Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/882

862 as indications of good and evil fortune. This connection of a red color with the notion of immortality through the medium of good and bad luck led to the adoption of cinnabar as the philosopher's stone, and thus to the construction of the whole system of alchemy; but the plant was regarded first.

Over-pressure in English Board-Schools.—A controversy is going on in England over the question whether or not over-pressure is exerted in the elementary schools. Much depends, in the debate, on the definition to be attached to the term over-pressure. Edith Lupton would include in it any physical or mental injury done to any child as a consequence of the carrying out of the education acts. The school-officers would require that the child should have been previously entirely healthy; but Dr. B. W. Richardson is quoted as saying that such a child in our present state of civilization does not exist. Dr. Crichton Browne has reported, after examining the London schools, that the evil in them is real, and is working injury upon the children. It is exerted by the "keeping in" after school-hours of children, usually those who are from any cause behind with their work and have to be pushed so as to be ready for the examination, and in the imposition of home-lessons. The prime motive to both these impositions is the necessity which exists for forcing backward pupils to the examination level. The very fact that these children are backward is evidence that they are not as competent to sustain the regular school-work as their brighter fellows; yet they are the ones upon whom the additional charges are laid. "The influence of that emotional excitement caused by the approach of an examination," says Dr. Browne, "is really one of the most dangerous elements in educational over-pressure," and the "examination-fever," as it has been called, "is now endemic in the metropolis." Many of the London children go to the school partially starved, through having to depend upon food which, though it may be abundant, is innutritious. They "want blood, and we offer them a little brain-polish; they ask for bread, and receive a problem; milk, and the tonic-solfa system is introduced to them." Some come breakfastless to school, because they must be in their places punctually, and they have no time to eat breakfast. More than a third of the children in the elementary schools of London are represented to be suffering habitually from headaches, and these come on for the most part in the latter half of the day, when the brain has become exhausted, and the pressure of work tells most seriously from it. Many are troubled with sleeplessness, generally caused by their thinking over their lessons, particularly their arithmetic-lessons. Parents frequently complain to teachers that the family are disturbed by the children talking of their lessons in their sleep. Dr. Crichton Brown-e believes that a considerable part of the increase in nervous and brain diseases, and neuralgia and short-sightedness, is attributable to this over-pressure. He found nothing, however, to complain of in Scotland, where the children are vigorous, well fed and clothed and taken care of. These conclusions have been scornfully contradicted by the friends of the school-boards, but Edith Lupton gives Dr. Browne a strong support by showing that even the school inspectors had not means of ascertaining the facts at all comparable with those which he used. Thus, at Bradford, the official inspection was done at a rate which gave an average of one minute for the personal examination of each child. "Out of that time had to be taken the time required for inspecting log-book, school premises, sanitary arrangements, teachers, and pupil-teachers. The children had to be examined in reading, writing, arithmetic, sewing, English, geography, elementary science, history, drawing, and algebra. The infant department, in facts about animals, coal, gas, salt, form, color, food, plants, clothing, rain, frost, etc., etc.; modeling, geometrical drawing, weaving, planting, drill. Then there was the merit grant in all the schools, organization and discipline, intelligence and instruction, behavior of children, inspection of the exemption schedule and its authentication 'by attendance officers,'" preliminarily to which special inquiries had to be made personally. Furthermore, the inspector "had to satisfy himself that in the daily management of the school the children were being brought up in habits of punctuality,