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 LI B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 SECOND THO USA ND. 
 THE 
 
 OVERSTEAm IN EDUCATION 
 
 BY 
 
 mCHAKD A. ARMSTEONG B.A. 
 
 IBeprinted from The Modern Keview, April, 1883.] 
 
 IloAA ^TTKTTaTO ip'^d, KAKWS V ■^•JTiVtOTO TTOLVTa, 
 
 JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET. 
 Price Sixpence.
 
 In rejsponding to the demand for a further issue of the present 
 pamphlet, I have to record the deep impression made upon my mind by 
 the multitude of testimonies which have reached me since its first publi- 
 cation, confirming the position I have taken up. These testimonies come 
 from all quarters — from the most Conservative of Bishops and the most 
 Eadical of M.P.'s ; but, above all, from the men and women who are 
 engaged in the hard struggle with the conditions of our " National Edu- 
 cation/' Only this week from a northern town conies the story of a 
 young female teacher who sought death by her own hand rather than 
 return to the burden of school duty : I do not commit myself to 
 the statement that this tragedy was due to Overstrain; but that 
 statement is freely made. I trust there is some awakening to 
 the evil in high places when Mr. Mundella himself rebukes the London 
 School Board for the severity of its syllabus. At any rate, the time 
 is ripe for organisation directed to the reduction of the '* Overstrain 
 in Education." 
 
 I have to thank the Bishop of the diocese in which I write for the 
 suggestion of the Homeric line on Margites as a motto for this plea for a 
 truer education. 
 
 R. A. A. 
 
 Nottingham, July 18, 1883.
 
 THE OVERSTRAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 ON entering the Dome Saloon of the New Capitoline Museum, 
 at Rome, the visitor may see on his left-hand side the tomb- 
 stone of one Q. Sulpicius Maximus. The subject of this monu- 
 ment was no hero of the camp or of the Senate, but a little 
 fellow not twelve years old whose title to fame was the defeat of 
 fifty-two competitors in the improvisation of Greek verses. 
 Specimens of his pretty skill are graven on the marble. But the 
 pathetic epitaph relates that death was the price of the over- 
 stimulation of the boyish brain. 
 
 Such, so far as I know, outside China, was the first case of 
 death from competitive examination. When will be the last ? 
 
 No Englishman can fail to feel some pride in the extraordinary 
 advance which the last quarter-of-a-century has seen in the 
 education of the English people. The purpose of this article is 
 to show that that advance has not been wholly in the right 
 direction, and that it has not been without grave drawbacks. 
 But he would indeed be a one-sided critic who should not con- 
 fess that great and good things have been done. The average 
 number of children in attendance at primary schools in Great 
 Britain in 1857 was 626,696 ; in 1881 it was 3,273,501. In other 
 words, the increase was five-fold, while the growth in population 
 was but an addition of one-third. In 1857, one in thirty-five 
 and a-half of the population was at a primary school ; in 1881, 
 one in nine. Whatever else this means, it means an enormous 
 diffusion of the primary arts of civilisation — reading, writing, 
 arithmetic; it means also a vast conversion of savagery into 
 orderly decorum. At the same time the spread of the higher 
 education has proceeded at no less extraordinary a pace — at any 
 rate among girls and women. " Fair girl graduates " are no 
 longer a poet's half -humorous dream, but sober fact. In every 
 large town the new Girl's High School vies with the old. founda- 
 
 A— 2
 
 4 THE OVERSTRAIN IN EDUCATION 
 
 tion of the Grammar School which has been usurped by boys. 
 Young ladies may now know chemistry as well as talk botany, 
 and we no longer marvel at her quaintness when we read that 
 Lady Jane Grey loved Greek and Latin. Liverpool, Birming- 
 ham, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Nottingham, as well as Manches- 
 ter, are the seats of large and flourishing colleges, staffed with 
 talented professors and richly endowed by the public spirit or the 
 private munificence of their citizens. 
 
 But there is a dark side to the picture. All those millions go 
 to school; but are they all educated? What is the general tone 
 and strain of our educational leaders? In what direction do 
 they point the aspirations of teacher and taught ? In nine 
 speeches or articles out of ten the one string harped upon is in- 
 dustrial success. Our young are to learn because otherwise the 
 foreign competitor will beat them. Moral apologues by the 
 thousand fall on our ears, the end and aim of which is •' success 
 in life ; " and success in life means solely and simply getting 
 plenty of money. Education is preached by the great chorus of 
 its preachers as a commodity of mercantile value ; and so, after 
 all, it is not education that is preached, but sheer technical 
 training from first to last. 
 
 The first great apostle of the modern educational movement 
 in this country was Mr. Eobert Lowe. Lord Sherbrooke 
 breathes now a serene atmosphere, and his cynicism may have 
 risen to a higher level. But the Mr. Lowe of the old days was 
 a philosopher who had one safe measure for all men, and that 
 was money. It is not yet five years since he wrote : " Once 
 place a man's ear within the ring of pounds, shillings, and 
 pence, and his conduct can be counted on with the greatest 
 nicety." * Such was the avowed principle of the able man to 
 whom, by an unhappy fate, was consigned the guidance of 
 the movement at the moment when the British people were first 
 aroused to the conviction that something big must be done in 
 education. The famous Code of 1861 was the issue : and that 
 Code set firm upon its pedestal the idol "payment by re- 
 sults." The simple social philosophy propounded by Mr. Lowe 
 penetrated every wheel and screw of the new educational 
 machinery. His desire was to govern the conduct of teachers, 
 so he rattled pounds, shillings, and pence at their ears. His 
 whole reliance was on their pecuniary avidity : to their sense of 
 the noble character of their task and its pregnant issues, he 
 made no appeal whatever. For he himself has said that where 
 
 * "■ Recent Attacks on Political Economy." Nineteenth Century, 'NoYem.' 
 ber, 1878, p. 864. J^%
 
 TRE OVEESTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 5 
 
 the money-motive once comes in, men's " deviations from a line 
 of conduct which can be foreseen and predicted, are so slight 
 that they may practically be considered as non-existent." * 
 
 Nor was the public sentiment on the whole at all averse to the 
 clever Minister's expedient for getting good results from the 
 educational institutions of the country. The children were to 
 be educated that they might themselves earn the more money 
 by-and-by, and so increase the wealth of the nation : what more 
 fitting than that the nation should put its investment into the 
 most direct form possible, and pay the teacher so many shil- 
 lings down for every boy he could turn out that could write a 
 commercial letter and add up a page of ledger ? The State was 
 buying clerks and traders ; why not make the transaction be- 
 tween the State and the teacher who turned them out clear and 
 simple, by promising him so many pounds a gross ? 
 
 ** Payment by results" is the very key of the whole com- 
 mercial system of the modern world ; and commerce is the 
 breath of the British citizen. -Nothing could be more natural 
 than its application to the new trade in which he was embarking 
 — the trade which in 1870 was taken over as a national concern. 
 The consequence has been, as in all cases where money is freely 
 introduced into the market, an immense stimulus to production. 
 The article demanded is delivered in ample quantities in spite of 
 a few "spoils" in the shape of enfeebled bodies or shattered 
 brains. And merchants, manufacturers, and Her Majesty's 
 Ministers congratulate one another all round. 
 
 But how has the system acted on the men and woman who 
 are the chief agents in working it out ? No one who has at 
 all acquainted himself with the actual work of our Elementary 
 Schools can remain unimpressed by the large amount of con- 
 scientious, disinterested, and devoted work which many teachers 
 carry on. Hundreds of them place before them as their fore- 
 most object, the welfare of the children entrusted to their care ; 
 and I desire at the outset to express my profound respect for the 
 numerous men and women whom the bribery of no Code can 
 decoy from that method which they deem alone consonant with 
 the physical, mental, and moral welfare of their scholars. But 
 the bribes dangled before the eyes of the forty thousand Certi- 
 ficated Teachers of Great Britain t are constant and alluring; 
 and they are bribes offered to a class of persons worse paid, re- 
 latively to the services required of them, than any other whatso- 
 
 * Ihid, p. 864. 
 
 t In 1881, England and Wales, 33,562 ; Scotland, 5,544.— Eeporf o/ Com. 
 of Council on Education, p. xlv.
 
 6 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 ever.* The livelihood of the teacher depends directly or in- 
 directly on the percentage of children he can push through the 
 ordeal of examination, and the number of subjects he can crowd 
 into their brains. It is true that it is a common thing for 
 Boards or Managers themselves t© take the risk of this from 
 year to year, and to pay the teacher a stipend not nominally 
 based on his examination successes. But indirectly, save in the 
 case of exceptionally wise authorities, the working is the same. 
 If the grant earned falls, the stipend will be reduced, or the 
 teacher will receive his dismissal. 
 
 Under the stimulus of this system of " payment by results," 
 the average teacher has, for the past twenty years, been press- 
 ing his scholars for more and more remunerative response to 
 his instruction. The motive appealed to by Mr. Lowe has been 
 successfully brought into full and constant play, till in the minds 
 of many it has outdone all others. Exceptionally able and am- 
 bitious teachers have driven their schools even harder than their 
 neighbours, and have obtained results from which golden grants 
 have flowed in, which have delighted managers, and, perhaps, a 
 little astonished "my lords." **My lords " have responded by 
 screwing up the conditions of grants to a higher and higher 
 pitch; and so the stimulus to the average teacher has grown 
 more and more goading from Code to Code. 
 
 It is, then, in the interests of both scholars and teachers, a 
 question for urgent inquiry whether this process has or has not 
 resulted in an excessive nervous strain upon the teacher. I say 
 in the interest of scholar as well as of teacher, because there is 
 no profession in which nervous strain must be so ruinous to the 
 quality of the work done as that of the pedagogue. The over- 
 taxed barrister may lay up for himself paralysis or lunacy ; yet, 
 while he is still able to stick to his work, the strain on his 
 nerves will only make his cross-examinations a little sharper, 
 and his references to his "learned friend'' a trifle more acid. 
 The over-taxed preacher may, if he is an earnest one, preach 
 morbid sermons, with a false strain of sentiment running through 
 them ; yet his hearers will, for the most part, be proof against 
 his appeals, and rather raise their eyebrows in surprise at his 
 exaggerated expressions, than set to work to shape their lives 
 according to his views. But the overtaxed school-teacher 
 becomes thereby hopelessly incapable of that just balance of 
 firmness and kindness, that happy admixture of patience, 
 
 * " In 1870, the average salary was .£95 for males, and <£57 for females ; 
 now it has risen to ^121 for males, and .£72 for females." — Presidential 
 Address of Mr. R. Sykes at the annual conference of the National Union of 
 Elementary Teachers , 1882.
 
 TEE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 7 
 
 energy, and [cheerfulness, which is of more, importance to the 
 conduct of his school than any certificate, or the praise of any 
 inspector. Hence the question how the nervous systems of the 
 teaching fraternity are affected by the pressure of successive 
 Codes is a question of unsurpassed moment in estimating our 
 national education. Such an inquiry is, indeed, beset with 
 difficulty. Official statistics are impossible to obtain. The 
 Committee of Council on Education duly report the number of 
 teachers with whom they deal, and the figure of the grants they 
 earn ; but they have no column to show the prevalence of de- 
 pression of physique or the percentage of lives sacrificed in the 
 fierceness of the competition. I have, however, made it my 
 business to acquaint myself, by correspondence or conversation, 
 with the experience of a large number of head-teachers on this 
 and other points. I have selected some of these on the ground 
 of facihty of personal access to them, others because I was 
 specially recommended to them on account of their width or 
 length of experience, others quite casually, and without any 
 previous knowledge whatever, picking the names of their schools 
 out of the official list of Elementary Schools aided by Parlia- 
 mentary grants. Of those of whose views I have thus had the 
 opportunity of informing myself, more than seventy per cent, 
 believe that they themselves or members of their staff have 
 suffered in health from the pressure of the Code requirements, 
 and many add striking testimony concerning other members of 
 the profession, of whose breakdown they have had personal 
 knowledge. Some of the statements which have reached me 
 deserve a more special reference. The head-master of a 
 brilliantly successful British school in Liverpool writes to me 
 that, though he is enthusiastically fond of his work, he is, at 
 thirty-nine, prematurely grey, and has undergone a surgical 
 operation for a disease brought on by over-work. He suffers 
 greatly from indigestion, especially just before inspection ; and 
 he adds that the master of a neighbouring school died of disease 
 of the heart, at the age of forty-two, brought on, in the words 
 of his physician, " by the worries and anxieties of school-work." 
 *' Only those,'' says the head-master of one of the largest Board 
 schools in the East of London, ** who know the anxiety of the 
 teacher for a few weeks before the inspection can fully enter 
 into the strain upon the mind, the excessive nervousness, and 
 ■even sometimes irritability caused by the desire to do well on 
 inspection day.'' The teacher of a Church school in a thriving 
 Midland town tells me, **I have often been taken for fifty, and 
 am not yet forty years old. Two years ago I had to exercise
 
 8 THE OVERSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 the greatest care, or the doctor said the mind would collapse.** 
 The late head-master of the excellent Lower Moseley Street 
 Schools, Manchester, mentions two teachers of his acquaint- 
 ance, both of whom were paralysed, and says that they always 
 attributed their break-down to the harassing and unyielding 
 conditions of the Code regulations, combined perhaps with the 
 constant inhalation of a vitiated air. ** My medical adviser," 
 says a Bristol teacher, " has distinctly warned me of the result 
 of this pressure, going so far as to assert that, if not stopped, I 
 should materially shorten my days.'* A teacher formerly very 
 eminent in his own town, now at rest in the well-earned haven 
 of a country rectory, looking back on the days of struggle with 
 the Code, writes to me in a very careful communication, " With 
 all the care I could exercise by the use of the usual means for 
 preserving one's health — and my constitution, I believe, was an 
 exceptionally strong one — I suffered from frequent attacks of 
 biliousness, and twice, at the critical time of the inspection, my 
 health quite gave way, owing to nothing but the constant mental 
 and bodily strain, in an impure atmosphere, notwithstanding 
 everything was done that could be done in the way of efficient 
 ventilation. Two promising young men, assistant masters, whO' 
 had been pupil-teachers, died of consumption, according to my 
 belief, from too close application, and I reckoned on one or 
 more pupil-teachers being away from their duty from sickness in 
 other parts of the year beside the usual holidays." A country 
 head-master complains that his health is undermined by the' 
 strain involved in conducting a class consisting of Standards IV.,. 
 v., VI., and VII. all together. " I have," says he, " four divi- 
 sions in the class all doing different work at the same time in 
 arithmetic, and three in dictation. I must dictate to Standard 
 IV., read a tale twice over to Standard V., and superintend a 
 theme or letter for Standards VI. and VII.'' Such a school, it 
 will be said, is miserably under-sta,ffed. It is true, but it is 
 staffed in perfect accordance with Government requirements. A 
 friend of my own, whose school stands foremost in its town for 
 the business aptitude of the boys it turns out year by year — 
 where, indeed, a regular list is kept of applications for scholars 
 from employers — has been at the pains to place in my hands a 
 statement which derives great weight from his long and wide 
 experience. In the course of a review of the effects of the system 
 on the physique of teachers, he says, " the nervous power of the 
 digestive organs fails first generally. Head affections prevail. 
 Paralysis, apoplexy, dementia supervene. Were it possible to 
 get at the vital statistics of the great body of certificated teachers
 
 THE OVEESTBAIN IN EDUCATION, 9 
 
 during the last twenty-five years, a sad history would be revealed, 
 I judge of the mass from my actual knowledge of seven teachers 
 whom I knew best during my college life. Of the seven, only 
 two survive" — my friend is, I suppose, five-and-forty years of 
 age — " and these have had, since passing their fortieth year, 
 very severe and protracted illnesses. Their lives are no longer such 
 as a careful insurance office would accept at ordinary rates. Nor 
 can an opinion on this point be founded safely on the cases of 
 teachers now at work in schools. It is notorious that those who 
 can escape from the profession do so. Nothing is more painful 
 than to find teachers occupying good situations, so far as salary 
 is concerned, bent on getting away from the work if they can." 
 
 Probably the record among the mistresses would prove a stil 
 sadder one than that of the masters; though I am inclined 
 to think that it would be modified by the fact that the 
 females are knocked out of the race at an earlier stage in 
 their career than the males. A few days since a successful mis- 
 tress told me of one after another of her successive pupil- 
 teachers who had found their way to the asylum, or otherwise 
 utterly collapsed. She herself suffers acutely from chronic nerve- 
 strain, and describes how at night, not sleeping, but awake, 
 she will enter into some explanation to her pupil-teacher, 
 to find after many minutes that there is no pupil-teacher 
 there, and that it is the walls of her chamber, not those of the 
 schoolroom, that surround her. An accomplished head-mistress, 
 in Suffolk, tells how the working up for examination is " the 
 old man" on the teacher's back. "After the honest work of 
 nine months," says she, " and the overstrain of the three in 
 which the examination falls, I often feel as if I had been put 
 upon the rack — bruised and sore in body as well as in mind. 
 About five years ago I had a complete break-down, when I 
 became very deaf, and my memory seemed suddenly to have 
 forsaken me. A long rest restored the hearing, but the memory 
 has never regained its old power. ... I assure you that, in 
 the quarter before the examination, I hold all my scholars 
 individually in mind. A's spelling must be improved; B's 
 arithmetic is weak ; C is not perfect with her repetition, and so 
 on. When I go to bed, there is still the same array of children 
 to torment me in my sleep. Add, that I go to bed at twelve and 
 rise at six to correct exercises, &c., and you may judge that the 
 Code is a heavy burden." 
 
 The mortality among school-teachers, according to the 
 Schoolmaster, amounts to 2 per cent, per annum, as against 
 I per cent, among police and sailors. Of the recent students of 
 
 A— 3
 
 10 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 a large' normal college more than one in fifty kas died" each. 
 year,, while the normal average mortality among persons 
 between twenty-two and thirty-four years of age is less than 
 one in a hundred. 
 
 But in 1881 there were in England and Wales 33,639 pupil 
 teachers assisting the 33,562 certificated teachers. Perhaps 
 these young people show a better bill of health, and we may 
 turn to them for encouragement. I fear not. The pressure on 
 these young lads and undeveloped girls is, if possible, more 
 severe than that on the chiefs themselves. The five best hours 
 of each of five days in the week are given by them to the 
 labour of teaching, probably even more arduous to them, 
 considering their inexperience and inefficiency, than to their 
 overseers. It is to be hoped that Mr. Mundella's new clause 
 limiting their hours of teaching-service to twenty-five per week 
 may be so interpreted as to free them from the heartless 
 drudgery of playing police over the "kept-in" out of school- 
 hours day after day. But, even so, hard indeed is the life of 
 these children who, it must be remembered, may be bound at 
 fourteen and ."practically even at thirteen years of age ; and 
 Diocesan or Board requirements of the most burdensome 
 character are too often added to those of the Department itself. 
 A London master says that his pupil-teachers have no recreation 
 whatever, except, perhaps, half-an-hour after tea. ** On Satur- 
 days,'' he explains, " lectures on Diocesan work have to be 
 attended, and Diocesan studies entered into; drawing, science, &c., 
 have to be done on this day. I hear everywhere the complaints 
 of pupil-teachers and of those who have been pupil-teachers : 
 their life is one of continual drudgery." The master of a very 
 large Board School in the Midlands says, "lam engaged to take 
 the classes in the pupil- teacher central scheme. These pupil- 
 teachers attend two nights a week, from 6.30 to 8.30, and one 
 night from 6.30 to 9 p.m. If, besides this, they attend any 
 science-class or instruction in Erench or other language — as they 
 must to get a good start at the Training College — and work up 
 to it, I do not see where the time for recreation is to come from. 
 As a matter of fact, the pupil-teachers who work hardest in 
 school teaching, and who are, therefore, often the best teachers 
 restore the balance by neglect of systematic study. '^ This is the 
 London Board's pupil-teacher's Saturday, according to a twenty- 
 five years' head-master : "A pupil-teacher leaves home at 8.30, 
 attends lectures from 9 to 12.30, then has four hours' hard study 
 to prepare his lessons for the various tutors for Monday, when 
 he again goes to the Centre from 6 to 8.30 p.m. If we break
 
 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION, 11 
 
 down, whose fault is it, but that of the powers that be— the 
 Taskmasters?'- "I fear," says Miss Miiller,. of ;the London 
 School Board, "there is very Httle doubt that the majority of 
 school-mistresses and all pupil-teachers live in a state of ceaseless 
 mental worry, which is injurious to health and perfectly incom- 
 patible with that happy and calm temper that every one has a 
 right to enjoy whose life is well-ordered and properly balanced."* 
 But it will be said that the pupil-teacher's is a selected life 
 which can well bear extra strain, since the medical certificate 
 required at the outset sufficiently guards against his liability to 
 injury under the stress of his duties. But facts seem to show 
 that the medical certificate is worse than waste paper, or else 
 that even the sound and strong are broken by the weight of the 
 burden imposed. The testimony to the miserable physique 
 induced by the pupil -teacher's life is melancholy to the last 
 degree. Their very stature seems to be affected. ^"Almost 
 always short of stature and pale-faced," says Mr. George Smith, 
 -" with the anxious, wearied look occasionally that young people 
 ought never to wear." "Of rather diminutive stature and 
 delicate health," says a quondam teacher, now a clergyman. 
 ^' They grow, or rather half -grow, narrow-chested," says another, 
 -"flabby-muscled, round-shouldered, thin ; their faces carry a 
 care-worn, dreary expression." A lady teacher testifies, '*They 
 are very generally pale and delicate in appearance, with a droop 
 in the shoulders and an anxious, careworn expression in their 
 faces while in repose. Their brain power can never be properly 
 developed while they work to the extreme of their strength 
 during the^ day." Another mistress : "In many cases their 
 growth appears much stunted." " A tall pupil-teacher is almost 
 a phenomenon in my experience," says an East-end mistress. 
 "" The body is sacrificed to the brain," writes a teacher from 
 Kentish Town, " and both suffer in consequence." A lady now 
 removed to the superintendence of a well-known endowed 
 middle-class school observes that " the moral strain in endea- 
 vouring to govern a class of 20, 30, or 40 children is excessively 
 bad for growing youths 'and girls." Such testimonies as these 
 might easily be multiplied without limit. Very striking is the 
 remark of the head-mistress of one of the training colleges : 
 *' We have done a hard term's work ; but these girls all look in 
 better condition than when we received them from their pupil- 
 teacher life." 
 
 Grave enough assuredly are these facts regarded solely in 
 
 reference to the condition of an honourable and indispensable 
 
 * Eeport of tlie National Union of Elementary Teachers, 1882. P. Ixxxiii. 
 
 A— 4
 
 12 THE OVERSTRAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 profession ; but contemplated from the point of view of our four 
 million scholars,* they acquire a portentous significance. If, as 
 I am persuaded, 50 per cent, of our whole teaching staff are 
 overstrained by their labours or their anxieties, how fatal a 
 flaw must this prove in their influence on the boys and girl* 
 submitted to their charge. Negatively, the listlessness and 
 weariness of the teacher must inevitably rob the lessons he 
 superintends of life and interest ; positively, the nervous irritability 
 to which so many teachers pathetically confess must fill the 
 child's mind with vexation or fear in place of the sunny temper 
 in which alone juvenile study can be healthfully or profitably 
 pursued. But the stress of the demands made upon the childish 
 brain itself renders the school-life to multitudes one long, painful^ 
 and pernicious strain, quite independently of the depressing 
 lassitude or the hasty temper of the over-wrought masters, 
 mistresses, and pupil-teachers. 
 
 To begin with, many schools call upon their scholars for an 
 appalling amount of home-work. Two-and-a-half hours each 
 evening is no uncommon thing. Boys hardly out of the infant 
 school will sit with flushed and throbbing brow over book and 
 slate till ten and even eleven at night. " The continuous occupa- 
 tion of the child-life," writes a very able and earnest teacher, 
 *' robs it of due recreation, and tends to destroy all faculty, 
 although it may increase capacity" But more predominant now 
 than excessive home-lessons is excessive over-time in schools. 
 Every school is compelled to exhibit a time-table, and that time- 
 table must be approved by Her Majesty's Inspector. But the 
 table is often little better than a fraud : the anxious teacher 
 expands the five or five-and-a-half hours per diem which it 
 exhibits to six or seven, or more. The quick children may 
 escape these extra hours ; the dull and the delicate are prisoners- 
 without reprieve. They must be worked up to ** passing" point, 
 and this is the only way to do it. Schools are quoted which 
 even hold three sessions in the day and another on the Satur- 
 day. How does all this affect the health of the scholars them- 
 selves ? 
 
 The most common symptom of its injurious consequence is 
 the talking of lessons in sleep, to which a chorus of inspectors,, 
 teachers, and parents bear united witness. " Dozens of in- 
 stances,'' says Mr. Quayle, of Liverpool, head master of St. 
 Thomas' and St. Matthew's, **of complaints from parents con- 
 
 * There were in 1881 on the English and Welsh registers 4,045,362 
 children. The average attendance for the -whole of Great Britain was 
 3,848,011.
 
 THE OYEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 13 
 
 cerning their children's loss of appetite, talking in sleep, languor, 
 nervous state, indifference to childish sports, &c. No robustness 
 •or energy." Mr. John Steedman, of Nottingham, says that in 
 his former school, where much hard work was done continuously, 
 ■and where the population was settled, the regular boys were 
 very small. He has been struck with the rapid growth of many 
 of them during the year or two after leaving school. **The 
 children would be better," writes a mistress, " both in mind and 
 body, if their school-life was happier ; the strain of the Code 
 prevents this." " The children's health is placed, unfortunately," 
 writes a master, " in competition with the schoolmaster's means 
 of living." Anecdotes abound of parents visiting the school to 
 remonstrate agttinst the pressure put on their little ones, and 
 vainly interceding for the remission of excessive lessons. '* About 
 a week ago," said a Lancashire mother the other day, " they 
 began to cram my little one, and she not seven years old, for the 
 examination. It was lessons morning, afternoon, and night, and 
 you never saw her without her books. I don't understand all 
 this learning, but at last I saw that they were killing her. So I 
 went to the school and said that I could not let her work so 
 liard. But they would not let her stop. They said she would 
 do grandly. But I wanted to keep my child. So at last, with 
 no end of diflSculty, I got a medical certificate, and now I mean 
 to keep her at home till the inspector's been and gone, I do." 
 In Nottingham, not long since, the parents of a little girl, seeing 
 her overdone and talking of lessons in her sleep, gave notice that 
 they should keep her from school for a time. The teacher 
 promptly called and offered a present if the child attended regu- 
 larly ! A mistress in Yorkshire was called before a Committee 
 of her Board a few weeks since for unmercifully beating a girl 
 eight years old on the head, because she failed to work a problem 
 in arithmetic (Standard III.). When the mother complained, 
 the answer was that the child was clever enough and could do 
 the sum if she chose. The parents pleaded that she was deli- 
 <iate, and that they would much rather she did not pass the 
 examination till the next year if any severity had to be used. To 
 which answered the teacher : ♦* But I want my money, and I'll 
 make her pass." That teacher put the whole system of " pay- 
 ment by results '' in a nutshell. 
 
 We must not dismiss this branch of our inquiry without noting 
 the effect of the requirements on eyesight — especially of the 
 needlework on the eyesight of girls. It is well known that alarm 
 has aiisen on this subject in Germany, and that many persona 
 tax the minutely differentiated German printed character with
 
 14 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 much of the mischief. But Hke results accrue in England with 
 no such type to bear the blame. A Birmingham mistress 
 writes : " A very large proportion of my scholars suffer from 
 diseases of the eye. Girls are frequently absent for weeks to- 
 gether attending the eye infirmaries. One pupil teacher became 
 temporarily blind while attempting to complete the needlework 
 for an examination." Another mistress, in whose school failing 
 eyesight is very common, says, " the sewing (required under the 
 New Code) is something terrible.'' " Sight," says a third 
 mistress, "is a rapidly increasing failing among the scholars." 
 A few years ago, H. M. Inspector, in a midland town, having 
 conscientiously appraised the needlework of the elder infants 
 grouped before him, turned to the mistress and asked, " Now 
 can you show me qjrj 'pinafores by the three-year olds ?" " No,, 
 indeed, sir," said she, taking the question for a solemn joke. 
 "Oh, but I assure you I get them in other schools," rejoined the 
 cfiScial incarnation of the educational ideal of EngHsh states- 
 manship. 
 
 In her address to the Elementary Teachers' Union, at Shef- 
 field, on "Over-Pressure in Schools," Miss Miiller said: "To 
 any one watching the progress of a school, be it boys', girls', or 
 infants', which attains annual good * results,' the signs of over- 
 pressure will be visible, though not to the passing visitor, who 
 exclaims in astonishment at the rows of class-rooms abnormally 
 clean, and the rows of children abnormally quiet. A superficial 
 glance at any large institution discovers only appearances, and 
 not realities. But let any one follow the course of such a school 
 during a year or two with quiet and constant visits, and he will 
 see little signs that have large meanings. There are certain 
 evidences which are unmistakable. The visitor will ask himself;, 
 ' Do the children look happy ? ' Alas, never ! * Do the teachers 
 look happy ? ' Still less." * Mr. Sykes, the late President of the 
 Teachers' Union, speaks with authority, at any rate on the views 
 of teachers. " To a dull child," says he, " our present system of 
 cram and mechanical drill must make the schoolroom appear as 
 a place of cruel mental torture. . . . Babies, of four or five 
 years of age, are subjected to [the mania for competitive exami- 
 nation] ; and children of seven years of age earn grants upon 
 their ability to satisfy the inspector, after passing through the 
 ordeal of individual examination. The pale faces, lack-lustre 
 eyes, aching brains of the little children, and the repeated com- 
 plaints of brain fever, loss of eye-sight, and bodily depression and 
 weakness, plainly evince the cruelty as well as the senselessness 
 * Report of the N.U.E.T., 1882, p.lxxviii.
 
 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 15 
 
 of the system.'' * As to the " babies of four or five years of age," 
 an ingenious inspector laments, in his report, that " a very 
 useful year of school-life is frequently lost because the attend- 
 ance officer can ask no questions about a child under five.'' f I 
 have a curly-locked, bright-eyed baby of just that age; I am glad 
 he is not " useful " in earning grants for anybody ! 
 
 An infallible index to the general depression of the health of 
 the children in our Elementary Schools is to be found in the 
 exceptional and permanent break-downs, and even deaths from 
 over-pressure, testified to from so many quarters. These cases 
 are difficult to get at, owing to the natural reticence of those who 
 know ; still more difficult to prove, because the post hoc is not 
 necessarily the propter Jioc. Still, it is impossible to doubt their 
 frequent occurrence. ** Two cases," writes one head^master, 
 "are conspicuous in my mind.'' *' Some two years ago," says a 
 Liverpool master, *' a very intelligent, but delicate boy entered 
 the school, anxious to compete for one of the scholarships 
 established by the Liverpool Council of Education. After being 
 in the school less than six months he died, the immediate cause 
 of death being rheumatism of the heart ; but during the delirium 
 of the last few days, he moaned sadly about his school-work.'' 
 '* My medical adviser," a teacher writes to me from Bristol, 
 " asserts that brain-fever is frequently the result of home-pressure, 
 and that the number of such cases has been on the increase for 
 some years." A lady in the service of the Board at Birmingham, 
 writes : "To maintain a percentage in upper classes meeting 
 Code requirements, I have had to raise a good number from 
 Standard II. to Standard IV. The parents of one child whom I 
 had put forward objected strongly, on the ground that ' last year 
 but one,' said the mother, ' my other girl was served the same, and 
 the very week after the examination she was taken ill and died.' 
 Of course," adds the teacher, " I respected the mother's wishes, 
 but I was not able to set aside the principle ; some other Stan- 
 dard II. child— the next best I could find— had to fill her place." 
 A Bradford master writes to me : "I have heard of many in- 
 stances in the town of permanent break-down or death resulting 
 from the strain of school-work. A few years ago a girl committed 
 suicide owing to depresrion of spirits caused by her inability to 
 do the home-work prescribed at school." Mr. Girling, at a 
 recent meeting of the executive of the National Union of 
 Elementary Teachers, referred to the case of a child who 
 had then just died of brain-fever, whose continual cry in his 
 
 * I6i(Z, pp. xxix., s;^viii. 
 t Report of the C. C. E., 1881 -2, p. 418.
 
 16 
 
 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 last delirium was, " I can't get it right ! I can't get it 
 right ! " At the last annual meeting of the Scotch Educa- 
 tional Institute, Dr. Farquharson said that lassitude, depres- 
 sion, and dyspepsia had frequently come under his observation 
 among the Common School children, and especially chorea, or 
 St. Vitus's dance, and he added that the grimaces and eccentric 
 movements of incipient chorea w^ere sometimes chastised as 
 pieces of impudent buffoonery. At the same congress. Dr. 
 Eobert Beveridge, Physician to the Aberdeen Eoyal Infirmary, 
 gave statistics of the increase of deaths from diseases of the 
 brain among children of school age in the eight large towns of 
 Scotland in the decade 1872-81, when the Education Act was 
 in force, as compared with 1859-68. Dr. Beveridge has been 
 kind enough to assist me in reducing these statistics to exact 
 tabular form. He compares first the percentage of deaths during 
 school age by brain disease with deaths from all causes for the 
 two periods, and then the percentage of deaths by brain disease 
 with deaths from all causes except zymotics, which are, of 
 course, very irregular. This is the result : — * 
 
 
 Percentage of Deaths from 
 Diseases of the Brain to 
 Deaths from all Causes 
 during School age. 
 
 Percentage of Deaths from 
 Diseases of the Brain to 
 Deaths from all Causes, 
 except Zymotic Diseases, 
 during SchooUage. 
 
 
 1859—1868. 
 
 1872—1881. 
 
 1859—1868. 
 
 1872—1881. 
 
 Aberdeen 
 
 V-5 
 5 
 
 6-6 
 5-5 
 
 5-8 
 
 9-2 
 
 84 
 7-7 
 7-3 
 
 7-7 
 
 11-3 
 
 8-4 
 10-27 
 
 8-4 
 
 9-05 
 
 12-7 
 
 Dundee 
 
 12-2 
 
 Edinburgh 
 
 13-4 
 
 Glasgow 
 
 9-9 
 
 The ei»ht large towns 
 of Scotland 
 
 10-95 
 
 
 
 Enough has, perhaps, now been said to establish the fact that 
 there is among teachers and children in our Elementary Schools 
 
 * These figures, covering about a third of the population of Scotland, 
 and comparing whole decades, are on a large enough scale to exclude casual 
 sources of fallacy. Their significance will, perhaps, be more apparent when 
 converted into the following form : — 
 
 Increase of proportion of 
 deaths from Brain Dis- 
 ease to deaths from all 
 sources. 
 
 Per cent. 
 22-67 
 68 
 
 16-67 
 32-73 
 
 Aberdeen 
 
 Dundee 
 
 Edinburgh 
 
 Glasgow 
 
 The eight large towns 
 
 of Scotland 
 
 Increase of proportion of 
 deaths from Brain Dis- 
 ease to deaths from all 
 sources except zymotics. 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 12-39 
 
 45-24 
 
 3048 
 
 17-86 
 
 32-76 
 
 20-99 
 
 Dr. Beveridge has extracted his figures from the returns of the Registrar^
 
 TEE CVELSJBAIN JN EDUCATION. 17 
 
 (1) a widespread depression of health, and (2) too high a per- 
 centage of complete physical or mental collapses. But it must 
 not be supposed that this state of things is attributable solehj to 
 the high-pressure system which is so much to be deplored. The 
 evil effects of bad methods of work are redoubled by bad sanitary 
 arrangements. 
 
 The principal requirements of the Education Department, 
 from a sanitary point of view, are that 80 cubic feet of internal 
 space and eight square feet of internal area shall be allowed in 
 every school-building for each unit of average attendance ; and 
 that managers shall not fail, after six months' notice, to remedy 
 any such defect in the premises as seriously interferes with the 
 efficiency of the school. Failure here may, under the New Code, 
 incur the loss of half the whole grant earned. The Department 
 further requires generally to be satisfied that the premises are 
 healthy, well-lighted, warmed, drained, and ventilated. 
 
 Such provision proves in the working miserably inefficient for 
 its ends. The close, stuffy atmosphere of nine school-rooms out 
 of ten after an hour's occupation is truly horrible. Indeed, how 
 could it possibly be otherwise ? Eighty cubic feet per child, says 
 the English Department : Professor Pettenkofer, of Munich, 
 lends his high authority to a demand for 540 cubic feet per child. 
 We put twenty-seven children into the class-room which he 
 
 General, the only source available. In these returns ages are arranged in 
 four classes :—(l) Under 5 years; (2) 5 to 20 ; (3) 20 to 60; and (4) over 
 60 years. Hence Dr. Beveridge is compelled to take school age as 5 — 20 
 years without further sub-division. The large proportion of the Scotch 
 town population going on to the High Schools and the Universities renders 
 this prolonged school-age less vitiating for our purpose than it would be for 
 English lives ; but undoubtedly the pressure in these advanced seminaries, 
 which is notorious, constitutes an appreciable factor in our residts. The 
 chief disease of the brain or nervous system among persons between 5 and 
 20 is cephalitis, or inflammation of the brain proper. Death from con- 
 vulsions, which would otherwise be a highly vitiating element, not depend- 
 ing on such causes as we are investigating, is almost entirely confined to 
 infants under 5 years. Dr. Beveridge has kindly supplied me with these 
 figures for the eight large towns of Scotland (1881), which will show the 
 proportion in which different nervous disorders prove fatal at different 
 ages : — 
 
 Age 
 
 : 0-5 
 
 5-20 
 
 20-60 
 
 60- 
 
 Total. 
 
 Cephalitis 
 
 350 .. 
 
 ,. 110 . 
 
 .. 47 .. 
 
 8 .. 
 
 515 
 
 Apoplexy 
 
 86 .. 
 
 .. 34 . 
 
 .. 280 .. 
 
 . 296 .., 
 
 696 
 
 Paralysis 
 
 11 ., 
 
 11 . 
 
 .. 221 .. 
 
 . 440 .., 
 
 683 
 
 Insanity 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 .. 10 .. 
 
 6 .., 
 
 16 
 
 Chorea 
 
 .. 
 
 2 
 
 1 .. 
 
 .. 
 
 3 
 
 Epilepsy , 
 
 9 . 
 
 '.'. 11 *. 
 
 .. 44 .. 
 
 14 .. 
 
 78 
 
 Convulsions 
 
 453 .. 
 
 . 31 ., 
 
 .. 12 .. 
 
 2 ... 
 
 498 
 
 Diseases of Brain in other 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 forms or undefined ... 
 
 GO .. 
 
 . 68 .. 
 
 .. 164 .. 
 
 . 90 ... 
 
 382 
 
 Total ... 969 ... 267 ... 779 ... 856 ... 2,871
 
 18 THE OVEBSTEAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 declares is only fit for four ! * In a hundred ways premises passed 
 without a criticism by H. M. Inspectors are disqualified for the 
 child's abiding place during one-fourth part of its existence. Light 
 falling in the wrong direction, knife-board seats, seats so high 
 that the poor little feet dangle, all these blemishes leave the 
 grant untouched. Miss Lofving tells us how in the schools of 
 the London Board, the child's left arm is placed on the desk 
 above the copy-book or slate, the trunk twisted and bent to the 
 left, the left side of the chest and abdomen pressing with full 
 weight against the desk — a posture disastrous to growth, to 
 respiration, to circulation, to digestion, and to spinal develop- 
 ment. " When remonstrating," says she, " against this 
 barbarity, I got the astonishing answer, that this position was 
 enjoined by the Government Inspector, ' m order to prevent the 
 children copying from each other.' " f 
 
 We have then to face the fact of terrible physical evil in our 
 national system of education — a wholesale undermining of health 
 which must tell with redoubled power in the second generation. 
 Now, I believe the unexpressed feeling of many excellent people 
 might be summed up thus : No doubt it is a very sad thing that 
 some should be struck down and many maimed, but after all it 
 is worth great sacrifices to become an educated nation ; if the 
 minority suffer, yet the majority have great gain ; and we must 
 not look only at the victims of the battle, but also at the splendid 
 fruits of victory. It becomes necessary then to ask. Are we 
 becoming an educated nation ? What is the calibre of the educa- 
 tion bestowed at so great a cost ? 
 
 Teachers, at any rate, are almost unanimous that to two 
 classes of children a good education — an education good for them 
 — is by the present system absolutely denied. First, the clever 
 children are defrauded of the proper fruits of their talent, for 
 they are dragged back by the dullards and the dunces. The 
 interested teacher has no interest in leading them forward 
 apace : the disinterested teacher has no time to spare to them 
 from the backward. Secondly, the dull children are forced in a 
 manner that robs them of what little brain-power they begin 
 with. They must be presented in a higher standard each succes- 
 sive year, and if possible by any pulling or pushing, they must 
 be passed. To the average child, a good many authorities agree, 
 
 * I would not, of course, imply that it is practically possible to supply 
 every child with 540 feet of cubic space. But at least I would plead for 
 some compromise between the present standard and the ideal. 
 
 f Lecture on Physical Education and its •place in a Rational System of 
 Education. By Concordia Lofvtng, p. 44.
 
 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 19 
 
 the requirements of the Code are pretty fairly adjusted. Now by 
 a trick of thought, it is common to assume that the average 
 children are the majority, that non-average children are the 
 exception. But in reality there are very few average children 
 indeed ; and if first we subtract those for whom the Code moves 
 too slowly, and next those for whom it goes too fast, we shall 
 have a very meagre class left to benefit by its measured scale of 
 progress. The truth, however, would appear to be that its pitch 
 is that of the rather clever children ; so that on the one side the 
 few very clever children suffer by its leniency, and on the other 
 the combined mass of the average children and the slow suffer 
 by its stringency. 
 
 It is the driving, then, which is the major evil in the 
 educational working of the Code. A horse spurred up a steep 
 hill will stop dead beat before it gains the top. " It is a common 
 thing," writes a Birmingham teacher, *' for children who have 
 been driven through the lower standards, when reaching the 
 fourth to fail utterly, and leave school with an utter distaste for 
 study." •* The fundamental work of the * three R's ' is not half 
 as well done as it was twenty years ago," says another; *' boys 
 who begin bright get quite stupid by the time they are in 
 Standard IV." Mr. Quayle says, '* Children just scrape through 
 an examination, and are then placed (per Code) in a higher 
 standard, where the work is far beyond their comprehension. 
 To ensure a pass, they are then forced, goaded, and crammed, 
 till work is made hateful to them, and their intellect is dulled. 
 This goes on year after year till they get exemption from 
 attendance at school, when books are cast aside and the ground- 
 work so laboriously prepared, is seldom made use of.'' Mr. 
 John Eeynolds, head-master of the splendid school at Flowery 
 Field, near Manchester, and on the whole the warmest friend of 
 the Codes Old and New I have met with among teachers, 
 alleges that " where an attempt is made to get extraordinary 
 percentages, dunces are worried into deeper stolidity." Mr, 
 Francombe, of the Kedcliffe Endowed Boys' School, at Bristol, 
 allows me to quote his opinion that " the number of subjects, 
 now being taught in our schools greatly impairs the results in 
 the * three K's," and that lut few hoys leave our schools able to 
 write well and spell correctly.^' A colleague in the same city 
 corroborates : ** Nothing is learnt really well, only a smattering 
 of each subject being taught to each child, as the requirements 
 are too many to be mastered in the time." Mr. Hodgson, of 
 Kidderminster, complains that ** there is not time to train 
 children to think." This view is more strongly put by a lady
 
 20 THE OVEBSTEAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 now freed from the trammels and conducting with the highest 
 success a school that knows neither Code nor Standard. She 
 holds that the "payment by results" system "is admirably 
 calculated to further mechanical cram and trickery and dis- 
 courage all true educators with noble aims." " What will pass, 
 not what will educate, is the incentive," says Mr. George 
 .Smith. Mr. Steedman has placed in my hands a most careful 
 paper on the whole question. While not deeming the Code 
 requirements as in themselves excessive, he holds that it is only 
 suitable for children " not harassed by multifarious work or 
 home-duties which occupy the mind with other subjects and 
 hinder that j^focess of germination which ought to ensue between 
 positive study and study." 
 
 It is worth while to observe in what manner the system 
 strikes at thoughtful teaching and induces " cram." A female 
 teacher whom I have already quoted, after sighing over the 
 process by which "the dunces are with pain untold brought to 
 ■'passing' pitch," says, "I once heard a Second Standard 
 ^examined in geography. There were ten out of the thirty 
 whose knowledge of Physical Geography might have put grown 
 people to the blush, and the rest acquitted themselves not dis- 
 honourably. Yet, in the report, the teacher's only reward was, 
 * The answering in Standard II. should be more general.' How 
 think you the teacher prepared her class for the next examina- 
 tion ? By the rule of grind ; so many through the mill : and 
 the report this time gave her great praise'* I have been fur- 
 nished with a kindred illustration from another branch : ' ' Mr. 
 
 X/ , head master of St. • School, felt very dissatisfied 
 
 with the results of his arithmetical teaching, although his school 
 passed very creditable examinations. The whole work seemed 
 to him too mechanical, and consequently little helpful in 
 developing the intelligence of his scholars. He changed his 
 methods. He taught next on first principles. He was delighted 
 to see the ingenuity shown by the children in inventing pro- 
 cesses. The answers certainly were not always correct, but 
 that was owing to mechanical drill having given place to 
 rational methods, which might be a little less reliable for 
 answers, but which were more fruitful of thought-life. The 
 well-known book of Sonnenschein and Nesbitt was his vade 
 mecum. The examination came round at last. If the * iniel- 
 ligence ' of his school should be now tested he was sanguine. 
 But intelligence could not be tested by a dumb card with one or 
 two arithmetical puzzles on it. The 'results' of the examina- 
 tion were bad. The grant was poor. Next year Mr. L
 
 THE OVERSTRAIN IN EDUCATION 21 
 
 turned Sonnenschein out, and returned to the old and profitable 
 plan, getting a good grant for his reward." 
 
 And if teachers speak thus hopelessly of their own work, 
 what have Inspectors to say? Truly I believe some of them 
 know but little of it ; yet many clearly see its failings. *' Year 
 after year," writes Mr. Brodie, " the same complaints are in 
 every Inspector's report. The teaching is dry, bookish, technical,, 
 barren." Yet this same Inspector boldly defends the test by 
 percentages of passes. ** They attest," he declares, " when high,, 
 to at least much solid hard work, dogged labour, and persistent 
 every-day drudgery.'' Alas ! they do. But doggedness and 
 drudgery, these will make neither bright nor intelligent children. 
 Mr. Barrington-Ward confides to "my lords'' his experiences, 
 thus : " Too many elementary teachers, men and women alike,, 
 still fancy that it is sufficient to aim at mere mechanical excel- 
 lence, to the exclusion of the development of those rational 
 faculties which raise man to his noble rank above the brute 
 creation. With some teachers whom I could name a parrot or a. 
 monkey would almost form as apt a pupil as his present charges.'" 
 This is very impressive writing, though not quite grammatical ; 
 but Mr. Barrington-Ward should remember that for twenty year& 
 our teachers have been assiduously taught that if they diverge 
 from mechanical teaching the average wage of forty shillings a 
 week is likely to drop to thirty-five. Mr. Alderson, one of the 
 best and kindest of Inspectors (though I grieve to find him going 
 for increase of school hours), finds little benefit to true educatiom 
 from the multitude of " subjects," in addition to the " three 
 E's," which throng the modern Codes. He finds in too many 
 of the schools of busy Marylebone "Heading which does not 
 expand the mind ; grammar, which does not leaven speech and 
 writing ; arithmetic, which does not form a habit of exact 
 thinking ; geography, which does not interest the imagination ; 
 literature, that does not improve the taste ; physiology, that has. 
 no bearing on the simple laws of health ; domestic economy, that 
 does not contribute to the comfort of homes." 
 
 No, we are not yet becoming " an educated nation." 
 I shall be met with the rejoinder that I have failed to recognise 
 the amendment in all this negative and positive evil likely to 
 result from the introduction of Mr. Mundella's New Code. 
 Teachers are almost unanimous in acknowledging the high> 
 ininded desire to do good which has actuated Mr. Mundella in 
 the preparation of this now famous document, and the gracious 
 courtesy and kindness with which, in bright contrast to some of 
 his predecessors, he has striven to comprehend and to meet their
 
 22 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 views; an acknowledgment most thoroughly deserved. But 
 unhappily teachers are almost equally unanimous in the appre- 
 hension that the New Code will prove very nearly as oppressive 
 as any of its predecessors, if not even more so."^ 
 
 That Code retains the principle, but modifies the method, of 
 <' payment by results." In Infant Schools the total possible 
 grant is to be seventeen shillings per unit of average attendance. 
 Of this, nine shillings is fixed, and depends in no way on results. 
 Two, four, or six shillings may be awarded as the " merit grant," 
 of which more anon. Two shillings will depend on results in 
 needlework and singing. In Boys' Schools, the highest possible 
 (excluding grants on " special objects ") will be £1 Os. lOd.per 
 unit of average attendance — viz., four shillings and sixpence 
 fixed independently of results; one, two, or three shillings, 
 merit grant; eight shillings and fourpence, depending on an 
 exact percentage test ; and five shillings, depending on a rough 
 percentage test.f In Girls' Schools one shilling extra is possible, 
 viz., the grant for needlework. In addition to these amounts, 
 however, individual scholars may be presented for examination 
 in one or in two " specific subjects," and for each individual pass 
 under this head, the grant will be swelled by four shillings. The 
 naerit grant is an entirely new element in the Government allow- 
 ance. It is undoubtedly conceived in the true interests of educa- 
 tion, and nothing can be more admirable than the description given 
 by *' my lords " of the " excellent " school entitled to the highest 
 award under this head.| But the Inspector is still instructed to 
 regard " the number of passes " — in other words, the percentage 
 — as an important element in the award of the merit grant ; and 
 quantity being so much easier to assess than quality, there is 
 every reason to fear that this will form, in the majority of dis- 
 tricts, the real foundation on which merit will be calculated, 
 quality, and, still more, general organisation and tone, being 
 more or less shadowy accessories in the inspector's mind. In 
 deed, though "the rage for percentages" which teacher after 
 teacher has deplored, may be in some degree checked by the 
 
 * Inspectors seem to expect that the New Code -will either leave things 
 pretty much as they are or increase the pressure all round. Mr. Collins, 
 Inspector for the Peterboroup^h district : " With reo^ard to the New Code, 
 generally, he might say that the examinations would, as far as possible, go 
 on the same lines as in past years." — (Schoolmaster, Feb. 3,1883.) Mr. 
 Hitchens, Inspector for the Huddersfield district : "No doubt it gave them 
 all more work."—{Schoohyiaster, Feb. 17, 1883.) 
 
 t The "Instructions to Inspectors'' suggests 75 per cent, in ^*^ class 
 subjects" for " good," which is understood to earn the full grant, 50 per 
 cent, for " fair," which will earn the half grant under this last head. 
 
 X "Instructions to Inspectors/' Sec. 32.
 
 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION, 23 
 
 •N^wGode, the temptation to the teacher to wring the utmost 
 possible quantitative results out of the brains of the largest 
 number possible of children will be as stringent under the New 
 Code as the Old ; nor will it make much difference in the stress 
 of that temptation whether the teacher's pittance is to be 
 directly measured by the results obtained or whether he is only 
 working in the fear of managers whose pride and (in Voluntary 
 Schools) whose pockets will be affected by the rise or the fall in 
 grant. No child whose name has been on the register within 
 the last twenty-two weeks, it must be remembered, may. be 
 withheld from examination without the express and individual 
 sanction of the Inspector ; every child must be presented in a 
 standard higher than that in which he was presented the year 
 before, unless the Inspector give express and individual permis- 
 sion to the contrary, and the First Standard must be taken at 
 seven years old. The loud and unanimous appeal of the 
 teachers all over the land is to be allowed to withhold from 
 examination at least one child in ten on their own responsibility, 
 and to be entrusted on their own responsibility with greater 
 freedom of classification according to the ability — as dis- 
 tinguished from the age — of their pupils. 
 
 The concession of this dual demand would, no doubt, mitigate 
 the monstrous evils of the unhappy system that is in vogue; 
 but I am persuaded that while the broad principle of " payment 
 by results" continues in the ascendant, over-pressure, rule of 
 thumb, and the perversion of the true ends of education will 
 prevail over the length and breadth of the land. Let teachers 
 rather look to the New Ministerial Circular of Upper Canada, 
 where, in the upper grades at least, a clean sweep is made of 
 payment by result. Let them ask, with one of my own corre- 
 spondents, **If the teachers in Germany and America can be 
 trusted to do their work without being required to make all 
 children pass a certain examination each year, why may not 
 we?" As it is, our allies in the methods of education on all 
 the face of the globe are, in some respects, it would appear, 
 Austria and China only ! 
 
 But it is not the method only, but the aim as well, that is in 
 fault, not the practice alone, but the ideal too. Two supreme 
 mistakes vitiate the whole organisation of English education, 
 from the Elementary Schools, through the Grammar Schools 
 and Girls' High Schools, to the Universities. The first mistake 
 is the conception of intellectual training as the acquisition of 
 information rather than the development of faculty. The 
 second mistake is the conception of intellectual training as
 
 24 THE OVERSTRAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 itself constituting edacation, whereas edacation is the co- 
 ordinate and inter-dependent development of physical, intel- 
 lectaal, and moral faculty. 
 
 Of the first mistake this only need be said : it springs out of 
 the trading spirit in which education is regarded, the trading 
 spirit which was the inspiration of Mr. Lowe, and corroded all 
 his work ; yet even from the purely commercial point of view it 
 is utterly fallacious. Not the boy stuffed with ** crammed" 
 facts (even if he did net disgorge them the moment schooling 
 ends) makes the good clerk or the successful merchant, but the 
 boy of thoughtful energy. Many a rich man of to-day never 
 went to school at all after six years old. Well spoke a thriving 
 Glasgow shoemaker a month or two ago : " Education Act a 
 success? Why, before the Act my apprentices used to come to 
 me unable to read or write, but they'd rise to an idea like a trout 
 to a fly. Now they all write well enough, but they've no bright- 
 ness or intelligence." 
 
 But the second mistake is the fatal one — the conception of 
 intellectual education as something which machinery may pro- 
 duce apart from the development of the other faculties of our 
 humanity. I will not speak now of moral training. The In- 
 spector is, indeed, instructed to satisfy himself ** that all reason- 
 able care is taken, in the ordinary management of the school, to 
 bring up the children in the habits of punctuality, of good 
 manners and language, of cleanliness and neatness, and also to 
 impress upon the children the importance of cheerful obedience 
 to duty, of consideration and respect for others, and of honour 
 and truthfulness in word and act.""*^ If the conditions of inspec- 
 tion and examination were not directly inimical to some of these 
 requirements, a higher value might be set upon this paragraph 
 than, as it is, is possible. It is perhaps useless here to express 
 the grief and shame that arise from the reflection that the 
 chaotic condition of religious opinion compels the unnatural 
 divorce of religious from intellectual training in the common 
 schools of the country — an arrangement which not only 
 emaciates the intellectual education itself, but fosters the per- 
 nicious conception of religion as a thing apart from the daily 
 concerns of Ufe. And this is said with the full knowledge that 
 no amendment is possible till the nation is baptized with a new 
 faith, and the vivid sense of religious realities penetrates the 
 national thought and life. 
 
 The failure of educationists in this country, however, to 
 recognise the need of interpenetrating intellectual with physical 
 * Cited from the Code of 1881^ in " nstructions to Inspectors/' Sec. 32.
 
 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 25 
 
 education, must be discussed at greater length. Parliament and 
 the Department have charged themselves with certain responsi- 
 bilities in regard to the physical welfare of the child. However 
 ineffectually they discharge it, they freely acknowledge the duty 
 of guarding the scholar from overt physical injury. Negatively 
 they hold themselves responsible. They have failed to perceive 
 that, if they undertake to educate, they have to take in charge 
 positive physical development. It is not enough to say, "We 
 will guard this child from bad air and bad smells." It would 
 not be enough even to do it, as well as to say it. If you are 
 going to educate, you must educate body as well as mind ; indeed,, 
 you cannot truly do the one without the other. Speaking of the 
 mass, not of the exceptional individual, it is certain that you 
 cannot have sound minds, save by securing sound bodies as their 
 instruments. If you try for the former, neglecting the latter, the 
 mind will fail of true health ; and every effort to develop it alone 
 will react with fearful force upon the body. " Overstrain in 
 Education " will not stop when adequate ventilation is secured 
 and hours of mental toil are limited ; it will go on till physical 
 development is sought by positive agencies as careful and 
 elaborate as those designed for the promotion of intellectual 
 progress. 
 
 "The art of education," writes (of all men) Professor Bain,. 
 " assumes a certain average of physical health, and does not 
 inquire into the means of keeping up or increasing that average.'* 
 Alas ! that is so in Great Britain ; but so it ought not to be. 
 True education is the harmonious development of all the powers, 
 towards the perfect man. It is not the traders only of the 
 future that fill our schools, but the citizens and parents. Mr. 
 Colt-Wilhams fears for our future army and navy if the present 
 school curriculum is extended. But physical vigour is no less. 
 needful to the sound citizenship of the civilian ; and in the light 
 of our modern knowledge of heredity, terrible indeed is the 
 responsibility resting on any legislators who strain the physique 
 of the fathers and mothers that are to be. 
 
 Just as much, then, as it is the duty of the State to strive to 
 develop a higher intelligence in the rising generation, is it incum- 
 bent upon it to take measures as an essential element in national 
 education for the development of a higher healthiness. Having 
 once laid its constraining hand upon our boys and girls, ic must 
 either make or mar, physically no less than intellectually : and 
 it is bound not to mar, but make. 
 
 If this grave national obligation once be recognised, many 
 hours of the present brain-labour will have to be swept away to
 
 26 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 make room for the physical culture which alone can secure 
 sound results even in the intellectual sphere. The games of 
 our little ones will be seen to be no less important than their 
 lessons ; the play-ground will be as essential as the school-room. 
 The "run out" at the end of every hour, while doors and 
 windows are flung open to let the air sweep through, will be a 
 part of the school discipline. H3'gienic seats and desks will be 
 universally required. And all this blessed reformation will be 
 consummated by a complete, graduated, scientific course of 
 gymnastic education — not the weekly drill based on the require- 
 ments of military evolution and superintended by a pompous 
 sergeant dressed in a little brief authority, but the daily exercise 
 of all the muscles of the body based on physiological laws. 
 
 The gratitude of all educational reformers and all believers in 
 the high functions of humanity, is due to Miss Lofving for her 
 efforts, in succession to Dr. Both, to inspire English educators 
 with a sense of the high sanctity of their calling and the 
 miserable failure of their practice. Especially is it to be hoped 
 that she may succeed in awakening interest in the gymnastic 
 system elaborated by her celebrated countryman and prede- 
 cessor, Ling. The London School Board has actually listened 
 to her pleadings, and allowed her to exhibit the Swedish 
 methods. But when she went so far as to ask for three half- 
 hours in the week for the girls of London to practise the Ling 
 gymnastics, ''payment by results" forbade it; and these chil- 
 dren — many of them without any true physical exercise what- 
 ever — must content themselves with fulfilHng Mr. Brodie's ideal, 
 *' solid hard work, dogged labour, and persistent every-day 
 drudgery," to the end of the chapter. =^ 
 
 * It was my intention, when I undertook this article, not to confine the 
 discussion to the "Overstrain •" in Primary Schools, but to adduce evidence 
 of its widespread existence in the middle and higher classes ; and I am 
 indebted to several head-mistresses and others connected with the educa- 
 tion now offered in Girls' High Schools for fiirnishing me with the fruits of 
 their experience and the expression of their views. But I have found it 
 impossible, in tJie present paper, to go beyond the limits of the narrower 
 subject treated in the text. The rapid spread, however, of Girls' High 
 Schools throughout the country, superseding by their cheapness many 
 excellent private seminaries, makes the nature of the education given in 
 them and the attention accorded to physical considerations, a question of 
 more than private interest and importance. The Girls' Public Day-School 
 Company now possesses twenty-seven establishments in different parts of 
 the country, with 4,800 pupils, and there are a growing number of schools 
 modelled more or less on the pattern of these, under local committees of 
 gentlemen and ladies. The Company aspires to set the tone of education 
 for middle-class girls. It is a pleasure to be allowed to quote Miss 
 Hastings, head-mistress of the Wimbledon High School, to the effect that 
 the Company are "most wise and thoughtful" in refraining from pressing 
 the responsible teachers for educational results which the mistresses think
 
 TBE OYEBSTnAIN IN EDUCATION. 27 
 
 With all the splendid progress "which has marked our cen- 
 tury, with all the battles won against ignorance, and filth, 
 
 excessive; but I fear they do not always exercise over mistresses who 
 adopt other views and methods of education than Miss Hastings, such a 
 supervision as shall check the excessive stimulus of which there is such 
 frequent complaint. Miss Hastings declines to send in any of her pupils 
 for outside examinations, such as the Oxford and Cambridge ''Locals;'* 
 but in other schools, both within and outside the control of the Company, 
 the utmost stress is laid upon these examinations as tests of work done, 
 and a distinguished head-mistress, though not prepared to set her face 
 against them, still writes to me that, in her opinion, the Council are misled 
 at times in the direction of too strongly urging examinations by the 
 success of schools which purchase their distinction at the heavy price of 
 overwork. Under mistresses such as I have quoted, the health of the 
 scholars is all that can be desired ; but of those schools where the lady 
 principals stimulate the ambition of their pupils, or fail to check the 
 eagerness of those whose natural ambition is excessive, a very different 
 story must be told. '^ During the examination week," writes an assistant 
 teacher, " I have known of several girls going into hysterics, who are 
 not usually at all wanting in seK-control ; and I have known of two 
 fainting in the midst of an examination." '' Girls are so anxious,'* 
 says another lady of much experience in High Schools, though not, I 
 believe, under the Company, " that they work themselves up to almost 
 a frenzy of excitement from nervous dread of failure." Yet the Prin- 
 cipal of one of the Company's schools writes to me: — '^' I have known 
 cases in which excitable girls, instead of being rather checked, have been 
 urged on by constant inquiries by their parents about marks, &c., first to 
 get to the top of their respective forms, and then to pass various outside 
 examinations, till their nervous systems have been completely overdone." 
 And though this lady lays the chief blame on the parents, who urge 
 their daughters on, yet, on the one hand, certainly many parents are 
 constantly protesting against the school demands, and, on the other, 
 it is the school system that is responsible for suggesting to parents 
 these mad and criminal ambitions. "Girls," says the same lady, '^' who 
 are pressed on at the early age of the Junior Cambridge to take high 
 honours often break down completely, and do no more. So also with the 
 Senior. I hear grievous complaints from Newnham and Girton that the 
 girls from certain schools have been so overworked before coming up that 
 they can do nothing at Cambridge." An assistant teacher writes to me : — 
 *' In High Schools it depends entirely on the head-mistress of each school 
 whether there is overwork or not." She adds her opinion — after an 
 experience in three High Schools — that " all marks, positions, prizes, &c., 
 ought to be done away with, and the pupils should work for the sake of 
 the good they get from the work. It is not the work, but the anxiety and 
 strain that accompanies the work which does the harm. Girls sometimes 
 get a mark-fever, never satisfied unless they get the highest mark. I see 
 them rush for corrected papers with flushed faces and trembling hands, 
 look at the end for the mark, and then stuff them into their desks. It is 
 not the work they care about, but what they get for the work," which 
 reminds me of a youth who afterwards took the Balliol, at Oxford, in an 
 exceptionally brilliant examination. When I knew him he was the most 
 wonderful prize-getter — no matter in what subject — I ever fell in with. 
 His true culture was indicated by the fact that his college room was 
 adorned with tawdry and vulgar coloured prints, and he always emphati- 
 cally protested that he cared not at all for knowledge, nor for distinction, 
 but only for the money value of his winnings. I will conclude this note by 
 transcribing the major part of an admirable letter from the mistress of a 
 non-Company High School in the North of England. She writes : — 
 
 " There are few subjects upon which I feel so strongly as that of physical 
 education and development; especially as it seems to take such a very
 
 28 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 and vice, in grasp of what is meant by the training of a 
 human being, we have fallen behind the fellow-citizens of 
 
 secondary place in many public girls' schools, and is frequently altogether 
 neglected. 
 
 " 1. I think one of the greatest evils is the local examinations for girls 
 under eighteen years of age. They put a great strain upon them. The 
 girls unconsciously get over-excited, and where the examination is con- 
 stantly held before them as the goal to which they are tending, they think 
 more of it than the work they are actually doing. Young children, 
 especially, if they are not stupid and apathetic, become unnaturally 
 excited. Work might possibly be arranged in a school so that the girls 
 were unconscious of an approaching examination in it, but this is very 
 difficult to accomplish with such as the Oxford and Cambridge Local 
 Examinations. In my opinion it is better in Girls' High Schools to arrange 
 for a systematic course of education suited to the ages, capacity, and to a 
 certain extent local characteristics of the girls, and subject the school 
 periodically to an inspection. This does away with prolonged strain and 
 enables thorough work to be tested. The Oxford and Cambridge Local 
 Examinations require a knowledge of a great many subjects, and young 
 children should not be occupied with more than a very few at one time. 
 For this last reason I consider them very injurious. Again, failure is often 
 taken very much to heart, especially by the best, most thoughtful, intelli- 
 gent and conscientious girls, and it is they who as a rule do not succeed 
 well in examinations. The result is that they are disappointed ; they lose 
 confidence in themselves, and become indifferent. Their intelligence gets 
 blunted, and all spirit for investigation and research is crushed out by 
 the thought that thei'e is no time for anything but that which is needed for 
 the examination. I think the very feeling of having accomplished some- 
 thing intellectually adds to bodily vigour and energy, and then follows the 
 desire for exercise. I have seen girls after thinking out some question, 
 and finally arriving at a right conclusion, being seized with the desire to 
 rush about and play. But this healthy feeliog never comes to a girl who 
 is crammed. 
 
 "2. No school should be without a spacious playground and a large, airy 
 room for wet Aveather. The system of turning g^irls out for ten or even five 
 minutes in the middle of the morning for an orderly march round a corridor 
 or playground, is, in my opinion, altogether unnatural. So is supervision 
 by a teacher during play, unless she plays with them at their request. A 
 large number of girls together will generally play, and play well and 
 heartily, if left to themselves for fifteen minutes, and not need supervision. 
 
 " 3. A portion of every day should be given to systematic drill. For 
 older girls of 17 and 18, gymnastics might be substituted for drill, or 
 supplement it with advantage. A good school should have its gymnasium 
 and, if possible, swimming bath. 
 
 " 4. I think that, as a rule, far too much written work is expected from 
 girls. The bent, cramped position over a desk, for a length of time, is bad 
 for them, both at school and at home. It increases the duties of the 
 teachers enormously, for all written work should be carefully looked over 
 and corrected. Children would be brighter, and their knowledge would be 
 more thorough, for more * question and answer ' in class ; and the time 
 thus spent in catechising would, although apparently taken from the 
 lesson, be spent to the greater advantage of the pupils. 
 
 " 5. If girls are kept on the mental stretch for nearly four hours in the 
 morning, that is, for two hours at a time, with an interval of half-an-hour 
 in the middle for drill and play, very little good work can be expected from 
 them in addition. In many High Schools girls work, I may say, literally 
 always. They come home at one o'clock, begin to work immediately after 
 dinner, take no walk or exercise, or, if they are forced to go out, think all 
 the way of their lessons. They work again all the evening until late at 
 night, perhaps until 11 o'clock, and even then they do not rest, but think
 
 TEE OVERSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 29 
 
 Pericles and the sophists with whom Socrates held dispute. 
 They at least knew that the whole man must be trained 
 if the parts were to be sound. Those schools of Athens, which 
 bred the highest type of intellect which has ever adorned the 
 human race, were all gymnasia. The young men, whose univer- 
 sity was the Academy or the Lyceum, equipped themselves with 
 immortal philosophy and mathematics while they walked among 
 the orange-trees and myrtles ; and health meant with them what 
 the word means in its old Anglo-Saxon strength, wholeness of all 
 the faculties which make up humanity. 
 
 In her essay on " Hygeiolatry," Miss Cobbe owns to the 
 gravest apprehension lest modern society should be invaded by a 
 new principle in morals. The threatening principle she reduces 
 to this formula: "That any practice which, in the opinion of 
 experts, conduces to health or tends to the cure of disease, be- 
 comes, ipso facto, morally lawful and right." * Nor is it easy to 
 escape the facts which Miss Cobbe marshals to prove her case. 
 Rightly or wrongly, legislation for health is carried forward with 
 a zeal which takes but scanty heed of constitutional principles 
 and personal rights for which our forefathers spent treasure of 
 means and life. Rightly or wrongly, not only the warehouse and 
 the mill, but the home and the actual person are more and more 
 subjected to inspection and control which neither we nor our 
 fathers have hitherto been able to bear. 
 
 But the strange thing is that side by side with this phenome- 
 non, contemporaneously with the appearance of the degrading 
 and deadly doctrine which Miss Cobbe deplores, and of the good 
 and true spirit of sanitary reform which is the brighter side of 
 the medal, we have a growing recklessness about healthy living, 
 which makes for the serious deterioration of the stalwart Ens- 
 
 of a Euclid rider or some other mathematical problem the last things, and 
 le*ve it to solve itself during the night by unconscious cerebrat'on. In the 
 morning it has to be hastily written out, and the girl leaves home without 
 having time left to eat her breakfast. This is not education ; and a school 
 which allows such a state of things to continue must have something very 
 much amiss with its organisation. Hard, bright class-work, with a little 
 carefully-set work to do at home on the day's lesson, is, in my opinion, the 
 best economy, and I have found it answer. 
 
 " 6. If teachers are conscientiously to prepare their lessons, and I main- 
 tain that the simplest lesson needs preparation, they must not be burdened 
 with the drudgery of collecting endless exercises. A teacher in a High 
 School should not have her time so filled up that she cannot correct all her 
 exercise-books within school hours. This, however, is generally the case, 
 owing probably to an inadequate staff. I do not believe a teacher in full 
 work can at the same time take an examination herself satisfactorily. I 
 have never known of a case of its being done without a breakdown sooner 
 or later, or without some detriment to health." 
 
 * '^ The Peak in Darien," &c., p. 82. -■ • ;
 
 30 THE OVERSTRAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 lish race. While health-committees of Town Councils are more 
 vigilant than any previous generation has known them, barris- 
 ters, solicitors, physicians, ministers of religion by the hundred 
 are living at a pressure of which the lightest result is chronic 
 dyspepsia and consequent enfeebled progeny, while among the 
 graver consequents are heart-disease, consumption, paralysis, 
 insanity, early death. While food-reform and dress-reform are 
 becoming the social gospel of thousands of educated ladies, I for 
 one have frequently reckoned up the whole circle of my personal 
 acquaintances in the vain attempt to find a single unbroken 
 family of vigorous and healthy girls. While local and national 
 legislators freely sanction, in the interests of health, regulations 
 which empower sanitary ofiicers to enter the private house and 
 carry off the sick child against the protest of the parent, the 
 school which the State endows reeks with foul air, and the 
 school-keeper is^bribed to goad the slow brain till it keeps pace 
 with the quick. While physiology and domestic economy are 
 earning heavy grants from the State purse, the simplest physiolo- 
 gical laws are ignored, and the first principles of sanitary economy 
 are defied by the agents of State education. 
 
 The anomaly springs from one fundamental cause. The 
 criminal excess and the criminal defect in the care for health 
 equally arise from a great lack in our social and religious philoso- 
 phy. That lack is an etJiics of the body. 
 
 The only true ethics of the body consists in its recognition as 
 an instrument for responsible use — a recognition which can be 
 generated only by a vivid reHgious sense of its direct derivation 
 from the Supreme in trust for the furtherance of the noblest 
 purposes of life^ Such a recognition will, on the one hand, 
 check the disposition to regard physical sanitation as the ulti- 
 mate end of the existence of the individual or the race. It will, 
 on the other hand, constrain each man by its moral force 
 towards thoughtful and steady solicitude for his own health and 
 that of the community of which he is a responsible unit. Under 
 the guidance of such a principle, we shall neither exalt the care 
 of the body to be the final goal of our social aims, nor leave the 
 body to shift for itself unconsidered and untended. 
 
 Guided by such an ethics, the citizen will perceive the avoidable 
 over-taxing of his own physical powers and the indulgence of 
 idle and selfish habits to be alike immoral. A voluntary spend- 
 thrift mental strain and a voluntary inactivity he will know 
 to be equal sins ; and he will no longer, while gravely telling his 
 neighbour he does wrong to overwork, cherish a secret per- 
 suasion that his own overwork leans to the side of virtue. We
 
 THE,. OVERSTRAIN IN EDUCATION. 31 
 
 shall all understand it to be our duty to maintain our physical 
 constitutions at the highest level of efficiency we can, to the end 
 that "our bodies maybe the servants of our spirits, and both 
 our bodies and our spirits be God's servants." 
 
 But if such is the obligation of the professional man in his 
 own case, how far graver the obligation with regard to the young 
 and tender minds and frames committed to his charge. Here 
 are men not. made, but men and women in the making. The 
 delicate balance of physical, intellectual, and moral power can 
 be sustained in the process of development only by the wisest 
 and most constant care. The breach of moral trust involved in 
 the reckless spoiling of the physical instrument of our own in- 
 tellectual and spiritual life is aggravated ten-fold when we spoil 
 the lungs or brains of those who are themselves defenceless 
 against our rule. Moreover, to the healthy development of the 
 child a bounding energy is needful which the adult can do with- 
 out. The twelve months of overstrain or the few weeks of 
 feverish solicitude and struggle go further towards over-balancing 
 the poise of child-power than towards wrecking the harmonious 
 order of a grown man's energies. Childhood is the time for 
 preparing the physical instrument ; in manhood, if it is simply 
 kept in sound condition, it is enough. 
 
 But the gravity of the trust is again enormously increased 
 when the State lays hold of the child with its all-compelling 
 hand, and charges itself with his intellectual development. 
 Compulsory education — however wise and necessary— is the 
 assumption, by the State, of the responsibility inherent in the 
 parent. The English legislature constrains the child to certain 
 intellectual training. It is bound by every consideration alike 
 of justice and of mercy to see to it that the form of that in- 
 tellectual training shall be consonant with the best and truest 
 physical development. It is its urgent duty to recognise the 
 rights and functions of the body. That State which seizes the 
 children of the poor at an age when, for the rich man's little 
 ones, life is still but the sanny alternation between the nursery 
 and the garden, and administers, in the name of education, 
 a system by which the physique of multitudes is enfeebled, and 
 preparation is made for the deterioration of the race, commits 
 surely an almost unforgivable sin. Whosoever shall cause one 
 of these little ones to stumble, it were better for him if a great 
 mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into 
 the sea. 
 
 The path of reform, however, lies open, and there is no 
 serious difficulty in entering on it. Let educationists clearly
 
 32 THE OVEBSTBAIN IN EDUCATION. 
 
 expound to themselves the ideal towards which they are labour- 
 ing. Is that ideal a generation of children full of useful in- 
 formation — information for the most part to be utterly forgotten 
 twelve months after emancipation from the mental drill of 
 school, — or is it a generation of bright and happy, intelligent 
 and loving boys and girls, full of the 'promise of that stalwart 
 manhood and comely womanhood which make for the greatness 
 and virtue of a nation? ,The latter ideal once selected, the 
 better way will soon be found; and the EngHsh people of 
 the dawning twentieth century will be a people realising that 
 noble harmony of physical and moral faculty of which Browning 
 
 tells :— 
 
 We need no longer say, 
 
 " Spite of this flesh to-day, 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole." 
 
 As a bird wings and sings. 
 
 Let us cry, " All good things 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul.' 
 
 W. Speaiglit and Sons, Printers, Fetter Lane, London.
 
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