of receiving any kind of
instruction.

It is the nervous boy or girl who generally makes the most promising
pupil. A natural inclination to study leads children of this type to
prefer the schoolroom to the playground. The boy who works hard to get
to the top of his class, or to pass an examination, or to obtain a
scholarship, is the one least given to games, and, in consequence, the
weakest physically.

These are the very children whom the teacher is most tempted to
encourage to do more work than is good for them. The process of their
mental development is so rapid that it needs no stimulation from
outside. But that is not, unfortunately, the concern of the school
authorities. The anxiety to produce scholars who will distinguish
themselves in public examinations, and thereby advertise the school,
invariably leads the schoolmaster to cram and stuff the brains of the
brightest and most forward boys.

There is special danger in over-working boys or girls of this type,
because the brain is not strong enough to withstand the pressure. The
result is never good, and in extreme cases it is as bad as it could
possibly be. It follows, in fact, as a matter of course, that the finest
and most sensitive intellects are the first to succumb to the pernicious
effects of over-cramming the brain. There is a strain that can only be
endured by second-rate minds, and it is not, therefore, the
intellectually fittest who are encouraged to survive under the present
system.

What has been stated above refers rather to the higher class of schools
and colleges, which prepare boys for examinations and academic
distinctions of various kinds, than to the elementary schools to which
the children of the poor are commandeered. In the latter establishments
a special barbarity takes place which has been so widely discussed in
Parliament and in the newspapers that I will do no more here than allude
to it in passing.

I refer to the forcing of instruction upon under-fed school-children.

Apart from the gross inhumanity of the proceeding, there is the
indisputable fact that the compulsory teaching of children whose bodies
have not been properly nourished tends to weaken the intellect. If these
children were subjected to a process of cramming such as is usual in the
higher schools, their minds would undoubtedly break down altogether. As
it is, the comparatively mild method of the elementary school does not
effect anything worse in such cases than the