Energy expenditure and food requirements of children at school

Abstract

The research here reported was carried out from June, 1919, to June, 1921, at Bedales School in Hampshire. It was fortunate that an opportunity for such an investigation should have arisen at a school perhaps better suited for it than any other in the country. Bedales is known to those interested in educational experiments as a school which for twenty-five years has justified the principle of co-education. For the purpose of this enquiry, it has been a great advantage to be able to study simultaneously boys and girls living the same life, and that under admirable conditions. During the second year, I was also enabled to work at the Junior School, which is distinct and separate. I have been given every opportunity of gaining an intimate knowledge of the working of the school, and of the children themselves, and this has been of incalculable value. Such work attempted hastily from outside would almost necessarily be full of gross errors ; only by identifying oneself with the life of the school, can one hope to study truly the activities of the child and adolescent.