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29
FATIGUE.
Fatigue is Nature's danger signal to prevent excessive wear and tear. It is almost certainly
due to toxic action, to definite chemical products, accumulating locally and later becoming generalised
in the blood. Recent experimenters have asserted what Erlich's theories would suggest, namely,
the power of preparing antitoxin which prevents fatigue. The normal course of work indicates that
Some such changes happen. There is a consciousness of working more effectively, so far as mental
work is concerned, in the second or third hour of work than in the first. The results of the ventilation
experiments given on page 63 tell the same story. Partly for this reason and partly because
it is the natural way of development noticed in young animals, we have always maintained that
the most educational form of any exercise for growing structures is in short, sharp, violent bursts
with relapses to comparative quiet. The physical exercise of infants during evolution of their motor
acquirements should tend to forms explosive in violence and duration. A healthy organism will not
suffer from such exercise. Running, jumping, and simple, short and large movements are not only
judicious in the infant department, but it is an educational crime to withhold them. Play can
become a labour and organised games tedious weariness, just as drills or exercises may be done so
slowly or carefully that they are a source of serious exhaustion and fatigue. It is therefore wrong
not to have physical exercises of a simple nature and plenty of them in the infante' schools, but the
teachers must learn to know almost instinctively what to avoid and what is useful.
Dr. R. J. E. Hanson, who has been paying some attention to fatigue, points out that the
early fatigue symptoms, quickened heart action and respiration, with flushed face and sharpened
mental activity are the very results wanted by our scheme of exercises. But many out of school
exercises, especially swimming lessons and contests, are more exacting, because respiration is impeded,
and these sometimes become most exhausting exercises, breathlessness being especially noticeable
among the young girls.
In contests between older boys, particularly if of different racial stocks, there may be difficulties
if they are matched age for age.
The tendencies of development at each age must be respected. If at the proper time the particular
educational tendency is neglected then the education is incomplete and defective in 6ome
respects. The tendency of the girls to nurse dolls or of the boys to play soldiers is absolutely
natural. The failure to exhibit these normal tastes may be held to indicate mental defect, and
often that defect is elusive in being shown only by perverted moral traits.
The educationalist will be wanting if he fails to turn this developmental stage to account.
It may be made a most powerful influence for good at this particular age, which for most English
boys is strongest about 12 or 14 years ; probably somewhat earlier among the East End aliens. In
the City, Marylebone and Paddington divisions, Dr Hanson has established an organised sport
(Art. 90, Sec. vii. of the Code) out of school hours, in the form of light rifle shooting. The boys
are squadded under their own leaders in groups of 24 (three sections of 8), the leaders being captained
by the leading schoolboy (school captain), and as each ultimate unit (section of eight) contains two
senior boys, it results that the responsibility for discipline and range attendance is minutely detailed.
Elementary military drill by a service instructor gives just that tinge of reality and " go " which is
lacking in the Code of Physical Exercises, and which appeals to the instincts of an English boy in
the way that no amateur instruction can do. There is no question that the moral effects in the
way of self-restraint, obedience and alacrity are remarkable. There is the great element of interest,
that each bit of practice or self-sacrifice demonstrably brings the boy nearer his goal of correct shooting.
There is the additional element of a sporting chance. These two elements make up the chief
pleasure of all our sports and games, and this is a sport for the town dweller that has the interest
and chances of cricket or football. The boy of twelve is capable of learning accurate shooting as
quickly as at any other age ; the only doubt is the possibility which has been urged of over-fatigue.
It was important to trace the relation of fatigue to rifle shooting, and this Dr. Hanson has been able
to do graphically, and thereby furnished also a complete demonstration of its value as a neuromuscular
training of the highest value for boys.
In order to prevent fatigue of the eyesight a large bull's-eye subtending an angle of ten minutes
is used in the early days of training. It is gradually diminished with improved shooting till the standard
size is reached. In light rifle shooting the necessity for free ventilation is as evident as in the work
of the class-rooms. Fatigue quickly ensues if the air is used up and filled with bye-products whether
from respiration or from spent cartridges. The emanations from damp and dirty clothes also appear
to predispose to headache and inaccuracy.
It generally takes some months to produce a consistent shot. This is due to the necessity
of learning co-ordination of eye, hand, and respiration. The lads are taught in the prone position,
Diagram VI.
which is not fatiguing, on a definite system by which all accident has been avoided. The alignment
of the rifle sights upon the bull's eye, together with the holding of the breath at the top of the normal