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14
School Board, creches were actually started to avoid this cause for non-attendance of the older
children. The infants cannot be tolerated in the streets, kindergartens or creches must be provided.
To accomplish what is required the crèche must at least come up to the standard of the
Austrian laws regulating creches promulgated thirty-three years ago. These allow not more than
twenty-five children in a crèche, and do not take them before their third birthday. All schooling
is forbidden in the creche; they are washed, exercised in coarse movements, and taught to speak
and sing. We would want at least this in London, twenty-five would be the maximum number
allowable if localisation of measles outbreaks was looked for.
Such a crèche for twenty-five children will be required in almost every street, it will want a
manageress of some kind, and as she cannot be left alone with twenty-five infants she also must
have an assistant. Whilst the isolation would do something to prevent measles and other infantile
contagions, the real evil of the infant school, unhygienic surroundings, foul air, and constant sensory
stimulation, would probably persist unchecked in the creches.
The cost would be very considerable. A first cost of £100 per head might be suggested, and
an annual cost for maintenance of building, teacher, and assistant would make it much dearer than
any infant school.
It is doubtful whether there would be any substantial gain in the prevalence of infectious
disease, which if postponed till later ages would certainly be a gain hygienically, although a great
disturbance educationally, in the upper schools.
Educationally, over-pressure only results in Infant Departments as one of the evils which the
country has to suffer from want of a medical department for education, and financially exclusion of
children at present in the infant school would call for more costly treatment in small creches.
The real question then is narrowed down to whether the ratepayers are prepared for the
additional call on the purses involved in the treatment of children between 3 and 5 in small creches
instead of in the present large schools. Should the question come into practical politics, it should
be first tried in a limited district.
THE WORK OF THE INFANT DEPARTMENT.
In the Infant Departments children are admitted from the age of 3. The Board of Education
have lately made it permissible for an authority to refuse children under the age of 5, at which age
compulsory school attendance begins. Reasons have already been given (p. 13) for admitting
children from the age of 3.
The Infant Department takes the children from the time they are admitted until the end of
the school year in which they attain the age of 6, when they are supposed to go into Standard I.
In London Standard I. is generally located in the Infant Department, and in a few cases Standard II
also.
During the time it is in the Infant Department the child has chiefly to grow. Nutrition and
sleep are its chief functions. Education, which is mainly a matter of training of nerve cells by
making them act in certain ways, is more active in the Infant Department than at any later period,
but it is not necessarily education of a literary character. Generally speaking, the child, on
admission to the lowest Infant class, can walk but some cannot even do that properly ; some can
run, but many fall in the attempt; few dare jump off a chair; many have dirty habits; and
each Infant school should have a woman attendant to look after the children with regard to this
matter alone. All these are matters which should receive attention during the first six months
at school. The majority require teaching to march, walk and run, hence some simple drill is
necessary; and as such movements are best done rhythmically and automatically, the rhythm of
music should be used with all exercises in the Infant Department.
Although in the syllabus of physical exercises issued by the Board of Education no scheme for
Infant schools is laid down, and only games asked for, it is to be remembered that this is the
minimum demanded from all schools, and that in large towns more than this is necessary. It would
be practically impossible to do the physical work which ought to be done in a large Infant Department
solely by games, though games should predominate in the lower classes to encourage
spontaneous movements.