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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 78
Insanity in Girlhood
Insanity in Girlhood.
In the public school I took third certificate in the Sixth Standard. There were thirty-three in for it. ... I was a year and six months at the High School. I was first in——language in the fifth form. I was then fifteen. I was fairly good at drawing, arithmetic, and grammar. I was good at fractions and decimals, but used to stick at problems about stocks, bankruptcy, and mensuration. The problems in Algebra used to bother me. You know what I mean. If A, B, and C go out in a field to work, and A does ½ in three days and B does 2/3 in five days and C does 5/8 in seven days, how long will it take the three working together to do the whole? Of course those figures are all wrong, but that is the type of the first easy one, and then they get harder and harder. I could not learn all these things at once, with English, Latin, French, botany, and history. Some girls can do it, but I couldn't. I was fagged out before the end of each term, and I used to get very cold in school; my feet were very cold. I liked it all, and could have done it if there hadn't been so many subjects. I think it would have been better for me if I had just gone in for one subject, and taken a prize in that, and let the rest go, like some girls do, but 1 tried to keep up in all, and it was too much. I've seen girls with their Euclid written out on a slip of paper using it in the class. Of course that's cheating; but I don't wonder at it, there is too much to do. It is the first year that is so bad, because you have languages and other things which you haven't had at the public school. I broke down at the examination at the end of August. I was working hard. I thought I would like to study, and take some prizes, so I worked hard, and then I got weak. I was tired out, and couldn't be bothered. Sometimes in the evening I went to sleep at my lessons over the fire, and then I couldn't sleep when I got to bed. I couldn't eat, and got very thin. Before that I was plump.
The work of which this young girl complains, and which broke her down, was neither so concentrated in time nor so great in quantity as that undertaken by many of her sisters. As she herself says, others Lave music to do as well, and we know that some now enter the lists as as-
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pirants for prizes in connection with public "competitions." Simple, joyous, buoyant, healthy girlhood is out of the question in this garish, strenuous, mental atmosphere, and the whole purpose of existence becomes centred in paltry emulation, cram, prize winning, and display. It is perfectly natural that girls who have as yet no conception of what may lie ahead of them in life, and who often tend to regard future motherhood as commonplace or even undesirable, should enter fervently into this feverish struggle for scholarships prizes or so-called "honors"; but one can scarcely excuse those parents who foster false ideals and encourage or allow their children to be exploited and sacrificed for such paltry ends.
Case A.—"I am not sure what was the real cause of her going out of her mind. When going to school she was good at every subject but arithmetic. To keep pace with others at this subject she had to put a great strain on her mind. She got into the habit of doing this, and would do it till the perspiration ran down her face."
Conversing with the master of a primary school some time ago, I remarked that it seemed to me very unwise to give girls precisely the same work to do as boys, because their natural aptitudes and bent of mind tended to differ fundamentally. I instanced arithmetic as a case in point. The schoolmaster replied that he did not altogether agree with me. He said he had himself always noticed that there was far greater difficulty in getting girls up to the required standard in arithmetic, but in his opinion this was due much less to natural inaptitude than to the fact that you could not cane girl—the most that could be done was to set impositions. So much for a system of compulsory education, which requires of every girl twice as much arithmetic as most of us could put to practical use in after-life.
Case B.—"She was exceptionally bright and clever at anything she gave her mind to, and was very successful in matriculating at school, and was studying up to the time of her trouble—that is, so long as she was able to. She seemed fond of studies, and they did not seem any trouble to her. but I cannot do away with the idea that there was too much mental application at her time of life and not enough complete change. I think that she must have been too much mentally focussed at her studies. Of course, this is only my conjecture."
The sentence "She seemed fond of studies and they did not seem any trouble to her (which I have italicised) indicates one of the most seductive pitfalls in education. I have heard the same thing said repeatedly by pupils, parents, and teachers in cases where the brain was being strained and stunted by excessive study. The keen, active, alert brain of the clever, ambitions boy or girl tends to subordinate everything to study. Yet this is the very instance where the greatest restraint would be exercised by any far-seeing teacher who could look beyond the immediate scholarships and prizes, and see the future man or we man standing before him. Ultimate capsbility and success of the highest order are assured to such a pupil if the development of the whole organism, with plenty of brain and nerve power to spare, can be made to keep ahead of the mental output.
The stimulus and mental exaltation, with feeling of clearness and unlimited power sometimes induced by study carried to the verge of mental collapse, was never better painted than by Stevenson. One can only regret that his lesson is rarely taken to heart until too late.
Now let me quote a few leading authorities on the special effects of over-pressure in women. It must be borne in mind that Mr Wilson is an apologist for "over-pres-sure," but not for "cram." He says: "I think there is a very great deal of unintelligent talk about 'cram.' Over-pressure need not be cram, you know." Theortically it need not, but we all know that is practice the over-pressure of modern education is essentially cram; and, in any case, over -pressure can only mean excess of pressure, or too much pressure, and as such is entirely indefensible.