The debate over homework, overworked children, and the need for fresh air is not nearly as modern as it sounds.
In 1900, editor Edward Bok used the pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal to condemn what he called the “cramming system” in American education. He argued that children were being pushed too hard, too young, with too many hours spent bent over books and too little time left for play, sunlight, and physical growth.
His prescription sounds strikingly gentle by today’s standards: no homework at all for children under fifteen, limited school hours, several hours of outdoor play, and only modest study added as the child grew older.
To Bok, a child’s brain could not be properly developed while the body was neglected.
This short 1900 article is a reminder that worries over school pressure, childhood stress, and the loss of outdoor play have been with us for generations. Long before modern homework debates, parents and educators were already asking how much study was too much.
Children and Studies
The cramming system and its accompanying evils are characterized as “A National Crime at the Feet of American Parents” by Edward Bok in the January Ladies’ Home Journal.
“No child under 15 years of age,” he contends, “should be given any home study whatever by his teachers. He should have not more than one hour to four of schooling each day, the hours increasing with his years.
“Outside of school hours he should have at least three hours of play. After 15, the brain has another period of rapid development, with special increase of the higher faculties. Four hours of schooling, then, is not too much, provided the child’s physical being is capable of it, and in time an hour of isolated study may be added. But that is enough.
“Five hours of brain work a day is the most we should ask of our children, and the child should pass at least two hours a day in the open air. Our boys and girls do not get enough fresh air and sunshine into their bodies and natures. The higher institutions of learning understand the need of physical development for brain growth fat better than do our lesser schools and our homes — sad as it is to admit it.”
Source: The Salt Lake Herald. Salt Lake City, Utah. March 4, 1900.
