The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-01-19 00:00:00

HEALTH AND EDUCATION.

In London, on Monday night, Dr. B. W. Richard-
son delivered a lecture at the London Institution on
"Learning and Health." After describing, in his in-
troductory remarks, excessive specialisation on the
part of men of science and members of learned profes-
sions, Dr. Richardson said he trusted some scholar
would declare the unity of knowledge, and denounce
from the point of view of education the subd.vision of
knowledge into minute departments, out of which the
student dared not step. To him it fell to oppose the
system as destructive to vital activity, and thereby to
the strength of mental growth. It was his business to de-
clare that at this time health and education are not going
hand in hand. He could not sit day by day to see the
failure of the young brain, and of the brain approach-
ing its maturity, and of the brain matured, and tamely
accept the phenomena as ine% itable. To him, ob.
serving as a physician, the appearance now-a-days of
such men as Shakespeare, Reynolds, Kz,nable, Newton,
Bacon, Scott were in the freedom of their intellectual
growths was impossible. Nature could, as of old,
produce acorns for future oaks, but if the young oaks
were forced in their growth, and when approaching
maturity were barbarously compressed into narrow
and unyielding 'tubes there would be no forest.
The present mods of education are not compatible
with healthy life. Faults in construction of school-
rooms, in school discipline, and s 10°1 punishment
exist, but they are departing errors. In their time
they hardened many hearts and broke more, and
have left their impress on the men and women whom
they trained into transmissible forms of character and
mind. The first serious and increasing evil bearing on
education and its relation to health lies in the too early
subjection of pupils to study. Children are often
taught lessons from books before they are properly
taught to walk and long before they are properly
taught to play. Play is held out to them not as a
natural thing, as something which the parent should
feel it a duty to encourage] but as a reward for so
much work done and as a rest from work done; as
though play were not itself a form of work, a form
of work which a child likes while he dislikes another
form because it is unfitted to his powers. For children
under seven years of age all teaching should be
through play. Through play letters and languages
can be taught, animal life can be classified, and
the surface of the earth made clear, and history
can be told as a story. Under such a system the
child grows into knowledge, learns well, eats, sleeps,
and plays well, and acquires the habit of happiness.
The increase of garden schools is a good sign. There
are schools where children of eight, nine, and ten
years of age, or it may be younger, are made to study
from nine o'clock until noon, and again after a hast4y
meal and an hour for play
.from two to five, and later
on are obliged to prepare lessons for the following
morning. The brain is rendered active because
diverted from its natural course, the child becomes
precocious. Its tongue will be furred or covered with
many red points like a strawberry, or too red and very
dry. The appetite is capricious, strange foods are
asked for, and the stomach is never in ordet. If you
watch the face you note that the frequent flush gives
way to paleness. The eyes gleam with light at one
time, and are dull and sad at another. The sleep is
broken. The child is a victim to the intemperance of
education. -

Dr. Richardson passed on to speak of overwork and
unhealthy competition at a somewhat later age,
observing that to put a horse in harness and make it
work hard while growing is acknowledged to be cruel
and ignorant, but that to make a growing child work
hard is thought a mark of vigilance. Teachers are
often forced into such a course by the ambition of
parents. The physician sees the result of the excite-
ment of success and the depression after failure.
Young men and young women now who are present-
ing themselves for the higher class examinations are
crushed by the insanity of the effort. In the past year
four of these victims have been under the lecturer's
care. In one, absence of memory had resulted ;
in another, sleeplessness, and that exhaustion
which leads almost to delirious. wandering. Here
failure caused extreme depression. In the third
case sleeplessness, labour, and excitement brought
on an hereditary tendency to intermittency of the
action of the heart. The examiners were not
testing the cramming of this youth. He failed
because his heart could hold out no longer under
their manipulation. In the fourth instance it was
necessary to decide whether a youth brought up just
to the condition for going into the inquisition should,
worn and wearied with the labour, bloodless and
sleepless, run the risk, being quite ready for it, or at
the last moment take six months' entire rest, and then
be got up to the same pitch of lifelessness and misery
again. The system was doing sufficient evil to men,
but what would happen to the world if women,
anxious to emulate, were to have their way and, like
moths, follow their mates into the midnight candle of
learning?