From the Richmond Daily State Journal, 1/18/1873, p. 1, c. 5

A Grave Mistake.

To the Editor of the State Journal:

The design of public schools is to bring the blessing of a good education can be an equivalent for this first necessity. Upon health depends the temper and disposition of the mind, and the want of it has filled many a prison cell – freighted many a scaffold. Let our individual experience answer whether our moral nature is as immaterial as many suppose. The play-ground is as necessary as the school-room, and should have its hours not minutes.

Grown men and women find confinement at the desk a weariness. Think, then, of children and young persons forced to spend the glorious part of the day, from 8 or 8 1/2 a.m. until 3 o’clock p. m., with a short recess of fifteen to thirty minutes at 11 o’clock, and from ten to fifteen at 1 p. m. When school closes are these jaded, hungry, (or too weary to be hungry) little bodies, after reaching home, prepared to eat and digest a dinner, often taken alone, cold and uncomfortable – the family dining earlier? Then they are “kept in” for trifles, stern rules requiring them to study and write as a penalty – utterly unfit for either exercise. What time have they for recreation and the study required of them in well learned lessons on the coming day? Is it not a subject of serious doubt whether a child should study after its supper? I am satisfied that if our schools closed, without fail, at one o’clock the children would learn more and be healthier and happier.

Education is not found only in books. Too much close study impairs the mind, makes it analytical to puerility. Let our study be to make body and mind in harmony, fit for something good and useful in this beautiful world, instead of crucifying our children. “Put yourself in his place” should be our heart motto. Would to God I could be heard for the children.

There is no reason why roses should not be cultivated on their young cheeks instead of being bleached out. The Greeks set us as an example, and their poets wrote of health as a divine blessing. Public and private schools both are too hard upon scholars, too hard upon teachers.

Fathers, in the press of business, lose sight of this matter. Mothers with home cares are too often glad to have the children at school “out of the way.” There are many, many things to be said in this connection – there is a voice never heard and that is the child’s. I would be thankful if our city’s papers would copy this, our citizens read it, and to it I would most respectfully call attention of our energetic superintendent and our school committee at its next meeting.

                                                                                                                                                          E. L. VAN LEW

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