Hurry, worry, and money : the bane of modern education / by T. Pridgin Teale.

  • Teale, T. Pridgin (Thomas Pridgin), 1831-1923.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hurry, worry, and money : the bane of modern education / by T. Pridgin Teale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    10/52
    cent., of which but 6 per cent, could be accounted for as the effect of hygiene. And what diseases has come down ? All but one. In the ten years before the Education Act brain disease killed one in 2,000 ; in the ten years after, it killed one in 2,000. ^ There was undoubtedly a large increase in the number of suicides, showing that there was something wrong in our social system, that the struggle for life and the keen- ness of competition were too severe. It was to be observed also that educated people committed more suicides than the uneducated, and therefore to that extent education had some- thing to do with it.' In answer to Lord Stanley of Alderley, who in the House of Lords (July Ki) raised the question of overwork in elemen- tary schools, the Lord President of Council states,' The result of inquiries made (of the inspectors) showed that while there were here and there cases of overwork on the part of children and pupil-teachers who were anxious to distinguish them- selves, upon the whole there was very little ground for the wide and highly coloured statements which had appeared in some of the newspa]~ers. Any school might earn a very fair grant by confining itself to the ordinary subjects of instruc- tion, and it was undoubtedly a mistake for the managers of a school to attempt to accomplish more than their statf enabled them to accomplish.' Mr. Leighton, in the House of Commons (August 9), in- quired whether the attention of the Vice-President of the Council had been called to the increased proportion of pauper lunatic children, and asked whether he would cause special inquiry to be made by Her Majesty's inspectors during the ensuing year on the subject of over-pressure in the elementary schools of the country. Mr. Mundella in his reply showed that such increase of pauper juvenile lunatics can be well explained by the increase of population, and by other facta bearing upon an increased recognition by the State of its duty towards lunatic children, the greater proportion of whom were idiots or imbeciles from birth. I need hardly say that Mr. Mundella, in all his public utterances on this subject of over-pressure in elementary schools, gives evidence of his earnest, watchful study of the effect of the new code, and of his sincere anxiety to prevent the overtaxing of children and teachers.