Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/752

728 These people who make their own way, unaided by wealth or influence, have never studied a dozen or more subjects at the village school, where at most they learned the "three R's"—reading, writing, and arithmetic—and where their physical forces were not deteriorated by want of bodily exercise. What they learned from the country schoolmaster they learned well, not because of any original superiority of their brains over the brains of the children of the present day, but because they did not go to school till they were well-grown children, and, further, for the reason that their minds were not tortured with a multiplicity of subjects to be learned, or goaded by the system of competition which prevails in almost all schools of the present day. Then, when they had arrived at that period of life at which their predilections were formed, they entered with ardor upon studies that they selected for themselves; for they knew exactly what they wanted, and governed themselves accordingly. They frequented reading-rooms and libraries, at such times as they could take from the labor necessary for their support, and they devoted their nights to the study of matters that it was necessary for them to understand. One hour of this kind of mental work, with a brain near its full development, and with the attention roused to its utmost power of exertion by the sense of necessity, the spur of ambition, the longing for success, is worth more than three times the amount with brains needing all their force for natural growth, and which are confused and painful from the alternate blandishments and lashings to which they have been subjected.

If a law were passed prohibiting the public schools teaching children under ten years of age from books, and restricting the education given therein to the elementary branches of English, I am sure that, as the ages of the pupils increased, healthy differentiations would take place. The principle of natural selection would come into action, and the result would be beneficial both to the individual and to the State. Something like this is now being attempted in a few of our colleges, and it appears to work well. It is not often the case that pupils will, of their own accord, cram themselves beyond their capacity, though cases now and then occur, through the operation of the factors of competition and an inordinately stimulated ambition, in which there is such a perversion of the natural tendencies that children eagerly overwork themselves at school. We should no more trust children with a superfluity of studies than we should place them at a table filled with toothsome edibles and tell them to eat as much as they wanted. In the one case there would be mental and in the other bodily indigestion. Montaigne speaks with no uncertain voice in regard to this matter.

"Too much learning," he says, "stifles the soul just as plants are stifled with too much moisture, and lamps by too much oil; for pedants plunder knowledge from books and carry it on the tip of their lips, just as birds carry seeds wherewith to feed their young. The care and expense that we received from our parents in our education