Errors in Education by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 5, 1883

Errors in Education.

By Editor

UNDER the head of “Mathematics and Youthful Delirium,” the Los Angeles Mirror gives us the following sensible paragraph:—

“An eight-year old Baltimore girl died recently from congestion of the brain, caused, the doctor’s certificate says, by over-study. This poor little victim of the vicious cramming and forcing process in education raved in her delirium about problems in long division which she tried to solve. One particular sum she went over and over again. ‘Whenever there came a pause in her monotonous calculations, there was sure to be a wail of despair, and then she would recommence the sum.’ The system which fosters, permits or makes possible a result so deplorable as this, is wrong and criminal. It is a crime against life and health for educators to heap burdens upon children of tender years which are too great for them to bear, and it should be prohibited by law. Even where the hot-bed process does not produce ill-health and broken constitutions—results too often seen in our public schools—it results in little substantial and permanent good to the pupil, whose youthful and tender brain is overtaxed to such an extent that repugnance to study ensues, and the lessons learned by rote, and recited parrot-like in school, are soon forgotten when the child has passed the portals of the school-room and gone out to wrestle with the practical affairs of life. A judicious combination of mental, moral, and physical training should be the golden mean aimed at by school boards, superintendents, and teachers. A sound mind in a sound body—a healthy and vigorous brain and a true heart.”

We spoke at some length on this subject in a recent number of the SIGNS. It is not only making a mistake, it is committing a crime against the young, to spur them on to overstudy, and this while depriving them of opportunities

for healthful exercise. Many of the school girls, especially in the cities, take very little exercise except jumping the rope, which adds to the evil; for it is generally conceded by physicians that jumping the rope is about the worst method of taking exercise that is in practice.

“The law of use” stands among the most important of all laws. Exercise taken in useful employment is the best, because it not only exercises the muscles but tends to the cultivation of right habits, and fits the person for usefulness in after life. We consider it one of the most desirable points in a school that labor be connected with study, and look forward with pleasure to the time when this shall be brought about in the Healdsburg College.