Popular Science Monthly/Volume 11/May 1877/Editor's Table
MENTAL OVERWORK UNDER THE COMPETITIVE PRIZE SYSTEM.
THE death by suicide, not long ago, of a brilliant student of Cornell University, Emil Schwerdtfeger, at the age of nineteen, has a painful interest in connection with the subject of education. We are glad to see that the case has elicited some wholesome comment on the part of the press, in regard to the influences to which he was subjected, and the system of culture that supplies them; and we think the lesson that has been drawn ought to be enforced upon the public mind in the most pointed and emphatic manner.
It seems that the young man had fallen into a state of hopeless depression, after a course of successful study, in which he had made the most remarkable proficiency in the languages. His mental condition reminds us of that through which John Stuart Mill passed, when about the same age, after being subjected by his father to that long and terrible discipline of acquisition which is so fully described in his autobiography and has been curiously confirmed by a letter lately discovered, written by young Mill at the age of thirteen to Sir Samuel Bentham. After being crammed with knowledge in the most systematic way—dead languages, classical literature, history, mathematics, and political economy—from early childhood, by poring over books, until he became a perfect prodigy of erudition, he passed into a cloud of melancholy, in which his future life seemed vacant and hopeless. All the fountains of impulse that had previously incited him to effort seemed dried up in his gloomy dejection. He went on with his work mechanically, but without interest, while this portion of his life, or what he did in it, was afterward hardly remembered. He subsequently described his case in the following lines from Coleridge:
"A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief
In word, or sigh, or tear."
He was not free from suggestions of self-destruction which arise in such mental conditions, as we gather from the following remarks: "I frequently asked myself if I could, or if I was bound to, go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year." It was unquestionably a case of exhaustion, brought on by steady, prolonged, and severe mental application, and giving rise to the morbid condition of melancholia. His vigorous constitution, however, rallied and carried him through, although he had several relapses afterward. His education had been conducted as if his mind was a chamber to be packed with knowledge, rather than a force or activity dependent upon an organ of exquisite delicacy, which is liable to be strained, overworked, impaired, and broken down.
The tragical result in the case of Schwerdtfeger was due to two causes, from the operation of which Mill was comparatively exempt: he had slender health, and he was exposed to the artificial, high-pressure competitive system which is now so much in vogue in the sphere of higher education. He was a poor boy, of a highly-sensitive nature, intellectually precocious, and with an unhappy home, from the trouble of which he had only been able to escape through absorption in books and study. At fourteen or fifteen he was employed in an office to translate German works, and displayed such remarkable faculties that a wealthy gentleman thought he would give him a chance by sending him to college. He went to Cornell, at the age of sixteen, and, though not prepared to enter the university, took up his residence with one of the professors, and was quickly qualified for admission. No sooner had he got in than he began at once to be plied with the dangerous stimulation of the competitive prize system. A pecuniary reward was offered for the best essay on the "English verb." Our slender lad went in for it and won the prize and the honor, while yet a freshman, with abundant plaudits for his remarkable production. The distinction thus early achieved had of course to be sustained, and an extrinsic and artificial pressure was thus brought to bear upon the young man, who was thereafter expected to be an honor to the institution. He threw himself with all the premature ambition of a precocious nature into lingual studies—a class of studies that stands highest in the rank of collegiate scholarship, and that, therefore, brings most applause. It must be remembered, also, that the ascendency of these studies has long been defended on the ground that they afford the most available standards of acquisition, or the sharpest means of marking the student's progress; in other words, are best fitted of all subjects for racing and winning honors. Language after language was rapidly acquired. Schwerdtfeger bought a Greek grammar and stuck to it for ten hours a day, as we are informed, getting on with such proficiency that a distinguished Greek professor, from another institution, happening to be there, was set to examining him. After three or four hours of it, the professor declared that he was well prepared to enter the classical course of any college in the country, and was confounded when told that Schwerdtfeger had only begun Greek three weeks before. In languages he was ahead of any student who had ever been in the university. He gave lessons as tutor in Latin, Spanish, German, Greek, French, and Portuguese. Under this intense strain his health, originally poor, grew worse, and he ought then to have at once left the place. There is a moral discipline in such institutions which, if violated, entails expulsion; and it is a serious question whether there ought not to be a sanitary discipline, equally stringent, for the exclusion of students who damage themselves by over-study. But when the boy's health quite gave way under the stimulation of college influence, instead of being sent away, he was struck by a baneful agency from without. The Intercollegiate Literary Association offered prizes before the whole country for the best essay in Latin. The sick boy of Cornell entered into the competition, beat all his rivals, and won the highest prize. He then lapsed into deeper morbid despondency, made his will, and shot himself through the head with a pistol.
We have here merely another instance, of which there have been thousands before, of the vicious working of that competitive system in our higher educational institutions, which should receive the inexorable reprobation of the community. Prof. Johannot writes to the Tribune, in relation to Schwerdtfeger's case, saying that Cornell University neither forces, crams, nor uses class-markings, which is all very well; but how about competitive prizes? Does it forbid these to its students? and, if not, is there no "forcing" here? Schwerdtfeger began and ended at Cornell by gaining prizes. If Schwerdtfeger "came to the institution an exceptional student, with a thirst for knowledge which was an absorbing passion, and had morbid fancies and an inherited tendency toward insanity and suicide;" if he was "fascinated with the life and fate of Chatterton," then the institution that took charge of him is to be all the more condemned for exposing him to the fatal stimulus of competitive prizes.
It is forgotten that we live in an age of excitement—a speculating, gambling, horse-racing age, feverish with political, religious, commercial, and sporting rivalries. All grades of society are infected by it, and the universal interest in it is such that the newspapers are crammed day by day with the details of competitive conflicts in numberless forms, from foot-races up to political campaigns. Against all this our higher education ought to make a stand. But, instead of doing so, the colleges, in various degrees, yield to the general tendency, and, in fact, avail themselves of the competitive spirit in carrying on their work. The pernicious effects of artificial excitements and provocatives are undeniable and notorious. Many have been sacrificed to this forcing system, through constitutional enfeeblement, prostration by disease, and premature death. For the natures upon which it takes effect are just those that are most liable to become its victims. Fatal results may not be produced, but shattered nerves and broken constitutions do follow everywhere upon the competitive prize system, because it is the readily impressible, the impulsive, and the unregulated, that are taken by its lures.
It is a physiological fact of the greatest importance in education that, under the stimulus of intense feeling and factitious excitement, the brain is capable of making rapid and extensive acquisitions, which are, of course, correspondingly transient. The cramming policy rests upon this capability of the brain, and it is this to which the competitive prize system appeals. It bids for immediate, striking, and showy results in acquisition, to be gained by exhaustion of the plastic power of this organ, and that, too, during the period of its growth, when the forces are required for enlargement and advancing organization. It violates this fundamental principle of education: that intellectual acquirement, to be permanent and valuable, must be slow; and that, for healthful mental development, knowledge, like food, must be taken as required by normal appetite, and become assimilated into faculty by the quiet, unforced processes of organic transformation. The protests in recent years against this policy have been many and emphatic, and much has been done to check it; but it will undoubtedly continue so long as partial parents continue to be imposed upon by the shallow parade of examinations, exhibitions, and prize shows.
The Intercollegiate Literary Association now appears as a new force well calculated to thwart this beneficent tendency. It works by prizes and honors in their most mischievous forms, by blazoning the victories of students through all the newspapers in the land; so that one might almost infer that the very object of its establishment is to encourage and strengthen the worst feature of educational practice. It is not an organization to improve the colleges by giving encouragement to neglected studies, or by bringing their schemes of instruction into completer harmony with the claims of modern knowledge or the necessities of modern life; but it offers its sensational rewards for proficiency in just those subjects which have long usurped undue attention in the collegiate education. It applies increasing pressure in those directions in which pressure is already excessive. Hence, if there are any students already shaken by struggles to get the leading positions in the colleges, the Association tempts them to come forward and fight it out with each other before the whole country. It will remain true to the end of time that those who sacrifice all the rest of their nature to the attainment of any one object will win it as against those who regard the claims of their whole nature. The Intercollegiate Association bids for the best cases of one-sided development. If a student has sacrificed his bodily health to brilliant scholastic results, the Association wants him for exhibition. Johannot says that Schwerdtfeger, "in preparing for the late intercollegiate contest, made no extraordinary effort;" yet he beat all the healthier fellows out of sight, and the Association gave him a prize for his disease. If it killed him, no matter; that was but an incident. Do not horses often die on the racecourse? and are not men often killed in the prize-ring? Aspirants must take their chances. To the earnest protest of a correspondent to its encouragement of the Intercollegiate Association the editor of the Tribune replies, "Even if young Schwerdtfeger's death could be directly traced to overwork in connection with the recent competition in this city, we should hesitate before condemning the intercollegiate literary contests." This is a little startling as an illustration of the foothold that sporting ethics has got in the field of education; but we can admire that pluck of opinion which does not recoil from its logical consequences.
THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF IDEAS.
We picked up an educational paper the other day, presenting a long list of distinguished men as editors. This promised well, as the field of American education is not the place where the editorial "dummy" humbug would be tolerated. Albeit the wisdom of the periodical did not seem to be of a very solid sort, though we read on, hopefully expecting to find it at every step. At length we came upon the reviews of periodicals, and thought perhaps here we should discover the sound sense promised by the import of the editorial names. We found the story-telling magazines dissected, weighed, and measured, with care and fullness. The writer was here clearly interested in his topic; but when we came to The Popular Science Monthly it was different. The writer said he never thought much of it, and, though he had no doubt there was some truth in Evolution, he did not like to have it thrust in his face and be bored with it perpetually in accordance with the usage of this periodical. This was the first time that he had broken out into adverse criticism. He had been hitherto much pleased; the contents of the story-telling magazines had not bored him. Whereat we reflected upon the different values assigned by different minds to different orders of ideas. We think the trashy love-sick stories, the idle gossip about notorious persons, and the dashing sensational criticism, which make up the chief portion of our literary periodicals, to be not very important; and on the other hand we think that Evolution, if true, is a very important matter indeed, and as the case stands it seems to us of very great interest to know what the ablest men of the age are thinking about it. Its establishment and general acceptance must work the deepest and most far reaching revolution in human thought of any truth to which the human mind has ever attained. Therefore we have taken some pains to keep our readers informed about it. And this was the more necessary, as the literary periodicals of large circulation pass the subject by, and the larger the circulation the more carefully is it ignored. They value, prefer, and select that which will "pay," and in so doing they cater, for mercenary purposes, to the caprice frivolity, prejudice, and ignorance of their readers, not troubling them much with the great and serious truths which science is working out for the world. It is gratifying to find that we are not singular in our estimate of the relative moment and significance of these two forms of intellectual occupation. A writer who gives elaborate consideration to President White's "Warfare of Science" in the Westminster Review opens with the following pungent observations:
"It has always seemed to us a matter for some wonder that people should take such a deep interest in the peddling events of poor individual human existences, and so little in the dynasty of ideas; that they should be content to wear their eyes out over the driveling three-volumed account of the loves and hates of vapid men and women, to indulge their finest emotions over the fifth act of some puling melodrama, and yet be altogether indifferent to the gigantic drama of truth in which the unity of place is the world, the unity of time the centuries, and the actors are beneficent truths or malevolent errors. Why men should be indifferent to these momentous events in the past which constituted the history of science, the history of philosophy, and, in the truest sense, the history of religion, and yet should enter with such eager zest into the gossip of the day and the trivialities of personal reminiscence, it is difficult to say. But, however hard it may be to discover the meaning of, there is no possibility of doubting, the fact. While the personal histories of men who have very small claims upon our better sympathies are read with avidity, the impersonal narrative of truths which have paramount claims upon our hearts and our heads are treated with the passive contempt of neglect. Men are much to us, while doctrines are little. We like to have our truths in the flesh; and we are too apt, when we find a doctrine incarnated, to neglect the sacred revelation and worship the man, to transfer the reverence which is due to an idea to the individual who is, as it were, the bearer of it. Here we have, in epitome, the history of many religions. Men will worship the truth with startled reverence, then they will worship the truth-bearer and overlook the truth in the symbol, and forget that of which it is the sign."
CONCERNING "BLUE GLASS."
We are asked why we do not discourse of Pleasonton and "blue glass." Why should we? Is it not abundantly considered by the press already? The object of our pages is to treat of subjects that are too generally neglected; to give expression to those great results of discovery and scientific thought which get but a meagre share of attention from the popular press, and we cannot find half room enough to do this work as it should be done. "But, really, what do you think of Pleasonton, and the blue-glass cure?" is now the obtrusive question. Well, we think that the man is a pestilent ignoramus, and his book the ghastliest rubbish that has been printed in a hundred years. He may be entirely honest, but that is no reason why we should give attention to his egregious folly. Pleasonton, however, it must be confessed, serves one important function: he gauges for us the depth and density of American stupidity. De Morgan says, somewhere, that certain men appear occasionally to play the part of "foolometërs" in the community, that is, to measure the number and quality of the fools furnished by any given state of society. Pleasonton has done this for us with an accuracy that leaves nothing to be desired. Our showing in this respect is on a very handsome scale, fully commensurate with the length of the Mississippi, the sweep of the prairies, the glory of the Centennial Exhibition, the grandeur of the national debt, and the splendid proportions of our system of education. He is a public benefactor, in that he has given us another "big thing." The interesting point just now about "blue glass" is psychological. It is an exponent of popular intelligence, an index of culture, a register of common-school work, and a test of the influence of colleges. Our collective schools produce in the community a certain state of mind; "blue glass" indicates it. There is evidently a very close connection here, and the problem deserves to be worked out. If the Intercollegiate Literary Association will offer an additional prize for the best essay on the connection between the study of Latin and Greek and the "blue-glass" mania, The Popular Science Monthly will furnish the money for the purpose.