Emotional Prodigality.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 907, 19 July 1889, Page 4

Emotional Prodigality.

Something has been wisely said of late about the danger of over-pressure in our schools. The time Bpent in study that ought to be spent ia out-door play or in exercise in gymnasia is worse than wasted. But the over pressure of intellectual work would not be so bad were it not for the emotional prodigality of many children both at home and at school. Teachers are spurred to strain pupils to the utmost that they may meet the coming tests for promotion. The healthy spontaneous emotions that make it the delight of childhood to learn are crushed, and factitious emotions of fear and dread are substituted. At home the emotional excitement is often greater than at school. Brizes, the expectations of parents, piano practice, oompany, parties, dancing, petting, and reproofs are the stimuli, culminating often in late hours preparing a half-dozen lessons for the

next day. The tasks at sohool, bard as they are, often are less injurious to children than the emotional dissipation at home; Again, the storm and stress of emotional activity that often occurs at adolescence is liable to Cause an alarming waste of energy ; and there ia danger that habits may then be formed of allowing the emotions to evaporate or to expend themselves in unessential, pedantic, and morbid activities. Whoever revels in emotion and squanders nervous euergy at one period of life will lack the needed support for intellectual activity at another period.—From ‘Economy in Intellectual Wo:k,’ by William H. Burnham in Scribner’s Magazine.