Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 169, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1917 — GIRLS WHO FAIL AT SCHOOL [ARTICLE]

GIRLS WHO FAIL AT SCHOOL

They Acquire a Sensitiveness Which Causes Great Deal of ( Unnecessary and Unsuspected Unhappiness. The suicide of a girl who failed to pass a mathematical examination at the Girl’s high school Is an extreme instance of a form of sensitiveness which is very common among school children and which causes a great deal of wholly unnecessary, and sometimes un-suspected-unhappiness, says the Brooklyn Eagle. This poor girl thought that she had disgraced her family by-her failure, an absurd notion which could only find lodgment In a mind not entirely recovered from the general unsettling of adolescence. At that age the unsettling affects both boys and giris, but the result Is more likely to be serious with girls because they take less exercise in the open air. Their nerves are less dominated by muscles tired out in healthful sport and they have more time for introspection —a process which is pretty sure to distort one’s view of his relations to his surroundings until such time as the mind has hardened and grown up and experience has taught that the world does not revolve around the success or failure of any one of us. - The prevention for this sort of unhappiness is to be found in keeping a sharp eye—on no account a sharp tongue —on children when they are beginning to study too hard, and to have some diverting relaxation at hand for them when the point is reached at which study is no longer productive. Children sometimes muddle for hours over lessons without getting any clear Idea and when all the nervous force they put into their study is wasted. Sometimes that Is because they have not learned how to think and sometimes because no one has aroused their interest in that study. They “just hate” algebra or civil government, and in that frame of mind the effort they put on It is almost sure to be wasted. The remedy in that case is not more study but either a better understanding or more play to rest tired brain and nerves. But the application of the remedy requires a very close and sympathetic understanding of the child, and parents sometimes find that harder with their children than outsiders.