tasks are given, they have to be learned out of school or not at all.  Pupils of grammar schools are known to feel obliged to study two or three hours daily from this cause at a time when they should be sleeping, or exercising in the open air.  Frequently, however, it is not so much overwork as overworry that most affects the health of the child,—­that worry which may not always be traced to any fault of system or teacher, but which, it must be admitted, is too often induced by encouraging wrong motives to study.

“In making up the verdict we must not forget that others besides the teacher may be responsible for overwork and overworry.  The parents and pupils themselves are quite as often to blame as are the teachers.  An unwillingness on the part of pupils to review work imperfectly done, and a desire on the part of parents to have their children get into a higher class, or to graduate, frequently cause pupils to cram for examinations and to work unduly at a time when the body is least able to bear the extra strain.  Again, children are frequently required to take extra lessons in music or some other study at home, thus depriving them of needed exercise and recreation, or exhausting nervous energy which is needed for their regular school work.

“It will be observed that in this charge against parents I do not speak of those causes of ill health which really have nothing to do with overwork, but which are oftentimes forgotten when a school-boy or girl breaks down.  I allude to the eating of improper and unwholesome food, to irregularity of eating and sleeping, to attendance upon parties and other places of amusement late at night, to smoking, and to the indulgence of other habits which tend to unduly excite the nervous system.  For very obvious reasons these causes of disease are not brought prominently forward by the attending physician, who doubtless thinks it safer and more flattering to his patrons to say that the child has broken down from hard study, rather than from excesses which are somewhat discreditable.  While parents are clearly to blame for endangering health in the ways indicated, it may be a question whether the work required to be done in school should not be regulated accordingly; whether, in designating the studies to be taken, and in assigning lessons, there should not be taken into consideration all the circumstances of the pupil’s life which can be conveniently ascertained, even though those circumstances are most unfavorable to school work and are brought about mainly through the ignorance or folly of parents.  Of course there is a limit to such an adjustment of work in school, but with proper caution and a good understanding with the parents there need be little danger of advantage being taken by an indolent child; nor need the school be affected when it is understood to be a sign of weakness rather than of favor to any particular pupil to lessen his work.  Not unfrequently there are found other causes of ill health than those