PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. MONDAY, MAY 14, 1906. THE DANGER OF CRAM.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 111, 14 May 1906, Page 2

PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. MONDAY, MAY 14, 1906. THE DANGER OF CRAM.

A lecture delivered at Dunedin by Dr. Truby King, in which he touched dramatically on the effect of over- . exertion of the mind on a child's future, has created a good deal of sensation. Dr. King said that people expressed pity for tho hardened brute who, after years during which he consistently ill-treated his wife, at last murdered her and was hanged, but it never occurred to them to pity those who were allowed to kill themselves with over-work —which killed them body and mind. He had two cases to quote—the case of a boy who was a dux of the Boys' High School onco, and a girl who attained a similar honor at the Girls' High School. These two people lay in the asylum hopeless lunatics, and they had a right to protect these people rendered insane for life. Not only had human lives been blasted, but it applied in an economic way too. Every person sent to the asylum cost the State an average of £1000. "Fancy," said the doctor,' "sixty years of life spent in an asylum becau.se of your system of education." Commenting editorially on the lecture, the "Dunedin Star" says:—"lt would be well if arrangements could be made for the striking story to be told in. other centres, seeing that it has a direct, we might almost say a terrible, interest for every parish in which there is a school, every home in which" there is a child.- Some 6'f the things said by Dr. King last night are the talk of the town to-day, and well they may be. . . . There-is at Seacliff Mental Hospital one who some years ago was dux of a country school. He got up to work at four in the morning, ignoring games and companionship for the sake of. the great ideal which had been set before him, a scholarship at a high school. While working for the scholarship he contracted rheumatic fever and concealed his condition, enduring pain of the worst kind, all for the sake of the glorious ideal, until he fainted, and the truth came out against his will. This Spartan youth subsequently became dux, not only of his second school, but of the Otago Boys' High School, having won an Education Board Senior Scholarship. He went from the High School to the University with another scholarship. From the University he went where ? ' A very painful story,' someone will say, ' but quite exceptional, if not unique; one of those inexplicable tragedies which cannot be foreseen or prevented.' Not a bit of it, neither unique nor inexplicable. Case after case of a cognate character can be cited. What about the dux of the Girls' High School who used.to work ti11.3.a.m. and rose again 'at 6 a.m., in order to get back to her1 books, all for the sake of that same pestilent fetish of an insidious and delusive ideal? Where is she now? These are not new cases. The breakdown of this boy and girl took place some years ago, but there is no lack of new cases that might be mentioned, and there is not likely to oca lack so long as the juggernaut of over-pressure and over-examination continues to be worshipped." The discussion has been taken up with keen interest in other centres of the colony, and is likely to bring about the elimination from our education of much that is false and injurious.