The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1883-10-26
A One-Slded Education.

Besides not educating the boys or
girls body side by side with the
mind. or even stopping to consider
whether throughout the year they
progress physically at all or not, in
every city, town and hamlet Of our
land we provide machinery and re-
quire them to use it, which, kept
within reasonable bounds, has
proved one of the great sources of
national progress, to which we
point with just pride. but which,
like almost everything else that is
good, may yet be so injudiciously
used as to work positive harm, and
that is the school system. With
many of our cities doubling
in population every genera
ton or oftener, with parks
and play grounds narrowing almost
annually, and many of these so well
kept that the children are not all
lowed to use the greater part Of
them at all. with school yards so
diminutive that half the pupils in
some of the schools could not even
stand up together in their own
school yards, much less do any play
ing, in an immense number of our
schools we put the boy where from
five to eight hours of each day are
gwen up to close, exacting study,
often in rooms in which the air
much Of the time is second hand
article, and hence unfit to breathe.
Is it difficult to see why, under such
treatment, many of the BOYS are
anything but hale and robust?
Maclaren, speaking of an English
schoolboy Of whom he knew, says
that his mother boosted that he
stndied seven hours a day regu-
larly. sometimes eight, and then he
wonders whether the boys head
aches were real or sham. But if
| this surprises him, what would he
think of such cases as the follow
ing, which are only one or two out
of scores sent to the New York
press some months since, when the
matter Of school overwork was
under discussion. One parent
| wrote:
my daughter, aged II, attends
Grammar school No. Y, one OF the
best in the city, and conscientiously
strives to obtain a good report.
She reaches home at $50, spends
one hour at the piano, and then
studies until $50. After supper
she studies again until 9, and then
retires, to rise again at 6 to study
away until breakfast time, after
which she starts for school"
Another parent wrote that his
daughter of fourteen, going through
the regular course, and wishing to
keep np with zher classmates, "haSi
come direct from school, and sat in
her room studying usually about foe
hours" If Mr.. Mclaren thinks
eight hours OF study or even seven
day ought to give child head
ache, what will he say to the ten or
twelve of each of these girls? Is
it strange that the father of the
second one added:
''Ths result has been that l was
obliged to take her from school, and
put her under the care of physician,
who is yet treating her for no less
disease than st. Vitus' dance.
Physicians and all who see her
agree that her brain has been over
worked"
School Commissioner Frederick
w. Devoe, on investigating these
and other cases, said: 81 was speak
ing to school trustee to-day whose
daughter, public-school pupil, is
afflicted with st. Vitus's dance, the
direct result of over-study. The
present course of study as so elaborate
that nothing more than q superficial
k1oaOledge can be gained 6y the
pupils"
Here, then, a course of study
which not only crowds out even one
minute q day of attention to the
body, which compels many pupils to
keep their minds on the stretch, not
four or five hours daily, but often
more than twice that long, and this
when they are under no care or ins
struction out of school which begins
TO fit their bodies for even their
/ present way of living, much less
for effective work in the future
years, when others besides them
selves must depend on them Cor
support-this plan is found by one
of the commissioners himself, after
careful examination, to be $50 elab-
crate that nothing more than q
superficial knowledge can be gained
by the pupils"
Is not this paying a pretty good
price for a pretty poor article? If
all that 5his injudicious. and IN
many cases dangerous, method Oh
education brings to the pupil is but
superficial knowledge" after all,
would it not be well to stop such a
plan at once, and substitute one
which will acquairt the pupil
thoroughly, not specifically, with
whatever he attempts to know, and
will at the same time educate his
body as well p-WILLIAM BLAKE,
in Harper'S Magazine.
INDULGENT parents who allow their
children to eat heartily of high-ses-
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