400 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from the work wliich. it lias primarily to perform, and where there 

 is in consequence a failure of strength to meet the sequelcB of 

 scarlet fever or other serious illness. Even in the great number 

 of cases where no strongly marked ill-effect discloses itself during 

 the years of youth, there are sufficient grounds for believing that 

 what is unsparingly taken at this period of life is taken at the 

 expense of future vigor and capability. It has, moreover, to be 

 borne in mind that mental overpressure and brain irritation, on 

 the one side, are likely, just as idleness and want of occupation 

 the other, to increase among boys peculiar physical (and moral) 

 dangers of a most serious character — dangers which are but little 

 regarded by the public, but which always exist where boys are 

 massed together. 



We consider that, together with a general failure to keep 

 steadily in view the true ends of education, great examinations 

 and the valuable prizes attached to them are responsible for a 

 large part of this overstrain placed on young bodies and young 

 minds. Let these great prizes once exist in the education market, 

 and we must expect that boys and young men will train for them, 

 regardless of higher and more important considerations ; that par- 

 ents and teachers will allow themselves to join in the emulation 

 — a few, perhaps, of their number mentally protesting, while look- 

 ing on with " somber acquiescence." 



By the side of the physical evils, at which we have glanced, 

 stand equally serious evils of an intellectual and moral kind : 



1. It should be noted that under the prize-system all education 

 tends to be of the same type, since boys from all schools of the 

 same grade meet in the same competition, and all teaching tends 

 to be directed toward the winning of the same prizes. No more 

 unfortunate tendency could be imagined. The health and progress 

 of every great science, such as education, depend upon continual 

 difference, upon new ideas, and experiments carried out to give 

 effect to such ideas; upon the never-ending struggle between 

 many different forms and methods, each to excel the other. It 

 can not be too often repeated that uniformity means arrest of 

 growth and consequent decay ; diversity means life, growth, and 

 adaptation without limit. 



2. We hold that the preponderating influence of examinations 

 destroys the best teaching. Under it the teacher loses his own 

 intelligent self-direction. He can not devote his powers to such 

 parts of a subject as are most real to himself, and most deeply felt 

 by himself (though on this depend the impressiveness of all teach- 

 ing and the awakening of permanent interest in those taught), as 

 he is constantly controlled by the sense of the coming examina- 

 tion, in which of course he wishes his pupils to succeed. The pu- 

 pil, on the other hand, allows himself to be mechanically guided 



