Much of this homework is done by a very bad light and the
boy's eyes suffer much. All home lessons should be abolished; home work
burns the candle at both ends, and makes the boy's life a slavery.
School hours are quite long enough, and an intelligent teacher can
impart in them quite as much as any boy ought to learn in one day. What
cannot be taught within those hours should be postponed until the next
day.
We see the result of all this overstrain in the prevalence of
eye-diseases in India. Western countries set us a good example in the
physical training of their boys, who leave school strong and healthy. I
have heard in England that in the poorer schools the children are often
inspected by a doctor so that any eye-disease or other defect is found
out at once before it becomes serious. I wonder how many boys in India
are called stupid merely because they are suffering from some eye or ear
trouble.
Discrimination should also be shown in deciding the length of the waking
and sleeping times. These vary, of course, with age and to some extent
perhaps with temperament. No boy should have less than nine or ten hours
of sleep; when growth ceases, eight hours would generally be enough. A
boy grows most during his sleep, so that the time is not in the least
wasted.
Few people realise how much a boy is affected by his surroundings, by
the things on which his eyes are continually resting. The emotions and
the mind are largely trained through the eye, and bare walls, or, still
worse, ugly pictures are distinctly harmful.
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