OVERWORKED SCHOOL CHILDREN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CI, Issue 11884, 6 May 1899, Page 7

OVERWORKED SCHOOL CHILDREN.

Now that the school holidays have come and the four months’ grind is suspended, we have time to , look around at some of the results .of our educational system. In regard to holidays, -neither teacher nor taught - has /anything to complain'of in New .-Zealand, These intervals of rest'and pleasure, are as necessary for the body as study.,, is , for ■ the brain. Work 1 itself is*

worth nothing when the workers’, vitality flags from fatigue or ■ loss of interest. If ever the holidays should be shortened, ample compensation ought to bs 4 made by cutting, short the hours, of work during the term. This plan might not slut teachers, who like a good clear holiday to , themselves, but it certainly seems more rational to give children every day a moderate amount of work and a moderate amount of play, than to overwork them for three or four months and then leave them with nothing to do for another month. Probably -there is less overwork now ■in New. Zealand than there was some years ago, when there were frequent reports of bright scholars breaking down with brain fever or nervous prostration. But even now the school age begins too ; early. Children under seven are hardly improved by sitting still, trying to concentrate .their .attention, first on one subject and then on another. The kindergarten does proceed upon more natural methods than the old system, and introduces an element of play; but unfortunately- the slate and pencil and the text-book are creeping even into the kindergartens, and in winter time lessons- take up nearly all the hours of sunshine and fresh air. The result of too early education. is often to bring about physical deterioration.. Spectacles, once, a sign of old age, are now to be seen in every classroom. A London physician points out that the cases of St Vitus’s dance in the Children’s Hospital are chiefly due to "preparing for examination,” “being worried over lessons,” and “ arithmetic too difficult.” A more insidious trouble is that nervous exhaustion which now does not spare the youngest. Even when the process is ; not carried to such extremes the severe strain on immature minds leads to arrested development. Up, to a certain point the scholars make marvellous progress, but ‘ after that point there is no continuous’development. ■ . We need to bfe cohstithtly fafllinded of the • fact that it is nof the amount learned, but the amount ’ “ assimilated and concerted into mind ” that’ counts. Teachers deal chiefly with one set of faculties, the receptive; which are strongest in childhood. The reasoning and executive abilities are drawn out afterwards by. contact with “men, women and things” in general. This is an additional reason for not sacrificing health and vitality to the mere preparation for life. Except for the very young or exceptionally delicate, our school hours are not excessive. It is in the home lessons that overtime comes in. Surely if eight hours a day are. enough for an adult, five are enough for a child. But home lessons, and such extras as music and drawing, often keep boys and girls at work for nine or ten hours, and before examination, when nqt properly supervised, they win continue studying till midnight. In England and America scholars seem much worse off than here. From London come reports, of bad sanitary conditions and overstimulation, leading to blindness, consumption and paralysis. The Americans have an insane -ambition to make their children “ know and have everything,” and one lady has taken up her pen in vehement protest. School she says, is never out. There is no child life left. “Go into any public school and you will see girls pallid as day lilies, and boys with flat chests and the waxen skin that has been,, named the school complexion. Undertake the tasks laid upon girls in their teens and then, tell me how you like the system.” Even the accomplishments of defining “ aphocrasis, apocope, paragoge and paralipsis,” and reading Browning at sight may be bought too dear. The feeling on this subject has now; grown so strong that practical steps have been taken, both in America and in Germany, to cany out what is called the “New Education'’ on more rational and moderate lines, and in England a King Alfred, School Society has set to work on a similar reform. It is time that we were moving in the same direction in this colony.