identical on boys and on girls. When young people are hustled from one subject to another no new knowledge is allowed to sink. That is to say, the opportunity is withheld of relating the new to the old. But if this is not done the mind is not being fed, but is being stuffed with matter which it cannot assimilate. When that happens a healthy mind will reject the matter ingested into it as speedily as possible: that is, a vigorous organism, speedily: a less vigorous one, more slowly; a weak one, not at all. If this principle is not understood and the teachers are becoming more zealous the inevitable result is that the pupils are crammed. The more information is rejected as being to the pupils alien, dead, meaningless, the more is shoved in by the teacher to fill up the gap. When the system of 'hustle' includes stiff qualifying examinations this grave evil is of course intensified.

Is this an exaggeration? One of the pupils of a first-rate London girls' school who has just completed the four years' course has furnished me with the following bristling list of subjects in which she has dabbled:

I. English: i.e. Paraphasing: Précis writing: Reading aloud, learning by heart: Essays. Four subjects for each of which time has to be found every week.

II. Scripture: Bible: Prayer-Book: Church History. III. French: Compositions: reading: translation: grammar: lecture.

IV. History.

V. Latin.

VI. Geography.

VII. Mathematics: Accounts: Algebra: Arithmetic :
Geometry.

VIII. Botany or Chemistry.

IX. Singing (in class).

X. Extras. Music and dancing.

German instead of Mathematics.

I do not see how the total of these items can come to less than twenty-two; and any subdivision of such huge subjects as IV, V, and VI would easily bring the number up to thirty. The effect of this state of things was emphasised to me lately by two most capable and

enlightened ladies who run another school of high repute. (I mean by the last words a school where the evil effects of hustle,' racket, and over-pressure are so far as possible mitigated.) They discoursed with eloquence and conviction on the mental dissipation, the want of leisure, or of any quiet time for growth. Does it need a profound study of psychology to pronounce such a travesty of education to be sheer insanity? Why, then, does it continue? There are several influences at work, but the most baneful and potent is the parents' insistence that their girls shall pass the School Certificate.

But what of the boys? The difference is this: Boys, who have always refused to be crammed, secretly despise education except as a means of pelf. Girls, who have accepted cramming and are damaged by it, believe in it and become teachers. It is to be noted that the mischief of a congested curriculum leading up to an important examination consists not only in general mental dissipation but more definitely in the necessity, for practical purposes, that the pupils should qualify for the examination, not by a tranquil, joyous process of self-feeding, but by being forced to imbibe facts prematurely; that is, before the mind can relate them to experience. That is called cramming, and it is the most serious and the most universal mischief of the helter-skelter multiplication of subjects; and the mischief would tell upon boys just as much as upon girls, were it not that the former are endued with a greater power of resistance fostered by a long tradition of antagonism between teacher and class. When he is bored by being crammed, a young Anglo-Saxon of the male sex can and does shut his mind and takes refuge in torpor. Thus he is saved most effectually from overstrain; so much so that I doubt if there is any authentic record of one of our boys overworking himself at school. But along with a grand heritage of strong nerves he grows to hate learning. Everything possible is done to make his school life happy and healthy; but by seventeen years of age the love of learning for its own sake has well-nigh disappeared for ever.*

* Recent investigations seem to show that while the most intellectually gifted school girls are (nearly) on a par with the élite of the boys, the decline in any group of the former is markedly more rapid. Thus the tail

The precise effect on girls is first that cases of overstrain are not unknown; but every one is on guard against the danger. Next, they are singularly free from the traditional indocility which most middle-aged Public School men look on as part of the nature of things. Girls allow themselves to be crammed without murmur or protest. The result is hardly to be described as mental indigestion, for indigestion suggests pain, and the grievous fact is that a sort of internal chaos is induced which is accompanied not by pain but by a dim sense of dutifulness. Morally there is something heroic about their endurance; but at the age of eighteen the High School product is a maiden whose mind has never been allowed to assimilate naturally and repeatedly the varied knowledge which has been piled upon it. It is true that as the months go by the silent priestess, Oblivion, stealing in upon the disorder, performs her task of 'pure ablution' like the sea around earth's shores'; and by twenty-five the young women are as ignorant as the young men. But their minds have lost freshness. They bear the marks of a long and unavailing struggle; and even where the positive evidence is less decisive there is no doubt whatever about the negative failure. The facts-the information-have not been retained: if they had been, the results would have been more deplorable still. In any case it is a sorry defence of a system to say that its main object has not been achieved.

Such for two generations has been the training of our secondary-school teachers. Both men and women have endured, on the whole patiently, a system woefully misunderstood by all concerned: a system of cramming which becomes more mischievous as it is administered with increasing zeal; and as the pressure of many subjects has been made more real, more concrete, by the urgency of frequent examinations. With striking success the adults have mitigated the asperities of the old-fashioned class-room, and by sympathy, by humour, by new and friendly co-operation with parents, by glad development of healthy extraneous activities, by a fine

end of fifty girls reaches a level of intelligence corresponding to the tail end of two hundred or more boys. Teachers of experience are inclined to accept this estimate as roughly true.

blend of discipline and kindliness, we have let down the curtain over the tragedy which is being played on the intellectual stage; but it goes on behind the scenes. For as the inducements to 'work' are multiplied, the i child's love of knowledge for its own sake dies away.

As to the remedial measures, there is little danger, indeed, of any over-precipitate reform. It is not that educationists are unable in theory to contemplate change, or that there is any general contentment with things as they are; but there is a widespread moral paralysis in presence of an organised system of examination tests so complicated and inelastic, so buttressed up by recent tradition and apparently symptomatic of efficiency, that any change has come to be regarded as quixotic and utopian. But if permanent immobility in this grave matter comes to be taken for granted, we are undone. The evils may be classified thus: (1) A spirit of rivalry and self-consciousness is engendered among children and continues to poison the true motive and the actual process of learning all through adolescence. (2) During adolescence the training is chaotic and meaningless for the boys, and often overstrains the girls, and for both produces a shallow and superficial mentality. (3) As selection-tests for professions, examinations inevitably put a premium on precocity.

(1) Fortunately there are a few schools where advantage is taken of the almost universal desire to learn, which is one of the winsome characteristics of children; and where the native interest in the subject gives ample 1 encouragement to healthy, joyous, intellectual efforts. All other stimulus is banned; there are no marks or weekly orders or competition of any kind. The day will come when our posterity will marvel at the long continuance of these pernicious and wholly needless elements in early school life.

To meet, then, the ethical mischief for children under fourteen, all competitive tests should be abolished. Even such an examination as the Common Entrance to the great Public Schools is unnecessary, and if rumour is to be believed, a movement is on foot for substituting a simple recommendation from the Preparatory School headmaster. (Entrance Scholarships form another and more complex problem which I cannot deal with here.)

The gain would be immense. The Preparatory teachers could teach by natural methods, and would be put on their mettle to vindicate wise experiments, which at present they are forbidden to make. Of course the wiseacres will prate about the dangers of dishonesty. This is a typical mare's nest. The accused parties are upright, sterling men to whom we entrust our children for their mental, physical, and spiritual training without a qualm for eight months out of the year. On what rational principle, then, do we accuse them of a wish to be dishonest in one detail only of the trust reposed in thema detail, moreover, in which any trickery which would be profitable would certainly be found out? I am afraid that whenever the change is attempted the criticism will be heard-but that is no reason for supposing it is anything but arrant nonsense. The truth is it simply indicates the reluctance of most people in this country to abandon an established and mechanical system for one that demands a little insight into the child's mind, a little patient experiment, and a freedom from cheap and baseless cynicism.

(2) Over-pressure is a far more formidable matter. But if the essence of the mischief is considered it will be seen to be due to nothing but the premature ingestion of knowledge'-facts and formule-into the delicate organism of the young mind: such ingestion being reinforced and necessitated by the prospect of competitive paper-tests. In its place the natural method of learning which is encouraged in the P.N.E.U. schools must be substituted for the present cramming. So far as possible, every pupil should be allowed to imbibe knowledge at his own pace: that is, the one salutary safeguard against over-pressure and distaste for learning is that the mediocre and the slow should be allowed to take in what they can without being buffeted, chaffed, penalised, or convinced of their inferiority by recurrent competitions. As to the constitutionally inert boys, a certain number of whom at fifteen will probably be irresponsive, a policy allowing of some temporary marking-time will be advisable. The number of such recalcitrants will be greatly reduced when sensible methods have been employed in the preparatory stage, from eight or nine years of age. The slow boy, too, though he will not be