High-pressure education : being an exposition of the evil effects upon the rising generation of hurry and worry at school, with suggestions / by Frederick Churchill.

  • Churchill, Frederick, 1843-1916.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: High-pressure education : being an exposition of the evil effects upon the rising generation of hurry and worry at school, with suggestions / by Frederick Churchill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from the Medical Times, Jan. 17th, 1885.] HIGH-PRESSURE EDUCATION. It is impossible to ignore the valuable opportunities possessed by medical men on the staffs of our Children’s Hospitals for studying carefully the aetiology of the multiple forms of brain mischief, from which the children in our Board Schools have suffered under the existing system of payment by results. The evidence already to hand from the pens of physicians attached to London hospitals is weighty, and worthy of careful consideration by philanthropists, teachers, sanitarians, and the governing authorities of our schools. These gentlemen speak of an increase of headache, lassitude, pallor, and sleeplessness, with brain irritability and chorea among their patients during recent years. I feel it incumbent upon me to enter the arena of conflict backed by an experience of fifteen years’ constant study of children’s diseases, with an average attendance upon over one hundred Board School children every week at the Victoria Hospital for Children. I must add to the list of positive evils alluded to above, some equally pernicious effects of over-pressure, if not quite so directly traceable as cause and effect. I refer especially to the want of systematic inspection of the sanitary arrangements of schoolrooms. Is it not most unreasonable to herd together teachers and children in magnificent palatial buildings erected with every care for sanitary fitness and permanency of structure, and yet to have no officer appointed to see that the excellent hygienic arrangements, provided regardless of cost by the architect, are being brought into daily use for the benefit of the children ? In such