The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-05-15 00:00:00

EDUCATIONAL PRESSURE.

A largely attended meeting in connection with the Social
Science Association was held in London on Monday night
at the Caledonian Hotel, Mr. Joseph Brown, Q.C., in the
chair, when Mrs. Garrett Anderson, M.D., read a paper on
"Educational Pressure."

Declining to express any opinion on boys' schools,
and confining her remarks to the methods of edu-
cation adopted in secondary schools for girls, Mrs.
Garrett Anderson urged the following practical
points as a remedy for the complaints made
as to overwork in such schools : —l. To get
the elements of knowledge well and thoroughly
taught at an early age, and not to urge tke
child to make up for early neglect by taking a very
, extensive range of subjects as soon as she goes to a
, good school. 2. To accept two and a half or three
hours of class work as long enough at one time for
almost all children, and to provide two or three short
intervals of rest—e.g., five or ten minutes in each
hour—during even this time. 3. To insist upon every
girls' school having a playground. 4. To aim at
greatly reducing the amount of writing in the home
work. 5. To reduce the number of examinations,
, and especially to make them as unstimu-
' listing as possible, and to Apply them with great reserve
to the children most likely to shine in them. 6. Not
to aim at completing. the education by the age of
eighteen. The main purpose of Girton and Newnha,m
Colleges is to encourage young women to continue their
education in an organised manner after they cease to
need the restraints imposed upon school-girls And the
existence or these colleges renders it more than ever
unnecessary to attempt to teach girls everything they
ought to know in early adolescence.
An interesting discussion followed the reading of the
paper.

In a leader noticing Mrs. Garrett Anderson's lecture,
the Standard remarks : .

. . . . Female education has for ages been so neglected,
that the reformers spurn the faintest hint as to their over
zeal. Boys' schools are in the same condition. " Subject "
after subject is added, and a schoolmaster who would avoid
the charge of being "behind the day," or who would hold
his own among his rivals, Must, year after year, lengthen
his programme, even though he may have misgivings as to
the possibility of any child digesting the banquet set before
him, without serious damage to his health. . . . And thus
subject is added to subject. No one can contest their
value, but while their merits are being urged, the limited
capacity of the human brain, and the fact that life is short,
are utterly ignored. Moreover, ;Iseems always forgotten
by teachers that the use of education is quite as much to fit
a child for acquiring future knowledge as to furnish him with
what he may soon cease to remember. The longest school
training can but impart a limited stock of facts, and if the
brain is ruined by being over-stimulated in learning there,
the pupil is unfitted to pursue his self-education further than
the age at which the schoolmaster abandoned it.. In the
discussion 'which followed Mrs. Anderson's Lecture
there was a general concensus of opinion regard-
ing the utterly mischievous character of examinations
as now multiplied. Examinations haunt the child
and the teacher at every step. The teacher has to
direct his efforts with a view to the appearance his pupil
will make at these competitions, and the pupil's brain is
over-stimulated with preparation for them. They spoil all
sound teaching, they encourage—and even necessitate—
cramming, and, after all, prove little except that the par-
ticular boy or girl who gains the greatest number of marks
has a more retentive memory than the one who is numeci-
cally less distinguished. Mrs. Anderson will, however, ac-
complish good if she can convince parents that their children
would learn snore if they were taught legs, and that their
health would be. better And their minds, fherefore. stronger
if their school hours were shorter.