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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



hours for play, it would require all the remaining 

 ten hours, out of the twenty-four, for sleep, in 

 order to supply that perfect renovation of body, 

 that extra nutrition which growth of the develop- 

 ing organs of the body so rigorously demands. 

 But it seems never to be conceived, in respect to 

 the human animal, that growth is labor. To put 

 a horse into harness at too early a time of its life, 

 and to make it work hard as it is growing, is con- 

 sidered the most ignorant of processes ; while to 

 work a growing child harder probably now than 

 at advanced periods of life is often considered 

 the most correct and vigilant of processes. 



This educational training has, according to 

 my experience, only one result — a reduced stand- 

 ard of health and life. Boys and girls subjected 

 to it are rendered pale, thin, irritable, feverish, 

 restless at night, and feeble. A thoroughly good 

 diet, and brisk play, and kind and sympathetic 

 encouragement, may diminish the evil, and I am 

 bound to say often do diminish it ; but these aids, 

 at their best, do no more than diminish. The 

 root of the danger remains, and for delicate chil- 

 dren the aids are a poor shield against the dis- 

 eases of lungs, of heart, of nervous system, that 

 are ever threatening and giving cause for alarm. 

 How easily such overworked children take cold 

 during vicissitudes of season, how severely they 

 suffer when they are attacked with the epidemic 

 diseases — the common experience of every prac- 

 tising physician proves. For these diseases are 

 themselves of nervous origin, and find the readiest 

 place in exhausted nervous natures. 



So the brilliant boy or girl of the school, 

 whose intelligence has preilluminated the world, 

 too frequently dies, and the dull boy or girl, the 

 hulk of the school, escapes back to health from 

 variations of it. And alas ! say the admiring 

 mourners of the dead, alas ! it is true, " whom 

 the gods love die young." Alas ! it is false, I say. 

 Whom the gods love die old ; go through their 

 appointed course, fulfill their appointed duties, 

 and sink into their rest, knowing no more of 

 death than of birth, and leaving no death-stricken 

 mourners at their tombs. 



The breach between health and education in 

 the period of studentship now under considera- 

 tion is further evidenced by the method that ex- 

 ists — and as a necessity exists in a bad system — 

 of making no practical distinction between one 

 learner and another in relation to physical capaci- 

 ty and power. It is one of the faults in the sys- 

 tem of punishments for those unfortunates who 

 have broken the laws of the land, that the same 

 labor is inflicted constantly on persons of entirely 



different physical power, so that either half a 

 punishment, or a double punishment, may be im- 

 posed for the same offense. This is most unfair 

 even to criminals. It is not a bit more unfair 

 than the system in school-classes of teaching 

 every one the same. To take the boy who has 

 an inherited tendency to consumption, or to heart- 

 disease, or to insanity, and to place him under 

 the same mental regime as another boy who has 

 none of these proclivities, but is of healthiest 

 parentage, is almost a crime in ignorance. And 

 when it is the fact that the healthiest boy in a 

 school is, in all probability, himself overworked 

 it is not difficult to detect that, in respect to work 

 imposed on pupils passing from the eleventh to the 

 seventeenth or eighteenth year, it is impossible 

 for health and education to progress side by side 

 and develop lustily together. 



I said there was a second course of error in 

 education at the period of life now under consid- 

 eration. That consists in failing to allow for dif- 

 ference of mental capacity and turn of mind in 

 different learners. There are many minds of 

 neutral tendency ; minds that can take in a cer- 

 tain limited amount of knowledge on almost any 

 and every subject, but which can never master 

 much in anything. These minds, if they be not 

 unduly pressed and rubbed out, or flattened 

 down, become in time respectable in learning, 

 and sometimes imbued with the plainest common- 

 sense. These minds bear at school much work 

 with comparatively small injury, for they are ad- 

 mittedly dull, and great things are not expected of 

 them, and great things are not attempted by them. 

 These minds do the necessary work of medioc- 

 rity, in this world, an important work enough — 

 the work of the crust of the intellectual sphere. 



There are two other very different orders of 

 minds. There is the mind analytical, that looks 

 into details in business, into elements in science, 

 into figures and facts in civil and natural history. 

 In the school such a mind is good at arithmetic ; 

 good at mathematics ; good at facts and dates ; 

 good at niceties of language. In these directions 

 its lessons are pleasures, or, at the worst, are 

 scarcely labors. There is, again, the mind con- 

 structive or synthetic ; the mind that builds ; 

 that uses facts and figures, only, in the end, for 

 its own purposes of work ; which easily learns 

 principles of construction ; which grasps poetry 

 and the hidden meaning of the poet; which is 

 wonderful often for memory, but remembers the 

 whole, rarely the parts of a theme ; and which 

 cannot by any pressure inflicted on it, or self-in- 

 flicted, take fast hold of minute distinctions. 



