kness
rather than of favor to any particular pupil to lessen his work. Not
unfrequently there are found other causes of ill health than those which
I have mentioned; such, for instance, as poor ventilation, overheating
of the school-room, draughts of cold air, and the like; not to speak of
the annual public exhibition, with the possible nervous excitement
attending it. All of these things are mentioned, not because they belong
directly to the question of overwork, but because it is well, in
considering the question, to keep in mind all possible causes of ill
health, that no one cause may be unduly emphasized."[1]

[Footnote 1: Forty-ninth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of
Education, p. 204 (John T. Prince).]

In private schools the same kind of thing goes on, with the addition of
foreign languages, and under the dull spur of discipline, without the
aid of any such necessities as stimulate the pupils of what we are
pleased to call a normal (!) school.

In private schools for girls of what I may call the leisure class of
society overwork is of course much more rare than in our normal schools
for girls, but the precocious claims of social life and the indifference
of parents as to hours and systematic living needlessly add to the
ever-present difficulties of the school-teacher, whose control ceases
when the pupil passes out of her house.

As to the school in which both sexes are educated together a word may be
said. Surely no system can be worse than that which complicates a
difficult problem by taking two sets of beings of different gifts, and
of unlike physiological needs and construction, and forcing them into
the same educational mould.

It is a wrong for both sexes. Not much unlike the boy in childhood,
there comes a time when in the rapid evolution of puberty the girl
becomes for a while more than the equal of the lad, and, owing to her
conscientiousness, his moral superior, but at this era of her life she
is weighted by periodical disabilities which become needlessly hard to
consider in a school meant to be both home and school for both sexes.
Finally, there comes a time when the matured man certainly surpasses the
woman in persistent energy and capacity for unbroken brain-work. If then
she matches herself against him, it will be, with some exceptions, at
bitter cost.

It is sad to think that the demands of civilized life are making this
contest almost unavoidable. Even if we admit equality of intel