HEALTH AND EDUCATION.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2841, 23 March 1878, Page 4

HEALTH AND EDUCATION.

Dr W. B. Richardson delivered a leclreofi Monday at the London Institution a " Learning and health." After dcsBribing, in his introductory remarks, excssire specialisation on tho part of men f science and members of learned proessions, Dr Iticbardson said he trusted nine scholar would declare the unity of ;nowledge, and denounce from the point f view of Education tho subdivision of :jiow3ed#o iato minute departments, out if which the student dared not step. To lim it fell to oppose the system as desractivo to activity* and thereby to the strength of mental growth. It was his jusiness. to declare that at this time health and education aro not going bund in hand. He could not sit

3uy by day to see the failure of the young brain, and of tho brain approaching its maturity, and of the brain matured, and tamely accept the phenomena as inevitable.. To him observing as a physician, the appearance now-a-days of such men as Shakespeare, Eeynolds, Kemble, 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 caks were forced in their growth, and when approaching maturity were barbarously compressed into narrow and unyielding tubes, there would be no forest. The present modes of education are not compatible with htalthy; life. Faults in construction of schoolrooms, in school discipline, and school 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 trausmissable forms of character and mind. The first serious and increasing evil bearing on education and health lies in I he 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 arc properly taught to play.* Play is held out to them'not as a natural thing, as something 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 work, a form of work which a child likes, whiles he dislikes another form because it is" unfitted to his potters. For children under seven years of ngo all teaching should bo through play. Through play letters find languages can be taught, animal life can be classified/ and the surface of the earth made clear, and history can be told as a Btory. 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 maybe younger> are made to study from 9 o'clock until noon, and again after a hasty meal and an hour for play from 2 to i, and later on are obliged to prepare essons for the following morning. The jrain is rendered active because diverted I'ora its natural course, the child becomes Precocious. Its tongue will be furred or iovercd with many red points like a strawberry, or too read and very dry. The appetite is capricious, strange foods are asked for, and the stomach is never in order. If you watch the face you note that the hequent 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. Eichardson 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, bat 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 ' excitement of success and the de- i pressiori after failure. Young men and young women now who are presenting 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 inniiltency 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 forgoing into the inquisition should, worn and wearied with the labor, bloodless and sleepless, run the risk, being quite ready for it, or at the last moment take six months' entire rest, and tlieu be got up to the same pitch of lifclessness 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 iholhs,. follow their mates into the midni&ht candle of learning ?—;Times. -1