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Mind and Body, April 1914
Fatigue Due to
Walking
By
W.A. Stecher
Every now
and then the Board of Education is petitioned by citizens to build a school
nearer the homes of the petitioners. The
claim usually made is that their children have too great a distance to walk
going to school and back again, resulting in fatigue which prevents them from
receiving the full benefit of the schooling.
As walking
is a form of physical exercise that has the sanction of even the most
conservative advocates of physical training, it may be of interest to see what
the mental effects of walking are upon school children.
In the
Zeitschrift fur Experimentelle Padagogik, Dr. Max Oker-Blom of Helsingfors,
reports upon a study he made relative to the effect upon the mental ability of
children 9 to 14 years of age of walking to school.
The experiments to determine the metal working capacity of pupils were
made by tests in arithmetic, and were repeated six times at different periods of
the day.
So far as
the effect of walking different distances to school was concerned, the results
showed that a daily walk of two-thirds to a mile had a good effect upon the
mentality of the pupils. It appears
that pupils living near school who were not forced to take this daily exercise
were fatigued more easily than those who by an enforced daily walk had acquired
more endurance.
It was
found, further that the older boys could walk 1.25 miles without detrimental
effects. These boys were not as
fresh mentally as the others during the first school hour, but after this they
had recovered their powers and showed greater endurance.
A distance of 1.6 to 2 miles to school was shown to be detrimental to the
best mental efforts all day.
It appears
from this study that a daily walk to school of a mile has a good effect upon
mentality, and that instead of it being a hardship, even for young children, it
is an advantage not to live too close to a school.
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