"CRAMMING."

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3992, 14 October 1881, Page 3

" CRAMMING."

Of what the effects of the cramming system of education are, and consequently of what it is that the people of New Zealand are now supporting, some of them voluntarily, some of them by force, we find a telling explanation in the following passages from an American non-Catholic paper named the Albany Times :—"What is properly called 'cramming ' is now at its height throughout the country. This is the.word which means.' preparing for examination.' The word is aptly chosen. As a turkey is crammed with food just

before Thanksgiving Day to make it fat and ready for market, so are the children of our schools crammed with knowledge,

in order that their apparent progress may <■■'■ delight theii;; friends aud relatives, and •'. shed renown on preceptors who, mayhap, have been half asleep the rest of the year. Children, even those of-tenderest years, are worked day and night and 'crammed' for an occasion. It matters not whether the day after examination they areable to answer the questions propounded to them, so long as at the examination itself they appear to advantage. The object . is simply to make a show—whether the . child. - is s , benefitted,; is a matter of secondary consideration.

The evils, resulting ..are so great that " legislative interference is needed to provide a remedy. Of late years hundreds of children have been physically ruined by this injudicious over-taxing of their brains and in not a few cases death has been

directly traced to this cause. The evil effects can be seen at any of the public exhibitions. Boys and girls look pale and worn-out. Their every movement indicates ill-health and forebodes premature wreck and decay. Four or five years ago in New York city, three of the girls of a

graduating class at the normal school died ' before the vacation was over, and the health of several others was so shattered that they will never wholly recover. This ! ease was a glaring ene, and the cause of death -and disease so plain, that the physicians called public attention to the matter and denounced in unmeasured terms the system of over taxing children by giving them more mental labour to accomplish than their bodies are able to endure. We educate our children just as we make haste to get rich. Teachers seem to pay -no regard to the laws of health, and make no distinction between the dull and the bright scholar. Each pupil is forced to learn just so much in a given time, and it is no wonder many are crushed'under the abnormal pressure. This is euphemistically called education. In fact the system of education in the greater number of schools is fundamentally wrong. The child is required to repeat whole pages of printed matter, of the meaning of which it knows nothing. In such schools.the struggle of the pupils —principally the girls, who as a rule are more ambitious than the boys—to acquire ' a perfect record' is pitiful to behold. They sit up at nights, when they should be in bed, and commit to memory whole P'agei of useless stuff, which they repeat in 'school next day, without missing a / word, and therefore receive the commendation of their teachers. In a western school, a few weeks ago, a pale emaciated girl was thus repeating sentence after sentence, and page after page, when it was suggested that she give the ideas of the text in her own language. She was utterly unable to do f this. The words conveyed no meaning to her mind. In fact, she was but a parrot, repeating certain articulate sounds that to her had no meaning. If she was interrupted in the midst of a sentence, she was forced to begin again at the beginning before she could complete it. Yet the teacher said, 'This is the brightest girl in our school.' One of the visitors insisted upon her giving the ideas of the text instead of the words. She replied, ' The teacher gives us a mark down if we do not repeat correctly every sentence of the lesson.' What a commentary upon our present system of education ! It is no education—for true education is teaching children to think, and this only teaches them to memorise. Our children have too

many studies, too much'nonsense to learn, . too much mental work, and the sooner there a complete reformation in this respect the better. This plan of forcing children to do more mental work than they are naturally capable of is inhuman. It is so easy to arouse'a childs ambition, and easy to ruin both its mental and physical health. Woe to .the child who at.an early age has a reputation for being • bright' or • smart.' Unless.he has parents and teachers who are blessed with common sense, he is doomed to an early graVe. We begin to make our children study at too early an age. No child of four years should know its letters: One of the chief officers of this,-government many years ago had a bright little'sbn—his first-born. Without the knowledge of the parents, the nurse had taught this boy page after page of hymns, which he could, repeat j word for word. Suffice it .to say that before be was three years of age he was in his grave. The doctor said it was brain fefer,; but he i was murdered. Elizabeth McGuire,., a- school- girl, sixteen years of age, attempted suicide, in New York by jumping into the East River. She was rescued, and it was found that her attempt'at suicide 1 was prompted by her failure to reach the standard, in studies, necessary to secure her admission to the normal college. She had for some years been a pupil of a New York grammar school and for months had studied so hard for this examination that her mind became disordered. She was not naturally of great ability, bnt her parents, and teachers had prodded her ambition and ' crammed' her to such an extent that the

poor girl's mind could not stand the pressure Sh<> had bocn ruined simply to gratify the pride of parents and teachprs, who desired her, not so much for her own benefit, as for their own glory, to pass brilliant examinations. She was overworked. Her brain was required to do more than it was capable of doing, and it gave way under the effort. But her case is only one of many that might be mentioned. Cramming should be stopped at once. Better that the child should be sent into the world a dunce than an idiot, or a physical wreck, There is liere a great work for the prevention of cruelty to children, and the sooner they set about the task of reformation the better." —N.Z. Tablet.