OVERTAXING YOUNG BRAINS.

Press, Volume XXX, Issue 4095, 11 September 1878, Page 5 (Supplement)

OVERTAXING YOUNG BRAINS.

It is an abuse of the first magnitude (says an English paper) that education is proving the destruction of many of our youth. Scarcely a day passes which does not bring to light some instance of this overstrain of nervous force. Almost any of our readers can call to mind some instance of a bright young mind broken down by overwork in study. We ourselves recall to mind the case of a young lady striving for a prize at sohodl. Aβ the crisis approached, her nerves became more and more on edge, until suddenly she was overwhelmed by hysteria and convulsions in a terrible form. These cases are by no moans remarkable or rare in occurrence. There are hundreds of them to be found around us. There are cases in which children of tender years, for the most trivial offence against school discipline, have been, not beaten, because, happily, corporal punishment no longer forms a degrading element in the education of our children, bat what is much worse, have been systematically kept in something like solitary confinement, on holiday afternoons too, having had nothing to eat from nine o'clock until five in the afternoon. We can conceive nothing more cruelty thoughtless. Any lad would prefer a whipping twice over to such a course of treatment. By lode, even more than by men, the deprivation of liberty ie keenly felt, and certainly does anything but tend to strengthen and mature the brain. Every pastor of a church comes upon similar instances in hia congregation. They are of all others moet distressing. The parents are suddenly aroused to a danger they had not measured. The hopes and ambitions of the student are destroyed, and often years of sickness are the inevitable sequel. No one will question but that learning is most valuable. The import* 1 ance of education cannot easily be exaggerated. Brain-power seems to be more and more the coming force whioh is to control society. Volumes might be written with the utmost interest and effect on the benefits of our higher courses of education. But is there not room in the midst of it all for the plea of common humanity ? Think of it. In all our , streets the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has its agents watching for galled, lame, and overstrained horses, and' these are at once taken off from car, cart, op ' carriage. Is there not some humane person who will rise up for the protection of our dragged out and over-worked children in, schools, ■