High Pressure

HIGH PRESSURE EDUCATION

To Blame for the Divorces Says Dr. Kinyon

AGAINST THE CRAMMING

Charges That Teachers Cram Pupils Too Hard and That There is Too Much Climbing of Stairs

At the opening of the practitioners' post-graduate courses given here this week. Monday evening Dr. Kinyon made this emphatic statement: "Unless present high pressure educational methods and cramming practice are changed, it may become necessary for American young men to make matrimonial incursions into foreign land where education is unknown." Dr. Kinyon led up to this conclusion in a harsh criticism of modern schools. He began with the common city grammar school.

"In most schools,' he said, "there are too many stairs. Far too many times school girls are allowed to climb up and down stairs. I have known girls who are confirmed invalids as a result of Climbing stairs in public schools. Before children are eight years of age no parent has a right to make his boy or girl study for more than four to six hours a day. The attempt of school teachers to keep their work up to a fixed grade leads them to overtax the children's nervous systems. An exceedingly dangerous practice is that of offering rewards for brilliant work. Few people know that in any court in any state a physician's statement will be upheld though it causes some rule of the board of education to be suspended."

Dr. Kinyon appealed to his audience of physicians to use their power in restraint of their patients' ambition in cramming their children.

"The danger is increased," continued Dr. Kinyon. "by teachers' ambitions to increase their work and surpass the records of other teachers." Dr. Kinyon reproached society for continuing the health-destroying work of the schools. "Divorces," he said, "especially those which occur among people of education and means, can be traced back to the cramming begun in the grammar school and the high pressure of the high schools. I think that indirect cause of strikes and the uprisings in the industrial world can be traced to our schools. Certainly much of the modern discontent starts with wrong methods of education. Among poorly educated classes the children have not sufficient mental powers for the methods used by ambitious teachers.  Their schooling gives a one-sided mental development if they go through with it.''