ABSTRACT

Richardson gave a lecture on "Health and Education," in the course of which he spoke earnestly against the evils of the present system of examinations and prizes in its influence upon health. In the critical period from 11 to 16 or 17 years of age, there were three errors committed in education. First, overwork; secondly, want of care in detecting the natural character or turn of the mind; and thirdly, the forcing the J?upil into endless competitions. To overwork a growmg horse would be held to be the most ignorant of processes, while to work a child harder, perhaps, than it would be worked at anI_other period of life, was thought to be most correct. Women had not been subject to these evils, so that one-half of the authors of the race had been kept intact; but if 'Women succeeded in their clamour for admission into the universities, and like moths followed their sterner mates into the midnight candle of learning, the case would be bad indeed for succeeding generations; and the geniuses and leaders of the nation would henceforth be derived from those simple pupils of the Board schools who entered into the conflict of life with reading, writing, and arithmetic, free of brain to acquire learning of every kind in the full powers of developed ma.nhood. The utterances of so eminent a philologist as Dr. Richardson are worthy of great consideration. The remedy will be in our opinion, not the continued exclusion of women and girls from equal examination with men and boys. but a mitigation of the system for both sexes alike, or, if this be not possible, its postponement till the candidates have attained maturer yea.rs.