The Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1908. THE YOUNG IDEA.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 7, 9 January 1908, Page 4

The Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1908. THE YOUNG IDEA.

In yesterday's issue reference was made to Mr G. H. Reid's complaint that education was so frequently misapplied in after life. Another criticism of educational methods, though of a somewhat different character, is made by Mrs J. D. Hay Shaw, who \yrites to the London Daily Express upon over-teaching. . Mrs Shaw deplores the extraordinary number of infant prodigies that the last decade has produced. She considers that in many cases the child's future health is ruthlessly and blindly sacrificed in order that during the first years of life it may succeed in gratifying the vanity of a mother by outstripping the children of her friends. "The child of to-day has barely opened its eyes to the ' world," ' she writes,' '" hardly succeeded in distinguishing common objects, before it is inundated with kindergarten toys and scientific models, all designed with the view of training the tiny Brain in the path ,of knowledge; and the mother of a child of four, who is able to read unassisted words of three letters, is an infinitely prouder woman than the one whose offspring of the same age revels in mud pies and battered hats, and is unable to distinguish B from D." Mrs Hay contrasts'the learned youngster with the manufacturer of mud pies, the latter generally being a sturdy, rosy child, impervious to wind and weather, while the former is undersized and fragile, already showing in his pallid and wrinkled brows that the overtaxing of the brain is sowing the seeds of that general debility and those nervous diseases which are the bane of modern life. Unfortunately .this, though perhaps overdrawn, is in the main true. Parents, otherwise practical enough, too .often seem incapable of realising that the brain should develop with the body, and not before it, and that to endeavour to produce a matured intellect while the body is yet in its infancy is as foolish as to expect a tree to bear fruit while still in the seedling stage. The consequences of this undue forcing are only too apparent. The brilliant child seldom develops into the brilliant man or woman. A boy may flash ahead of his fellows like a meteor for a1 few years, but presently, when he has been talked of in the family circle as a future politician or financier, fchere is a collapse of,the prodigy, and chagrin and disappointment for the parents. The child t suddenly fails at a crucial test, v and sinks, intbf insignificance, arid "some plodding, slow, and hitherto despised contemporary steps quietly into his place. That this is true is well within the knowledge of us all, and Mrs Shaw's timely criticism of the forcing process should have 'a good effect. It is clear that nothing can be gained, but very great harm may result, from commencing the Educational process too early. Mrs Shaw considers that the child of seven who has never been taught a lesson will readily outstrip another who has been led along the path of knowledge from two. "And it must be acknowledged," she says, "?that to force the mind of a child of ten to receive an amount of intellectual food which could only be assimilated naturally by a man of twenty wil! not tend to the strengthening or improving of the child's brain at maturity." The moral of it all is that if the best results are to be achieved by children—if they are to have sound minds in sound bodies and not become broken-down, palefaced, bespectacled ansemics at any stage of their career, parents must be content to let their children be children while Nature intended they should be.