Dr Lindo Ferguson on the Evils of "Cram."

I shall now refer in some detail to Dr. Lindo Ferguson's work. Nearly seven years ago, before the Intercolonial Medical Congress at Brisbane, he read a paper dealing specially with certain disastrous effects of our conditions of education coming within his immediate sphere of observation as an oculist. Dr Ferguson's conclusion were felt at the time to be so starling and significant that one marvels how our education system withstood the shock of publication. His revelations caused grave comment and anxiety, but the matter did not get beyond the stage of newspaper editorials denouncing cram and over-pressure. No reform followed, and instead of being lessened or withdrawn, the temptations and inducements to overpressure have been actually increased—increased at the very period of life when, as he says, mental stress acts most prejudicially, and ought to be reduced as far as possible Since Dr Ferguson spoke, the competition at the primary schools for free

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entry to the high schools, added to the limitation of time allowed for getting through an overwhelming amount of new work at the high schools, supplies the last straw to a previously intolerable burden. Dr Ferguson's work is so thorough and his analyses so searching that he leaves no room, for doubt. The cases are taken from his own records. He was induced to make minute inquiry by the frequency with which school boys and girls were brought to him suffering from nervous breakdown, manifesting itself specially in connection with the nerves of the eye. He carefully excludes all cases due to original defect or alterations in the physical conformation of the eye itself (accounting for simple shortsightedness, long-sightedness, astigmatism, etc.), and focusses his attention on the special form of eye failure due to break-down in connection with the brain and nervous system. He says that in making up his lists he omitted all cases where he considered that "accommodative distress was independent of school conditions. . . . The question immediately arises, Why should such a large number of children show insufficient nerve force for the accommodative effort?" Out of 175 cases two-fifths occurred in boys and three-fifths in girls. Dr Ferguson continues :—

The conclusion pointed to by the figures is clearly not that our children are in danger of breaking down during their school life in the direction of myopia (simple short-sightedness), as is the case in Germany . . . but that the tendency is towards the neurotic type of failure. . . . Inquiry as to why children should feel the strain of their work . . . brings us face to face with two important factors in our educational system. The first is the promotion of children from standard to standard by examination;^* the second, the system of educational scholarships given in primary schools. As long as teachers find their reputation as successful teachers depends on the percentage of their pupils who pass the examination from one standard into the next at the annual inspection, there will of necessity be a strong temptation for them to cram the pupils for the examination. . . . Quite recently a mother brought me a girl who had broken down at school, and said that her son—a boy of about thirteen—was in much the same condition, and that his eyes were troubling him very much at night, that he had an extra hour in school, making six hours, and between five and six hours home work, because there was one boy in his class who was preparing for the scholarship examination, and the work of the class had to be set accordingly. The evil does not end here, for the next class below has to be prepared to take up the work of the scholarship class the following year, and the standard of the whole school, down to the infant class, is regulated by an examination for which the great majority of the children will never enter. . . .

I have several times discussed the question of home lessons with teaeners and one teacher of great experience said to me: "I am sure all my children [unclear: ta] five hours over their home lessons, and [unclear: i] they had less to do their parents would complain that they were not being given enough work, and that their ehances [unclear: of] scholarships were being sacrificed." What is to be said to the parent who thanks an eight-hour day for his own work [unclear: is] one of the laws of the universe, but [unclear: w] insists that his growing children [unclear: should] work ten hours?