MENTAL OVER-WORK AMONG PUBLIC MEN. 15 



out of this over-work. These cases were observed a few years ago 

 when the system of competitive examinations prevailed in its worst 

 form in Philadelphia public schools. The Boys' High School and 

 Girls' Normal School had accommodations only for a fixed number 

 of pupils. Any school of a certain grade could send pupils to the 

 examinations ; but those to be admitted were selected from the com- 

 petitors absolutely in the order of the averages obtained. Twenty- 

 five might be accepted from the grammar school of one section, 

 and only five, or perhaps not one, from another school of an equal 

 grade. Cramming was at the highest premium. A teacher's repu- 

 tation, and even his position sometimes, depended upon the success 

 of liis pupils at these examinations. Teachers and pupils both fre- 

 qucn.'Jy gave vray under the terrible mental pressure to which they 

 were subjected. One grammar school principal, just before his last 

 illness, succeeded hr extraordinary efforts in getting the highest 

 general average of ;;ny school in the city, and also had in his suc- 

 cessful class the boy who attained the highest average among all 

 who competed. These were dearly bought honors. It was no un- 

 common thing for teacher and pupil to begin wark at seven o'clock 

 in the morning, to invade the dinner hour, and to continue their 

 labors until ten or later in the evening. Happily, a quota system 

 has taken the place of the murderous method here outlined — a 

 method to which, I trust, Philadelphia will never return. 



Not long since, in some of our newspapers, was noted the case of 

 a colored girl who was in attendance at the same school with white 

 children, and who died from " brain fever " brought on by over- 

 work, in her efforts to compete with her more favored schoolmates. 

 Scores of children whose skins are fair, differ as widely from each 

 other in capacity and helpful surroundings as she differed from 

 those with whom she vainly endeavored to compete. 



Our children are too largely in the hands of those educationalists 

 to whom Clouston^ refers, who go on the theory that there is an un- 



^ Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases. 



