ts for which I am indebted to them.

To take the case of healthy children first, it is satisfactory to learn
upon high authority that they do not suffer much physical harm from the
effects of overwork. What happens in their case is that the vigorous and
healthy brain offers a sound resistance to the stuffing process, and
speedily forgets what has been forced into it. From an educational point
of view this is, of course, very disastrous; but as far as health
considerations are concerned it affords a certain amount of consolation.

This is to say, one must bear in mind, that modern methods of education
are only salutary as long as they fail altogether to affect the
intelligence. The moment they prove themselves to be efficacious they
become an immediate source of danger.

It follows from this fact that stupid children are as well protected
against the evil effects of the education system as the healthy
children. In fact, to a large extent the stupid children are the healthy
ones by reason of their stupidity. It is, however, a great mistake to
suppose that a stupid child necessarily implies one that is in any sense
deficient mentally. The dull schoolboy often proves in after life to be
the brilliant man. All that his dulness need be taken to signify is that
his mind is not receptive to the subjects which are being forced upon
it. Linnaeus was very stupid at Latin until an enlightened physician, who
was aware of his passion for botanical study, suggested his reading
Plinius; and although he may not have imbibed very accurate information
about natural history from that philosopher, he succeeded in making
immediate progress in the Latin language.

There should be, under a rational system of education, no such thing as
a stupid child. What is, after all, stupidity or dulness in a schoolboy?
It simply means that the boy's faculties are undeveloped, and that no
amount of fact-cramming has succeeded in developing them. The whole
mischief lies, of course, in the fact that the school is not trying to
develop the boy's own faculties at all, but merely to force him to adapt
himself to its own curriculum and conventionality.

The danger to the brain of the healthy or stupid child is not
over-development but under-development. It is not they who suffer in the
worst sense from the evil effects of over-education, but the gifted
children, as they are called, or those whose quick, nervous intellects
are most susceptible to the process