3. The seat should slope downward a little toward the back, be slightly concave, and have rounded edges in front.
5. The child, when sitting erect, should be able to place both forearms on the desk without raising or lowering the shoulders. This is a very important rule.
6. The seat must be correctly placed as regards the distance of its front edge from the corresponding edge of the desk.
Badly constructed desks cause eye-strain and marked distortions of the spine. Desks should be adjustable in height, especially for growing children. School-children grow most rapidly between the ages of twelve and sixteen years--nearly two inches a year--and the desks and seats should be adjusted twice a year at the least. If a child is moved to another desk an adjustment is to be made at once.
To counteract the bad effect of long sitting, even at properly adjusted desks, children should be frequently sent to blackboards, and at regular intervals a few minutes are to be given to "setting up" exercises.
Great attention should be paid to the eyesight of children. Those that complain of headache should have their eyes examined. The lines in school books should be not more than four inches in length, and they are to be printed in clear, well-leaded type. Slates are dirty and unsanitary: let the children write on paper that has a dull finish.
Teachers should prevent lounging positions at desks, especially stooping. They are not, however, to try to make children under fifteen years of age sit still. The youngsters can not remain immovable, and the effort to make them do so is irritating to no purpose.
Nervous children need outdoor exercise more than anything else. When nervousness takes the form of religious scrupulosity in school-children and novices do not immediately apply a moral theology to them--call in a physician that has common-sense, because there is a nervous scrupulosity which is much more frequently met with than the purely spiritual form. Aridity in prayer, a loss of sensible devotion, and similar troubles have to do with advance in the spiritual life, but they more commonly have to do with the liver in persons that are not nearly so important spiritually as they fancy they are; and in these cases the cook is the particular devil at fault, if they have exercise enough.