the views of those who consider that alcohol has its important uses, dietetic and social? A few years ago the Contemporary Review opened its columns to a discussion of the alcohol question; and we are safe in saying that there was a preponderance of opinion among the many eminent men who joined in the discussion in favor of a moderate use of alcoholic beverages. In the August number of the North American Review, a well-known physician of this city enters a plea against the indiscriminate condemnation of narcotics and stimulants. Is all this opinion to go unrepresented when the alcohol question is introduced into the schools? Of course it must, or the specific object of the teaching would be ruined. We say, therefore, that this is not teaching science; it is harnessing science to the temper ance" cart, and driving her under instruction from " temperance" headquarters. THE RESULT OF SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE INSTRUCTION. Will the reader please cast his eye upon the following questions: 1. How can it be proved that nicotine is a poison? 2. Why are cigarettes especially harmful? 3. Is alcohol a food? 4. What is the effect of disuse upon a muscle? 5. Under what names is opium sold? 6. Under what name is alcohol drunk? 7. What is the difference between a food and a poison? 8. Is anything gained by changing from one narcotic to another? 9. What is the effect of beer as a drink? 10. How does cheerfulness help the muscles? These are the questions given as a test in physiology in the public schools of a prominent Eastern city. They are not addressed to young men about to leave school. No; they are asked of little boys and girls of from 8 to 10 years of age. This is the examination paper at the end of the first year's elementary instruction in physiology. Of ten questions, eight relate to drinking and smoking; the physiology is a mere side issue. These children, who ought to have about as much knowledge of such matters as they should of the methods in vogue at the stock exchange, are actually forced to learn by rote the details of human vice; and that, too, under the name of "physiology," the only science which they learn. Unconsciousness, naïveté, is the symbol of childhood. The fact that physiology, even if well taught, tends to destroy this trait is the chief objection to its early study. Instruction such as the above implies crushes the most valuable trait in the child, directs curiosity to what is morbid, and forces into precocious development ali its dangerous elements. Not enough that the newspaper and the dime novel proclaim in glaring colors the story of crime and sin; some notion of the perversity of human nature must be mixed with the food of babes. That the result of this teaching is to excite in the children a morbid curiosity to experiment for themselves in such matters; or (with the boys) to regard the whole thing as a lesson in "goody-goodiness," to which they forthwith decide to show themselves superior; or to regard their father who takes his glass of wine at dinner as an incipient criminal-this could easily have been foreseen and goes without saying. If there is one method better than all others to produce a race of drunkards, this has good claims to that distinction. If there is a degree of wrong in such superlatively perverse methods, then it is still worse that the fair name of science should be outraged in this cause. Not only that this kind of teaching necessarily depends upon catechism methods (that the answer to the second question, for example, is to read that the especial perniciousness of cigarettes is due to the fact that they are usually made of decayed cigar stumps), but that the entire idea of science thus implanted is as wrong as it well can be. Better far revert to the old days when there was no science on the curriculum than have science thus taught. The crowning educational virtue of science is that it leads to the use of scientific methods of teaching; this usurper chokes up all possibility of an interest in the scientific. The temperance question is doubtless one of the most important with which our age has to deal; sufficiently important, perhaps, to make some consideration of it in the public schools a legitimate proceeding, but it must be done at the right time and in the proper way. Nothing can excuse the conversion of a text-book on physiology into a "temperance" tract; nothing can excuse the sacrilege of presenting this story of disgusting vice under the name of "science." TEMPERANCE INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS. [From the Medical Record, September 24, 1887.] Probably no class of men in the community are better fitted to give a calm, unprejudiced opinion on the alcohol question than physicians. In their capacity of public sanitary guardians, they feel an interest in all practical measures designed to limit the deleterious effects of the use of liquors upon the human systems. The latest effort in this direction is the introduction into the public schools of several States of so-called " temperance" text-books and other paraphernalia of teaching. Some communities have already experienced the first fruits of this new system of instruction. These results are somewhat curious. It is found that the incidental facts designed only to lead up to the one great moral are more prominent in the pupils' minds than the moral itself. The various charts which portray stomachs, livers, and other viscera diseased from alcohol are regarded much in the light of picture-books on a large scale. They produce no more impression on a child's mind than the sight of a tattooed man, or some "freak" of a dime museum. It is right that the question of temperance should be brought down to the scope of a child's ideas; right from a medical standpoint as well as from a moral one. But it is hardly the judicious course to teach him to regard alcohol as a deadly poison under every circumstance. He will be disillusioned as he grows older, and will look back to his text-book teaching as a mass of overstated facts. The trouble with many of the text-books on temperance used in schools is that they are not physiologically correct. They are written by persons with more zeal than accurate knowledge, and consequently we have sometimes ludicrous statements from pupils. The description of the distillation of alcohol strikes the child as a very interesting thing, and so the fact designed to be taught-its pernic ious effects-fails to make a lasting impression. We think that a better state of things could be brought about if physicians could be led to take a more active management in the public schools. Ministers, lawyers, business men, and professional politicians are always represented upon school boards, but rarely physicians. They are the very ones who should be fully represented. They can, by their advice, better than any other class, conduce to bring up a class of pupils who shall have sound minds in sound bodies. They can prevent the introduction of text-books on temperance or any other topic having a reference to physical matters which are not written with a due regard for truth and for the receptivity of the minds which are to grasp it. It is coming more and more to be realized that a physician's duty to the community oversteps the sphere of mere sanitary matters and lays hold upon social factors as well. Much of the teaching in schools nowadays is one-sided, because the mind is regarded as something apart from the body and taught accordingly. No one so well appreciates the relation of one to the other as the physician. HOW WE TEACH INTEMPERANCE. [From the Popular Educator, December, 1891.] At the Norfolk County teachers' convention, recently held in Boston, a paper was read on the teaching of physiological temperance (or intemperance) in the . public schools; and, a little more than a week after, the same subject was presented for our consideration at a teachers' meeting in Hyde Park. At the former meeting it was very noticeable in the discussion that followed the reading of the paper that those who objected to this scientific teaching, taking the moral side instead, met with greater favor from the audience as a body, judging from the heartiness of the applause, than the paper itself. Possibly, if those gentlemen who advocated the strengthening of the moral nature as the best preventive of intemperance had explained their position more fully, this article would not have been written. There is, as I believe, a radical error at the basis of this scientific teaching of intemperance, or its causes, to little children. Let me illustrate. On our way home from the convention we were discussing this subject, and one of our party related the following incident which had come under her notice: A teacher, who was an enthusiast on this subject, had taken the fruit into the schoolroom and taught the children the process by which the pure juices of the grape and apple were changed into alcohol, and its effect upon the body. A short time after, one of the boys who had been instructed by her remarked to some one that he had learned the taste of all the liquors in his father's store (he was a saloon keeper), and could readily distinguish one from the other. How much fear of the effects of alcohol upon his body do you suppose had been created in this boy's mind by this teaching? Instead of this, it would seem there had been aroused in him a curiosity to know more of the things about which he had been taught. How many of these boys, think you, went home, took their grapes and apples, and made their own wine and cider ? All might not do this, of course, but, judging human nature as it appears, and especially child nature, there seems to be a strong desire to do that which is forbidden. I know the thought has been, and still prevails, that to avoid evil we must know something about it. What is our practice in educational matters? Formerly teachers used to put mistakes upon the blackboard to correct, but now the best teachers claim that children should see only the perfect form of word or letter. We teach children to be pure in thought, word, and deed, but would never think of specifying the evils to be avoided. No wise parent or teacher would ever say to a child, "You must not read that book. It contains that which will poison your mind and give you wrong views of life." Nevertheless, I did hear of a teacher not long ago who advised her girls not to read a certain book which she named, and immediately they sought and obtained the book, of which they had not known before, and read it, although warned against it. No doubt all who read this can recall many instances of like character. Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, As the world is to-day, the children can not but see that which we call evil all about them; but if they have been taught to love the good, the evil will be hated, or perhaps not recognized by them; while, if we continually keep it before their minds, even though we teach them to avoid it, we make it a familiar object of thought which can not but produce bad results." 'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, what soever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." We all know what great imitators children are, and that with them example goes further than precept. How, then, can we teach them the bad effects of alcohol and tobacco so they will feel it and never touch them when fathers and brothers and men who hold high places in the community and are respected by everyone are slaves to one or both of these habits? We must find some other means of teaching them the truth so they also shall not be led into this captivity to the senses, than that recommended at the convention. Teach temperance, not intemperance; health, not disease; truth, not error; purity, not impurity; goodness, not badness; teach the positive, not the negative. "EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL." [From the Journal of Education (Boston), December 31, 1891.] A TEACHER. May I again call attention of the importance of strictly adhering to truth in teaching concerning the effects of all drugs upon the body. On page 359 of the Journal we are told, "Whatever effect is produced upon the albumen of the egg by contact with the alcohol the same thing must happen when alcohol is mixed with food in the stomach." This is incorrect: 1. Because blood albumen is not egg albumen. 2. Because the blood albumen is greatly diluted, while the egg albumen is concentrated. 3. Because in one case the alcohol used is concentrated, in the other greatly diluted. 4. The experiment in the test tube is performed away from the "life forces," while in the body "life forces" modify chemical forces. In a word, a laboratory experiment must not be taken to explain literally what occurs in the body. The boy, taking a drink of beer, finds he is not killed by it, and soon comes to reject all that he has been taught in reference to the effects of stimulants. Harm is done by our inaccuracy. G. G. GROFF, M. D., President State Board of Health, Pennsylvania. CHILDREN CAN BE TAUGHT TO THINK ABOUT BETTER THINGS. An effort has recently been made to fight intemperance by teaching, in connection with the subject of physiology, the effects of alcohol and narcotics on the system. It is an open question whether the results are all that were anticipated. It seems that in many places the craze after cigarettes and old cigar stumps is worse than ever before, notwithstanding the fact that the schools are giving instruction along this line. Why is this? It is quite possible that many teachers use both time and text book in such a way as to injure the cause of temperance. To spend a portion of each recitation in talking about rum and tobacco is, to say the least, unwise on the part of the teacher. Instead of this let him class rum, tobacco, and opium with other things that should be let alone, and let him speak of them only as occasion requires. The better way will be to see that none of these things are found on or about the school grounds. Milton has not increased our hatred of Satan by making him a hero in Paradise Lost. Why should rum and tobacco be the "heroes" in so many school rooms? Children can be taught to think about better things. (J. D. Meese, Southwest State Normal School, Pennsylvania.) VII. ANSWERS TO SOME FALSE NOTIONS. BY MRS. MARY H. HUNT. The following misconceptions have arisen in certain quarters concerning the teaching of physiological or scientific temperance: First, that temperance is a moral not a scientific question; therefore, if taught at all in the schools it should be from the moral standpoint only." "The strengthening of the moral nature is the best preventive of intemperance." "You should strengthen the will to prevent the pupil from drinking," these objectors say. Second, "If you teach the pupil the evil character and effects of alcohol, tobacco, etc., the law of perversity in his nature will make him want to try those things for himself," etc. Third, "As long as the fathers smoke and drink it is not only of no use to teach the children not to, but such teaching is disrespectful to parents." ED 9047 In answer to the first objection that "temperance is a moral, not a scientific question," etc., let us inquire; (1) Is it not true that a moral question is one that considers what is right or wrong in action on the part of beings capable of choice? (2) Are there not certain facts which are the reasons for an action or course of action being right or wrong? (3) If these facts, the reasons for the right or wrong, are duly arranged in the case of each obligation, do they not form the science of that special obligation? Webster says that "Science is knowledge duly arranged." (4) Can a person be taught the principles of morality in any case, or to intelligently choose the right without being taught the facts which show why one course or set of acts is right and another wrong; are not these facts the science of the case? To illustrate: Moral obligations may be classified under three general heads: (1) Duties to our Maker. (2) Duties to our fellowmen. (3) Duties to ourselves. The facts that are the reasons for our duties to our Creator are set forth in the science of theology. Those in the case of our duties to our fellowmen are classed as the science of sociology. The facts that prove our moral obligations to ourselves in the case of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics are very properly termed the science of temperance; and here, as in the case of other duties, no person can fully comprehend the extent or scope of that obligation without knowing the facts. The answer to the question, "What is the nature and effects of these substances," is the facts in this case, on which the whole temperance question rests. There is no such thing as moral question without a basis of fact that is the science of the question. These are not the days of dogmatic morality. Modern morality teaches the reasons for the right, shows why, and thus "strengthens the moral nature." The objector says, "Strengthen the will to resist temptation." How do we strengthen the will? The will is the faculty in us that acts on choice, and our choices are more or less influenced by our knowledge or ignorance of the facts in the case. How would you strengthen the will of a boy against the tempta tion to row across the Niagara River a little way above the falls-by telling him he must not, it would be wrong, or by explaining to his reason the perils that inhere in that fatal current? How would I strengthen a boy's will against intemperance? I would try to give him intelligent reasons on which his will should act. Just as I would teach him the character of the Niagara Rapids I would teach him the nature of those other, the alcoholic rapids, that lead to a worse, a more hopeless plunge into utter darkness. While I would never exag gerate, I would search for the truth on this topic as for "hid treasures," and then teach it, abating not "one jot or tittle," leaving the consequences with Him who said "I am the Truth." He has so made the human mind that it is moved by truth that warns as well as promises. I would teach the boy before appetite is formed the dangerous and deceptive character of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics, especially that proven fact that a little alcohol in any liquor has the power to create an imperious, uncontrollable, and destructive appetite for more, and therefore its use in any quantity is never safe. I would show him that there is a scientific connection between the first glass and the drunkards' fate. I would not preach at the boy nor weary him with repeated homily, but I would lead him, through the study of the laws of his own being, to see and understand for himself that the inestimable blessing and happiness of a strong, healthy, useful life are the result of obedience to laws that are written in our living tis sues, and that the penalty of disobedience inheres in the law itself. I would strip the wine cup, and the whole brood of strong drinks, the pipe, the cigar, and the cigarette of the glamor with which ignorance and tradition have decked them, and help the boy to see them and their consequences as labeled by modern science-narcotic poisons. In answer to the second objection, that teaching the evil character of alcoholic drinks will make the pupil want to try them for himself, we reply: If we tell the boy the perils of the rapids in the smooth, safe-looking stream above the falls, will he immediately wish to embark thereon? Is it a rule that teaching the consequences of evil is only furnishing a motive for immediately plunging into the evil? If so, there must be something radically wrong in the most authoritative of all teaching, for all through the Bible the blessings of right doing are coupled |