insufficient amount of sleep not only causes slackness and weariness
in games and lessens the power of fixing attention on work, but is "a definite factor in the causation of intellectual inefficiency." It is not necessary, however, to insist on the evils attendant on insufficient sleep, especially in the case of growing boys. Rather, the strange fact is that what is so obvious should only now command general attention by reason of the weight attached to the opinions of those who have signed the com- munication sent to the Times, and who, with no little public spirit, have thus drawn attention to a very grave evil.
It will be generally admitted by the great majority of schoolmasters that the doctors in this ease are right ; and if, as a result of the discussion raised, the hour of work before breakfast known as early school is abolished, we imagine that many who have had to preside over assemblages of sleepy pupils on cold, dark mornings will be able to suppress signs of dissatisfaction. Early school has never been a popular institution, either with masters or boys ; and though that is not necessarily a reason for its discontinuance, there is no very convincing proof that the mental and physical dis- comforts which it entails, or may entail, are compensated for by an increased ability on the part of teachers to teach or learners to learn. Nobody in holding that opinion need be supposed to assent for a moment to any kind of molly- coddling or fuss; the suggestion is merely thrown out that in one particular instance what is generally disliked may con- ceivably be generally harmful.
But there is, of course, another side to the question. Might not the eminent men who have drawn public attention to this matter of the allowance of sleep necessary for growing boys take for examination one or two other points ? Is it lack of sufficient sleep which alone is answerable for the signs of "intellectual inefficiency" which they find noticeable P Dr. Acland, in a paper read before the Association of Medical Officers of Schools in May last, and since published in separate form, quotes Dr. Welldon, once Head-Master of Harrow, as having made a remark on „a fact which has for many years impressed all who are interested in English school educa- tion,—namely, the number of boys who, having shown cleverness, and even brilliancy, in their schooldays, have in after life absolutely gone under. Dr. Clement Dukes, another of Sir William Broadbent's fellow-signatories, is quoted as having made the comment on Dr. Welldon's remark that the Head-Master of Harrow did not realise that the immature brain-tissue of these boys had been exhausted before they attained manhood. But did either commentator urge that the failure of these brilliant boys to do anything in after life had anything to do with lack of proper sleep ? We are not told so; and even if we were, we should suggest another explanation. Dr. Welldon, who is an old Eton Colleger, was doubtless thinking of his own schoolfellows. The reflection arises,—Is it not possible that there was some- thing wrong with the actual teaching of the boys of whom Dr. Welldon was thinking ? Each of them between the ages of twelve and fourteen had obtained that coveted distinction, admission to the foundation at Eton, which at once knocks off a parent's school-bills a clear £150 a year. Now under what conditions were those scholarships obtained ? In many cases, even thirty years ago, it was undoubtedly the practice to cram small boys for these scholarship examinations. The practice to-day is almost universal. Competition, keen in all professions, is nowhere keener than in the profession of the preparatory-school master. And how is the preparatory- school master to make his school well known to, and there- fore patronised by, parents and guardians ? One of the surest ways, at all events, is to try to get his name among those who are successful in obtaining scholarships at the great public schools. If he is to do that, he must begin sooner or later to drive his clever boys. He is not to blame for doing so ; if any one is to blame, it is the parent, who is always asking whether Mr. So-and-so gets scholarships at the public schools, and who sends his boy to the school from which most scholarships are obtained. Very likely the schoolmaster himself dislikes and disapproves of the necessary drive. But he is forced to it, not only by the desire of parents for scholarships, but by the conditions upon which the public schools themselves insist. The scholarship examinations are much too complicated. They demand performances from boys of thirteen which would do credit to undergraduates in Honour Moderations. The range of subjects of which knowledge is expected is absurdly wide; for each subject the boy has to be thoroughly prepared, and the pre- paratory-school curriculum has to be organised in order to cope with the demands of these examinations. What wonder that boys have to get out of bed at half-past six P However much the schoolmaster may disapprove of what he has to do, however deeply he may desire to be able to teach his boys quietly and steadily the things that really matter in after life, he has always before him the fact that he is expected to obtain scholarships whenever possible. Is it lack of sleep which accounts for the dropping out of these boys in the race of later years ? Surely the parallel is rather with the hot- house plant, whose vitality is forced into existence before its natural time.
But if there is a danger visible in a method of education which results in forcing a young boy's intellect into efflor- escence at an unnatural time of life, there is also a danger to be guarded against by those who would be foremost in supporting such recommendations as those made by Sir William Broadbent and others on questions of school hygiene. It is no doubt an excellent thing that school- boys should not be allowed to overwork their brains or to overtire their bodies. But it would be, we believe, essentially detrimental if this control of work and play were only to be obtained by means of increased supervision on the part of the schoolmaster. Here again the object-lesson is the method of the preparatory school, for questions of school hygiene have necessarily been more seriously considered among the preparatory schools than among the greater public schools, simply because of the stress of competition. And the result of over-consideration of questions of hygiene has been to a certain extent harmful. The schoolmaster becomes so anxious that his boys shall always be doing the right thing that he never lets them out of his sight. From the time at which they get up for early school to the time when the school rules ordain that they must go punctually to sleep, they are ever- lastingly "under supervision." Bird's-nesting? Pillow-fights? Feasts in the dormitory ? Black eyes or bloody noses ? All that belongs to the mythical era of schooldays, which used to be associated thirty years ago with stories of robbing orchards for apples. But is it really a good thing that it should be im- possible nowadays for small boys at a preparatory school to fight or to climb trees ? Not all schoolmasters, at all events, think so. To one of the most liberal-minded men known to the present writer the news was brought by a conscientious subordinate that a certain small and extremely virtuous boy had decided to smoke a cigarette, with catastrophic results. "It is the most encouraging news I have heard about him for two years!" was the only comment. His outlook on the whole question was the sane and wise one that no law was worth making unless it was worth breaking ; that indepen- dence of character was only to be obtained in an atmosphere of freedom. He would assure himself that nothing really wrong went on anywhere where he could stop it, but he did not believe that wrong could be counteracted best by making it impossible for wrong to happen. Above all, he distrusted and discouraged any methods of supervision approaching those of the French lyeee.
Is there any danger, then, to be apprehended from increased attention to modern methods of education and school hygiene? At first sight the question looks hardly worth asking, for bow can it do harm to discover and to put into practice the latest and most scientific theory P But it is at least occasionally true that the healthiest way is the rudest and most brutal. Although no sane person is going to combat the deliberately expressed opinion of a body of distinguished physicians and professors, and although the needless brutalities of school life in past years are certainly to be repressed and avoided, there is undoubtedly a danger of going to the other extreme and of sacrificing independence of character, and natural growth of brain-power, to the methods of the hothouse.
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