“Let her make herself her ownTo give or keep, to live, and learn, and beAll that not harms distinctive womanhood.”
“Let her make herself her ownTo give or keep, to live, and learn, and beAll that not harms distinctive womanhood.”
I have recently been assured by one of the best students that have ever graduated from our University, and by another who graduated from Hillsdale College in this State, from precisely the same course as the gentlemen students, that to girls of average capacity, the college course, all that is required of the young men—and all thattheyare accustomed to perform—is not by any means difficult, and will not over-tax any girl of average health and abilities, who is properly prepared when she enters. But the trouble is that while girls like the studies in the regular course, and study with a real relish, they want more. They are not satisfied with the French and German of a course, they want to speak and write these languages, and add extra private lessons to those of the regular classes. The few lessons of the course in perspective drawing have, in some, awakened an artistic taste, and they want to pursue drawing farther. There are better teachers to be found in the vicinity of a University than they will find at home, and they are constantly tempted to do too much. A number of girls in the literary course of the University attend the medical lectures in certain departments, some teach students who are “conditioned” in certain branches. From all the colleges, the report in this respect is the same—girls caneasily do all that is required of the young men, but they will do more. And yet the report from every college is—more young men break down during a course, and are obliged, from ill health, to abandon their studies, than young women. This certainly does not threaten danger to girls who attempt only the same that the young men do. The tendency in our colleges towards elective courses of study is in the right direction to remove the dangerous temptation into which girls are liable to fall—of taking studies outside the course. I hope to see even greater freedom of choice.
From a woman, a mother, and lover of little children, a few words about school buildings and school methods may not be out of place.
Americans are proverbially giving to boasting. People of the older world tell us that this is an expression of our undeveloped youth—a kind ofSophomorismdenoting that we are yet not very far advanced. Be that as it may, I have observed that there is no more common subject for boasting than our schools and our school system.
“There are our King's Palaces, where we are training our future monarchs! Those are the towers of our defence—the bulwarks of our republic!” I heard a western Congressman exclaim, as the railway train whizzed past one of those immense school edifices which so closely dot the area of many of our western States, that one scarcely loses sight of one ere the high towers and ornate roofs of another come into view. “I will acknowledge that I am proud—feel like boasting, when I can point a foreigner to such buildings as those, and tell him they are but our common free schools, open to every child in the land, rich and poor, alike.”
The friend addressed, an intelligent, shrewd, naturalized Scotchman, replied that he was “a little old fogy,” he supposed, but that those great high buildings, where six or eight hundred children were gathered in one school, were like great cities, where too many people were gathered together. School life, no more than city life, could be healthy, nor just what life ought to be, under such conditions. To carry out these great union school plans, made a necessity for too much machinery. This it was which was grinding out the education of our children, rather than developing thought, and the result would be machine education. He said that school was a continual worry at home. One child was kept after school one day for one thing, and another the next day for some other thing, and there was a deal of worry and fretting about how they were marked, and a good deal more talk about the marks for the lesson, than there was about what was in the lesson itself. One little girl, a delicate lassie, they had been obliged to take out of school. The child didn't eat, couldn't sleep, and was getting in a bad way altogether.
“There is no more color in L——'s face when she is getting off to school in the morning, than there is in my handkerchief, she is so afraid of being marked,” said a mother to me a day or two since. “Yesterday morning was especially one of trial to the child. I wish you could have seen her when she got off, or rather when she got home at night, and have heard her story. I had charged her not to hurry so, but come back if she was going to fail; I would rather she would lose the day than to gain her school through such an effort.” The child reached the school, and came home at night to tell how. Rushing into the house, the delicately organized, nervous little girl exclaimed: “Oh, mamma, I did get there; and the best of it was, I overtook G—— S—— (another as delicate child); she was as late as I was, and we both ran every step. We managed to get our things off in the wardrobe and get into our seats, but G—— could not get her mittens off; and when she at last dropped into her seat, she put both hands up to her face and burst out crying as loud as she could cry. Oh, I did feel so sorry for her!” The effort of getting to school, the fear of the marks, had thrown the delicate child into hysterics, given her physical system a shock, and made demands on her brain that a year's study could not have done. I could fill a volume, as could any observing woman, with instances like this—the occurrences of every day in the year. They cannot, perhaps, be helped. Teachers are not to be blamed for them. Six or eight hundred children cannot be hindered for one child. All are tied to too much machinery.
In some of the public schools which I have visited in Germany, the lessons for children eleven and twelve years old seemed to me more difficult than the lessons set for children of the same age in our public schools; and our children are not in school nearly so many hours in a day as the children in German schools, which are so often referred to, not only as model educational institutions, but conservators of health as well. Children in Germany go to school at seven o'clock in the morning. In very early morning walks, I have often met scores of German children, with their little soldier-like knapsack of books strapped to their shoulders, and have stopped them to examine their school-books, and inquire about their schools. In a little valley in Switzerland, seeing a bevy of children starting, so many in one direction, before it was light in the morning, I inquired where all those children were going. “To the school, to be sure,” I was answered. “But they cannot see to read or study,” I said. “O, sie müssen Licht mitnehmen” (they must take a light with them), was the reply.
Our modes of education will be changed; there are defects to be remedied, evils to be cured, which affect both sexes; but women will be educated. All the tendencies of the age are towards a higher intellectual culture for them. Women's clubs, classes, library and literary associations, are, throughout our cities and villages—in little country neighborhoods, even—furnishing women with means of intellectual growth and advancement. There is no more marked feature of the age than these associations. The Babe of Bethlehem is born, and has even now too far escaped the search of Herod to be overtaken.
Nor is there anything in the spirit of the times which betokens the revival of the nunnery and monastic systems. Women already tread almost every avenue of honest thrift and business, unchallenged. The shrines of Minerva will not be desecrated by their presence. Their intellect will be developed, and their affections will be cultivated, and all truly womanly virtues fostered in the innermost penetralia even, of that temple where all wisdom, and all art, and all science, are taught; whose patron deity was prophetically made by a mythology, wise beyond its own ken, not a man, not a god—but a goddess, a typical woman.
As surely as girls persistently breathe the same air their brothers breathe, eat and drink as they do, go with them to church, public lectures, concerts, plays, andsocial entertainments, so will they, in the new and more truly Christian era that is dawning, come, more and more, to study with them, from youth to old age, in the academy, the sacred groves of philosophy, halls of science, schools of theology—everywhere and “persistently.”
Lucinda H. Stone.
Kalamazoo, Mich.
Top
When I was giving, in Dundee, a lecture upon the Education of Women in America, the substance of which appeared in theWestminster Reviewof October, 1873, the chairman, on introducing me, said. “De Tocqueville, the French philosopher, considered that the chief cause of the great prosperity of the American nation is the superiority of the women; now we are to hear to-night how these women are produced.”
Two things uniformly strike foreign travellers in our country; the general intelligence of the people, and the equality of the education and intellectual interests of the men and the women; and few remarks are oftener heard from those who have visited us, or have known our countrymen and women on the Continent than this: “American women seem so much superior to the men.”
But a third fact stands just as boldly forth—the thin, unhealthy-looking physique and nervous sensibility of the American people; and the impression of this is deepened by comparing us with our original ancestors, the English, confessedly the finest physical race in the world. These facts—the superior average education in America, and the inferior average physique of the nation—are so striking, that it is strange that they have not oftener and more forcibly been placed together as cause and effect. The education has gone on increasing, and the physique has gone on declining, till now the census returns begin to make us look anxiously about us. Our men are unmuscular and short-lived, the best of them; the men of a physique of the type of Chief Justice Chase rarely live beyond sixty or sixty-five. They are not invalids, but they are subject to fever, congestion, and paralysis, violent crises. The women are slight, graceful, impressionable, and active. In the poorer ranks of life they have a nervous, anxious look; in the well-to-do and wealthier ranks, a nervous, spiritual look. They are not invalids, but they are delicate, and are kept under a constant and chafing restraint from want of strength to carry out the plans they set before them, and they give an unsatisfactory prospect for the coming generations. Our census reports are very trustworthy oracles; these give us dark omens, and it is folly to shut our eyes.
Many causes may be assigned as contributing to this physical deterioration, any one of which, with a little ingenuity, may be clearly made to appear responsible for almost the whole; and such, in some degree, is the temporary effect of the very clever feint of Dr. Clarke—nothing else can it be called. The book gives us the impression that the author is going to attack our effort to produce the kind of women upon which any shrewd observer must see that our unparalleled prosperity to a great degree rests. It makes us believe he is going to attack the very method to which our success in educating women is due; and it makes us fear that he is going to attack the modern doubt concerning the old theory, that “the highest and ultimate aim of a woman is to be thesatisfactory wife of one man, and the nourishing mother of another;” but he does not even try to do any one of these things. He has thrown a calcium light upon one spot, revealing some defects, and many eyes are for a time drawn towards it. His feint has created a sensation, and brought an important subject up to a grade of familiarity and openness where it can be talked of and examined, and I closed the book with a great sense of obligation on behalf of my nation.
I have long felt that physicians, themselves, have no adequate impression of the danger we are incurring in the average neglect that attends the physical rearing of American girls, and subsequent care of young women, nor adequate knowledge of their tendency to weakness in their present condition. Mothers are busy, and girls are left too much to take care of themselves.
From considerable personal knowledge, I am aware that the present state of things ought to occasion anxiety; that girls, ignorant of the consequences, are disposed to conceal any weakness or unnatural condition, through their great aversion to medical attendance, and from a dislike to restrictions upon their social pleasures; and also from the fear that these restrictions would produce suspicion among their friends in regard to their condition. I am sure that I am stating facts that are not appreciated in the degree that they deserve.
Looked at physically, and with a philanthropy that extends beyond our contemporaries, English women do not allow us to feel wholly satisfied with our American women. They make us feel that there is a debit as well as a credit column when we compare our system of social life with theirs. But we must not be so unwise as to attribute the fault to four or five years in the Americangirl's life; nor must we be so short-sighted as to limit the responsibility to the present generation. Our own grandmothers did thus and so; but, as Miss Phelps says, this is the very reason that we cannot do it; nor can we afford to be so unjust as to make women bear the whole blame, nor so injudicious as to criminate our society as a whole. Crime implies bad intentions, or mistakes that result from inexcusable neglect of available knowledge. Our bitterest enemies, the devotees of a “high-bred aristocracy,” could not charge us with the first; and as to the second, the past furnishes no experience for our guidance. We do not know just how much work this complex human machine is capable of doing; nor indeed do we know how to adjust the action of the different parts, and to manage the repairs so as to get the best possible work out of it. Some overstrain it, others take needless trouble about the repairs. As yet the capacities of human muscle and nerve have never been adequately tested. We are carrying the experiments in this matter farther than they have ever gone before. We cannot know the full strength of a cord till it is broken; but we grow cautious when we see that the fibres are beginning to give way.
Our astonishing prosperity is due to the large total of brain-activity that is being applied in the development of the natural resources, industries, and social life of our nation—a total to which women as well as men contribute, and the poorer people as well as the richer. That they are able to make this common contribution, is due to the fact, that we educate not only men but women, not only the rich but the poor; that they are keenly stimulated to make it, is due to the natural resources of the country, to the mobile conditions of society,and to the peculiar system of educating all classes and both sexes together, which conditions combine to afford to the various individuals, inviting possibilities for acquiring wealth and influence. Along with this tremendous brain activity, a very large proportion of our people are carrying on an unusual amount of muscular activity. That is, our active brains multiply things to be done faster than they supply us with mechanical contrivances and organization in industry, to reduce muscular labor.
In looking at the conditions of English life we observe:
I.Comparative repose, the absence of an exciting hope and a hurried and worrying activity. A large part of the nation attempt to lead nothing beyond a simple animal life, putting their entire energies into animal force, and using this animal force for the benefit of those above them, almost as completely as the horse or the ox. This statement is so true of the agricultural laborers as to admit of very little palliation, and it is scarcely less true of the unskilled working classes in the towns. In all the lower ranks of society there are great obstacles to advancement in position, because each plane of life is crowded with its own members; because each class is educated in schools where only children of that class are found, and where the education is especially adapted to that class—that is, to their industrial needs and to what is expected in that grade of society—and does not fit them for any other place in society. One-fifth of the nation cannot read, and the education of the great majority of the remainder, when not limited to the “three R's,” does not go far enough to create a taste for reading books; and, shut off as they have been from participation in political life, they have too little interest in public concernsto read the newspapers. That is, as compared with our life, the possibilities for advancement are limited, the average education is of a low order, and the stimulus that comes from an acquaintance with the habits of those above them is absent. Nearly all the spurs to ambition are wanting, and in consequence there is little tendency to do more work than is necessary to keep along in the old ways. The skilled artisans have in this matter of opportunity for advancement more in common with the circumstances of our life. This sphere is not overcrowded, but they, too, lack the means for education and association with those above them provided in our public schools.
The result of their better chances for improvement shows itself with them in the same way as with us, in a tendency to overwork, though, as we should expect, not in the same degree. Complaints are made of the physical deterioration of this class, and laws are enacted to limit the working hours of children; and in the last session of Parliament, Mr. Mundella introduced a bill to fix the limit for women below that of men. The bill did not pass, but it will be introduced again in the next session.
The large shopkeepers and manufacturers are, again, more assimilated to us in their possibilities for rapid changes in financial conditions; but at best they are a small class, and efficient help is more easily attainable. With us, as soon as a man becomes conscious that he has good ability for work, he finds for himself an independent place. Here, as a rule, there is no independent place for him, and he is obliged to sell his ability to some other man who has an independent footing. So that the leader of a scheme is not only relieved from puzzling over details, but a large part of the planning is done byable men in his employ, and he need give but little of his time. As a rule, a man must be on a pretty high platform to have much hope of crowding his way up higher.
II.The importance of health is a dominant idea in the whole nation. This is probably due to the very permanent impress given to English civilization by the feudal system, to the demand made for the permanence of the family, and for the production of warrior barons and warrior retainers. The physical condition, that was formerly a necessity, is now maintained as a matter of aristocratic fashion and pride in ancestry. The higher classes have nothing to do that demands a strong physique, but they devote the best part of their energies to securing it, and set up their own results and methods as a model which the whole nation follow. As evidence of this national interest in health, we may observe the number of Public Health bills that come into Parliament, and it is not strange that they get the most attention from the Conservative side of the House. As farther confirmation we observe the great number of holidays spent, not in merrymaking, but in a stroll in the fresh air of the country, and the fact that nearly all the families of the whole nation make as regular provision for one or more “outings” in the year, as they do for the extra wraps for the winter; and still farther, that almost the poorest classes refuse to buy bread and meat of second quality, not from luxurious tastes, but from a belief that it is less healthful. This consideration for health pervades all ranks of the nation.
III.As conducive to the maintenance of health, we find, first, remarkable regularity of habits, which is largely due to the fixedness, or caste state of society, that keeps people in the same grade of life into which theyare born; that is, in conditions where they have no occasion to change their habits, and where they have little opportunity for seeing any habits, except those to which they conform. Children naturally fall into the ways in which they are expected to go. This permanence of conditions goes far to insure a degree of regularity that almost converts habits into instincts. Within the last few weeks, I have for the first time heard an Englishman say that he had eaten too much. Doubtless this mistake does sometimes occur, but the fact that it puts one at discredit to acknowledge it, is sufficient indication of the popular feeling respecting it. A child, even, is seldom seen eating a bit of fruit, or a bun, at other than the regular meals. Once I saw a woman, in an Oxford street omnibus, eating a basket of gooseberries, and so unusual was the sight, that I could not help wondering if she were not some stray American.
Perhaps, in importance even before regularity of living we should rank the athletic habits of the people, their large amount of vigorous out-of-door exercise. The upper classes are, by the customs of society, quite generally excluded from productive industry. They follow the custom of feudal times and live mostly in the country, where walking, driving, riding, and country sports furnish the chief employment and amusement. Children are trained into habits of out-of-door exercise till they get an appetite for it, as they have for their food, and it is not unusual to hear an Englishwoman say, “I would as soon go without my lunch as without a walk of an hour or an hour and a half in the day;” and the habits of the upper classes, as I have already intimated, percolate down through all ranks of life. As contributing in no smalldegree to invite this open air exercise, we must include the moderate and equable temperature, and the excellent and attractive roads and walks.
IV.Almost as the tap-root of this long-lived, hardy race is the strong and universal desire for family permanence, which makes the peculiar constitution that gives the best promise of maintaining the family, the ideal standard for the whole nation. Mothers know that their daughters stand little chance of marrying an eldest son, unless they have a well-developed physique, and daughters are not slow in learning the same truth. This necessitates a high physical ideal for the women, towards which they consciously strive, outside of and above the general national habits.
These considerations, the repose, the care for health, the regularity of habits, the open air exercise, the demand for a strong physique as security for the permanence of the family, combine to produce a high average of health in men and women alike. In looking into the habits that more especially affect the health of the women, we may separate society into two classes, drawing just below the large retail traders, a line of division which, as a rule, marks the distinction between skilled and unskilled servants. In this upper division, we find a nurse who has served an apprenticeship as under nurse in the same grade of life, a cook who has served as under cook, etc. Each servant understands exactly the duties that belong to her sphere, that is, the regimen in her branch of work, proper for a family in that position.
Fashion says the women of the family should not only do no money-earning work, but also no money-saving work. In short, the best criterion of rank would be the degreeand naturalness with which they indulge an absolute leisure.
Ostensibly they very rigidly obey this fashion, though doubtless, in many cases, some dressmaking or plain sewing is done somewhere out of sight. The plan is for the mistress to spend half-an-hour in the morning in giving her orders and looking over accounts; beyond this, for the women of the family to be exempt from any real household service, while all branches of sewing are to be given to professional seamstresses. If the family lives in town, the evenings are supposed to be very regularly spent in social enjoyment; if they live in the country, they fill in the time as best they can, after the late dinner. But whether at home or away, the food and habits are about the same, or, if there are late hours, the sleep is made up in the morning. The children are in the hands of a competent nurse, and from her they pass to a governess, who looks after their physical habits as well as their lessons. Few mistakes are likely to be made. The regimen of habits for the children at the advancing ages is well understood, and the success of the nurse or governess in keeping her place depends upon her fidelity in carrying them out. The children are trained into these regular habits till they become appetites, and seem to be laws of their nature.
In the lower division, the servants are less numerous and less efficient. Mothers and daughters do a part, or all, of the domestic work. But the baking, in most parts of the country, and much of the sewing, is done out of the house. More servants are employed than in corresponding families with us, and altogether much less work is included in the domestic occupations. In the higher grades of this lower division, the education of thegirls continues till from fourteen to sixteen, and is carried on either under a governess, or in small schools, which are either boarding-schools or day schools. The governesses are cheap, and the schools are cheap, and there seems to be little choice between the two plans.
The girls have a little history, French, music, and ornamental needlework. Below these upper grades, girls are educated at the National schools, where, if they remain long enough, they are taught the common branches and plain needlework, moderately well. Through the upper division of society, the education of the girls continues till from seventeen to eighteen. About half of their education, also, is given by governesses, and the other half about equally in boarding and day schools. Nearly all private schools are small, rarely exceeding forty pupils, and giving an average of from twenty to twenty-five. If there is but one session of the school, it never exceeds four hours. Great pains are taken not to have the schools change the dietary and hygienic habits to which the girls are accustomed at home. They either go home for their simple midday dinner, or they dine at the school, and their daily walks are provided for at home, or taken with a governess at school. That is, there is an approved system of habits for English girls, and these are rigidly carried out, whether they are in a boarding-school or a day school, or under a governess; and on the average, either in the efficiency of the teaching, or the physical results, there seems to be little choice between the three plans. As to the amount of intellectual work accomplished, no English person speaks well, nor indeed with a moderate degree of censure.
About ten years ago, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the condition of the education of the country; and though the plan first contemplated, included only boys' schools, the commissioners were later instructed to extend their inquiry to girls' schools. The report of this commission bore the most concurrent testimony, that the girls' schools were much inferior to the boys' schools. They complained that too many subjects were attempted, too little thoroughness was attained; that there was a disposition to limit the education too largely to moral training; that much time was wasted on music; arithmetic is spoken of as “a weak point,” and mathematics, beyond this, as seldom attempted. I have not space for the full consideration of the points brought out by the commissioners. I give only enough to show that the average and almost universal education of English women is wholly of the old-time feminine type—useful sewing, reading, writing, and religious instruction for the girls of the lower classes; ornamental needlework, music, modern languages, history, and English composition for the girls of the higher classes. The result is, as far as I have been able to judge, women who are in a rare degree truthful, pure, and faithful to recognized obligations, but, as a rule, their range of recognized obligations is not very wide, and the subjects in which they take an interest are very limited. Among the lower classes men are said to seek society in the beer-shops, and in the higher classes, at the clubs and with their gentlemen friends, because they have little companionship at home. The education is so different that there is far less of companionship between men and women than with us. Among the lower classes, great wastefulness in the family economies is attributed to the ignorance of the women. In the report of one of themeetings of the Social Science Congress, I find the statement of a working man which, I am sure, expresses the general feeling of the people of the country. In referring to the want of education, and the consequent want of the home-creating power among the women, he said: “The homes of our artisans are not nearly equal to the work they execute, nor to the wages they earn.” Among the higher classes, I am disposed to believe, that nowhere else can women be found so exactly fitted for the place that the popular sentiment expects them to fill; in short, that the handiwork of man shows no higher triumph of skill in adapting its instrument to the purpose it is meant to serve, than is seen in these moral, healthy, dignified, orderly, executive English matrons; and though the place they fill in the work of the world is not very large, it is not strange that the conservative sentiment of the country dreads to disturb the perfect balance.
The narrow intellectual attainments of these women do not interfere very much with the general prosperity of the family. Social position depends so largely upon birth that no amount of intelligence or grace would enable them to add very much to acquaintance or popularity; and the servants are so skilful in their departments, that the cleverest amateur could help them but little.
All these women of the upper class uniformly write and speak better English than we do. This is, perhaps, quite as much due to the fact that they neither hear nor read anything but good English, as to the careful drill in English composition given in English schools. I am speaking now of the intellectual attainments of the very large proportion of the women in this upper class; but among them are women, forming a considerable class,with whom we have very few to compare, and none to equal the best. But these highly educated women do not owe their attainments to the schools and governesses. For the most part, they are the daughters of learned men, by whom they have been taught, or they have kept along with their brothers, who were getting “honors” at the public schools and universities. If women have once studied enough to create an intellectual appetite, the privacy of English homes, especially rural homes, furnishes great facilities for fostering it. In regard to the school habits of girls under eighteen, I quote the following statements, from the letter of a teacher whose opinion and practice respecting these matters would be received with as much authority as that of any person in England:
“1st. We insist upon plenty of sleep. Our oldest pupils go to bed at nine o'clock, the younger ones at eight or half-past eight; and none rise before six. We have no work before breakfast. We allow no later hours, and no omission of out-door exercises when preparing for examination.“2d. We do not allow them to work immediately after a meal, and after dinner we have no lessons (recitations), except music and dancing, and no heavy study.“3d. We regularly secure from one to two hours' exercise in the open air, and we never keep them too long at one occupation; but they must work vigorously while they are about it.“4th. We make a great point of warm clothing and careful ventilation of the rooms.“5th. The intellectual work is not allowed to exceed six hours per day; and if more than one hour is given to music, the other work is diminished.“6th. Each girl is watched, and little ailments are attended to.”
“1st. We insist upon plenty of sleep. Our oldest pupils go to bed at nine o'clock, the younger ones at eight or half-past eight; and none rise before six. We have no work before breakfast. We allow no later hours, and no omission of out-door exercises when preparing for examination.
“2d. We do not allow them to work immediately after a meal, and after dinner we have no lessons (recitations), except music and dancing, and no heavy study.
“3d. We regularly secure from one to two hours' exercise in the open air, and we never keep them too long at one occupation; but they must work vigorously while they are about it.
“4th. We make a great point of warm clothing and careful ventilation of the rooms.
“5th. The intellectual work is not allowed to exceed six hours per day; and if more than one hour is given to music, the other work is diminished.
“6th. Each girl is watched, and little ailments are attended to.”
This schedule represents the general practice in the best schools and under the best governesses, and the poorer schools differ mainly only in this, that they permit more dawdling work. In a few schools, girls who are a little older, or are exceptionally strong, are permitted to exceed the six-hour limit of work; but the general habit and feeling would be so much against it, that, as a rule, the girl would not think of asking the exceptional favor, and the teacher would not like the responsibility of giving it. These rules, of course, are not always thoroughly carried out; but with the careful home discipline, the habits of obedience in girls, and the frank intercourse and co-operation between parents and teachers, it is safe to say a pretty strict observance of them is secured.
In regard to the care taken of girls during the few years of their most rapid and culminating development there are no rules uniformly observed, except that riding, and very vigorous exercises, are prohibited on the occasions when the system has less than its usual vigor. Beyond this, the sixth rule given above covers the whole ground. Whatever especial care is needed, is adapted to individual cases. If paleness, languor, or unusual color is observed, it is at once traced to its cause, and that cause is removed. The schools that expect to get the daughters from the best families must show the best results in health. I quote the following from the letter of a teacher whose large and varied experience in teaching girls and women, and whose present educational position, together with her especial knowledge of physiology, makes her, I think, the best authority upon this point: “The result of my observation is, that English mothers and schoolmistresses are very careful about the health of girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen—in fact, rather disposed to be over-careful, and to listen to the fears of medical men as to overwork. I have known girls who suffered from unnatural conditions of their functional organization, but I can safely say these have never been brought on by mental work; they have been induced by change of diet, such as girls brought into town from the country must always experience, or by coming into a sedentary life after an active one, or from inattention to the action of the digestive organs, but none from mental work. My own experience would lead me most unhesitatingly to say that regular mental occupation,well arranged, conduces wholly to the health of a girl in every way, and that girls who have well-regulated mental work are far less liable to fall into hysterical fancies than those who have not such occupation.”
The following is from the letter of an English medical lady educated on the Continent. “The exercise of the intellectual powers is the best means of preventing and counteracting an undue development of the emotional nature. The extravagances of imagination and feeling, engendered in an idle brain, have much to do with the ill-health of girls.”
In the evidence given by an eminent teacher before the Royal Commission, in answer to the inquiry whether there was not some danger of injuring the health of girls between the ages of fourteen and sixteen by hard study, I find the following: “I think study improves their health very much. I am sure great harm is often done by hasty recommendation to throw aside all study, when a temperate and wisely regulated mental diet is reallyrequired. They will not do nothing, but if they have not wholesome, and proper, and unexciting occupations, they will spend their time on sensational novels and things much more injurious to health. Where I have heard complaints about health as being injured by study, they have proceeded from those who have done least work at college. Indeed, I do not know of any case of a pupil who has really worked, and whose health has been injured. We have had complaints in a few cases where the girls have been decidedly not industrious.” In answer to the inquiry, whether a girl's mind has not a tendency to develop more rapidly than a boy's mind, and whether, in consequence, there is not some risk of its being overstrained, the reply is, “decidedly, if the teacher is not judicious; but supposing that sufficient time is given to exercise, sleep, and recreation, then there is no danger of its being overstrained by a teacher who does not give work that the pupil does not understand. For one girl in the higher middle classes who suffers from overwork, there are, I believe, hundreds whose health suffers from a feverish love of excitement, from the irritability produced by idleness, frivolity, and discontent. I am persuaded, and my experience has been confirmed by experienced physicians, thatthe want of wholesome occupation lies at the root of the languid debility of which we hear so much after girls leave school. I have been considering the question of health somewhat of late, and I have made up from different tables some statistics about literary ladies; from one source I find that the average age to which they live is over sixty-one, and from another sixty-eight; so that I do not think learning can injure their health. Harm is often done in this way: where a pupil goes to severaldifferent teachers, one of these, ignorant of the amount required by other teachers, may give too much work, and this can only be kept balanced by care from the head teacher, who overlooks the whole.”
In regard to whether girls from fourteen to eighteen are able to do as much work as boys of corresponding age, the experience is as yet too limited to give any ground for positive opinion. The presumption, based upon the difference in physical strength, is against it. Still, girls, on the average, at the best girls' schools, are now doing more work than the average of boys in the best boys' schools. But these girls have better care than the boys have, and none of them do the work of the leading boys, who are looking forward to university honors.
All agree that girls have not less mental aptitude, but no one, I am sure, would like to assert that it is safe to subject girls to as much intellectual pressure as may be safely applied to boys. One teacher of both boys and girls confirmed my own observation, that there is often some clog in the development of boys which, though less positive in its action and less productive of a crisis, induces a sort of physical torpor, which is not wholly attributable to rapid growth, as it often appears when the growth may be the very reverse of rapid; against this a boy may be pressed without much danger to his health, but not without liability to give him a distaste for study, thus showing that we are making a demand for an amount of mental force which he has not ready at hand to give. There is, however, but one opinion upon this point—that the least safe thing to do for girls at this nervously critical and mentally excitable period is, to allow them time to indulge and feed their fancies, or to grow weary of themselves; that mental work is ashealthful as food, but, like the food, needs careful regulation; and that the health of women would be vastly improved by increasing the school work in degree, and by continuing it beyond the present term, chiefly as a matter of employment to the women in the upper classes. Among the lower classes, it would be a means of enabling them to secure more sanitary arrangements in their homes, and, in general, of enabling them to get better results from their annual expenditures. The usual practice in Germany, by which Dr. Clarke confirms his theory, is not the usual practice in England, and there would be great unwillingness on the part of English people to accept it as a general rule. Experienced teachers, women physicians, philanthropic men physicians, and wise mothers, are, as I have said, more afraid of an undue development of the emotional nature in these critical years, than of overtaxing the intellectual powers; and it is doubtless true that while very few of the girls and women in the upper classes overwork, a very large number suffer in health from the absence of interesting and absorbing employment. In Germany and America the circumstances are different—in the former, girls have more domestic occupations, and in the latter we have to guard, not so much against the depressing influence of idleness, as against the temptation to social excesses, from which energetic school-work seems to be the best shield. But even here, in England, I have found a few thinking, active women who, judging from their individual cases, had come upon Dr. Clarke's theory for themselves, only, instead of limiting it to girlhood they would extend it through womanhood, calling these periods of repose the natural Sunday in a woman's life, during which, if rest of body and mind was indulged,there succeeded a marked renewal or awakening of power—but this is an exceptional view in England.
Two movements are going on side by side in this country to improve the education of women. One aims to make the ordinary school-work more thorough, the other to extend this school-work into later years of life. In 1858 Cambridge University established a system of “Local Examinations” in various parts of the country, for boys or schools of boys who wished to avail themselves of this test for their work. There were two of these examinations, the “Junior Examination,” for boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, and the “Senior Examination,” for those between sixteen and eighteen. The effect of this spur upon boys and boys' schools was so apparent that the university, at the request of a large number of women interested in education, in 1863, opened these examinations to girls of corresponding ages, and it was the glaring defects discovered by these examinations that led the Royal Commission so readily to extend its inquiry to girls' schools. The number of girls' schools, and girls studying under governesses who avail themselves of these examinations, has steadily and rapidly increased, and the results have been such as to leave no doubt in regard to the mental acumen of girls as compared with boys. These Local Examinations subjected the girls to precisely the same examinations as the boys, but the subjects in which both boys and girls were examined did not follow the precise curriculum of Eton, Harrow, and Rugby; that is, the university, in making up its list of subjects for examination, instead of adapting itself to the long established lines of study for boys, conformed rather to the modern opinion in regard to the best system of education.
Out of this experiment in examining girls grew a movement to secure a higher education for women, which soon separated into two sections, the one subsequently embodying its views in Girton College, the other in the “University Examinations” for women above the age of eighteen. The two parties agreed upon these points—that intellectual development takes place in men and women in the same manner, and that the methods that would be best for the one are also best for the other; and that, while the methods at present made use of for girls are wholly inadequate, the standard methods applied in the education of boys and men are by no means in accordance with the best educational opinion of the time. But the friends of Girton College said, “Admitting these defects in the masculine system, it is, nevertheless, the existing system; it has precedent and popular sentiment in its favor; its standards are the accepted standards for educational measurement; and the education of women will be at a disadvantage, in inferior repute, so long as we test it by a different standard—that is, we can never get full recognition for the intellectual work of women until we test it by the standards accepted for men; and it seems to us that we shall advance the education of women most successfully by falling into the existing routine.”
The other party said: “We will not waste our energy in crystallizing into a form that is not the best, and that evidently cannot long keep its place in the education of men; we will start upon a plan consistent with the most enlightened educational opinion, and by our results will secure favor for our methods, and respectability for our standards.” Girton College, now located at Cambridge, holds simultaneous examinations with those of the university, and uses the university examination questions. The number of its students is small, and they are for the most part those who are looking forward to teaching as a means of support.
By the second, and what seems to be considerably the stronger party, four years ago lectures were instituted in various parts of the country, to prepare women for the University Higher Examinations. The plan of these examinations and lectures is something like what I understand to be the plan at the German Universities. There is no definite curriculum connected with them. They cover a wide range of subjects, each candidate making her selection, and preparing herself for examination in one or more specific subjects, and, if successful, receives a certificate of proficiency in those, except that certain subjects must be passed before a certificate is awarded for others.
To meet a widely preferred demand, Cambridge University has recently opened these “Higher Examinations for Women,” to men; and “mixed classes,” as they are called, are now being formed. The university pledges itself to supply the lecturers, provided classes of a certain size are formed in towns sufficiently adjacent to be grouped together. Under this last extension of its educational advantages, the University proposes that, in each place, a lecture on one subject shall be held at some hour in the middle of the day most convenient for women to attend; and one on another subject shall be held in the evening, with reduced fees, for the benefit of the working classes. Each lecture is open to any one who will pay the fees; but, as a rule, the higher classes would go to the day lectures, and the lower classes to the evening lectures. To supplement these lectures,which in each subject occur but once a week, in each of a group of three towns, what is called a “class” is held on a second day, when, by the payment of a small additional fee, any one can go for further instruction upon any point which he was not able to grasp from the lecture. The lectures recommend a course of reading, and suggest subjects for investigation, just as is done by the lectures in the university. These examinations, as I understand, are considered as severe as the examinations for the same subjects in preparation for the B.A. degree at the university. The plan is to carry systematic instruction in the branches of university education into all the large towns, and to keep it at a cost that can be afforded by women and working men.
I have spoken only of the Cambridge University Examinations; but, though Cambridge has taken the lead in this work, the other universities have followed along at more or less remote intervals, and the London University has, here as elsewhere, placed its standards above those of the others. The present system looks something like an itinerant university; but no one can predict just what it will become. All this work is simply experimental. Plans are adopted to meet the present exigency, and new ones are at any time engrafted. But a few strongly-set tendencies are unmistakable, old forms are giving way, education is working its way down below the rich, men and women are coming together in their intellectual work, and the notion of “finishing” an education sometime between twelve and twenty-three, promises to be forgotten.
The elasticity of this more German system, into which English education is drifting, will obviate the difficulty so much complained of in the English university system,that of forcing all students, irrespective of the varying mental and physical powers, through a definite course of study in a definite period of time.
Opportunities for instruction are offered. Students choose the subjects, devote as much time to them as they like, present themselves at the annual examinations if they choose, and when they choose.
The university promises to provide good instruction, to test the thoroughness of the work of all who desire the test, and to award certificates of success to all who come up to its standards; and these certificates will doubtless eventually be able to sum up into degrees, or else degrees will lose their especial value, and be abandoned. Limiting the ages of the candidates for the several examinations, though seemingly a little arbitrary, aims to avoid encouraging too precocious advancement, while there is a willingness to make exceptions in favor of pupils who are shown to be exceptionably able.
I do not find, in the English schools, and certainly there is not in the universities, a rigid practice of giving daily marks for the work. The teachers lecture, and the pupils take notes.
In the schools these notes are carefully examined, and the pupils who give evidence of deficient knowledge of the subject, are sent to a leisure governess, for especial instruction. At the universities, the only tests are the examinations, and at the schools, the examinations are chiefly relied upon for promotions. This plan allows pupils of irregular power, and varying health, to admit these same irregularities into their work, without great prejudice to the total credit of their results. With these two systems of allowing choice in the number and kind of subjects pursued, and of testing the work byexaminations, rather than daily records, provision is made for the differences of power and aptitude between different students, and for the occasional variations in physical vigor, which are likely to occur with any except those who possess the strongest constitutions—and this, with the athletic habits and general care for health that pervades English life, is likely to prove a pretty good safeguard against excessive mental work for both men and women; though, of course, individual cases occur where, driven by ambition or necessity, one incautiously puts more strain upon his powers than they can bear.
The English sentiment in regard to the advisability of encouraging young women to pursue precisely the same course of study as young men, would be expressed in this way: “It is rarely advisable for any two young men to pursue an identical course of study. The chief aim of education is to develop the mental faculties, to enable us to observe accurately, and judge correctly; the practices that secure these results are various; one set of practices may be better adapted for the training of one mind, and another set better adapted for training another mind, and no one set will fail to give good results, if pursued with energy. In the choice, we are, as a rule, safest to follow the individual inclination. As yet, women have been so limited in opportunities, that they have had little chance to discover their mental inclinations, either as a class, or as individuals.”
The statement would, I think, go no farther. The question of co-education has as yet scarcely come into the popular mind. Small experiments, prompted usually by convenience, have been made, so far as I have heard, with uniform success, and the practice is making its way into the higher education of the country. Women arealready admitted to the Political Economy class, and one or two other classes in University College, London; as I have said, the lectures and classes organized under the recent plan of Cambridge University, for carrying university education into the towns, are open to men and women in common; and the various governing bodies are now discussing the question of admitting women to degrees in London University, to both classes and degrees in Queen's College, Belfast, and to classes in Owen's College, Manchester, and a bill is likely to be introduced into the next session of Parliament, to empower all the universities to extend their privileges to women, if they desire to do it.
The time-honored precedents are at present against the plan, but the practice of these highest authorities will soon turn opinion in its favor. The lack of funds to educate women, the rapidly growing feeling that men and women are at present too much separated by social customs and differences in tastes, and the belief that it would promote a higher moral tone among men, are uniting to produce a strong current of interest and feeling in favor of the system. Young men at the English universities rarely overwork. Popular feeling, fashion, respectable sentiment—call it as one will—is all against considering health secondary to anything. A few evenings ago I chanced to be talking with a university young man, who was at home for the holidays. I asked, “About how many hours do your good students work?” The reply was, “Rarely more than seven. A few of the hardest reading men—those aiming at fellowships—who do not take more than two hours for exercise, work a little longer; and they work longer just before the examinations.” When I smiled at the evident contemptthrown upon the “two hours for exercise,” he said, “You do not think two hours enough for exercise, do you?” In all the best English schools, either for boys or girls, the plan is to work with vigor, and play with vigor. There are hours enough for sleep to secure good rest; then work is arranged to give variety, and confined within moderate limits of time, so that if a pupil does extra work, he does it by extra intensity.
After leaving school, English girls in the upper and middle classes give more time to society than American girls do; that is, society is the regular evening occupation, and in the day-time there is little to do but to recover from the previous evening.
But society is relieved of a large part of the excitability that attends it with us. The wealth and social position of the family and the ingenious tact of mammas, as a rule, win the husbands, and the daughter needs only to be in sight. It is not at all rare to go to an evening party and know no one but the host and hostess, and as introductions are rarely given, one has only to look about and go home when she is tired. At a dinner-party she is told the name of the one who leads her to the table, but she is always at liberty to talk as little as she likes, and she offends the social taste if she talk very much. English mothers of this class have very little to do except to give birth to their children, and go through the established routine of dinners and calls. If there is any complaint respecting the work they have to do, it is of the deficit, and the inferior health of the women between their school-days and their wifehood is to be accounted for by the want of occupation and independence. They have no more to do, and no more chance to exercise their wills, than during the first six years of their lives.
After the early years of marriage the health almost uniformly improves, and by the time they are forty or forty-five, they have usually attained a ripe perfection of health, which gives them a physical superiority over the men for the remaining twenty-five or thirty-five years of their lives, and also over the women who have remained unmarried.
The sentiments that pervade, and the circumstances that control our life, and the habits they engender, are very different. It is not possible for us to have habits whose regularity shall so nearly convert them into instincts as is the case with the English. We have to make our lives out of the conditions about us, and these conditions change year by year. The opportunities for acquiring wealth and social distinction are so great that they stimulate us to great exertion.
Our schools give all classes an opportunity for education, and by associating the poorer classes with the wealthier, implant in the former, tastes for the life of the latter, and a keen ambition to attain it, and this imposes upon the latter the necessity of struggling to maintain their position. All our men are over-active; our girls are educated along with the boys, and they not only acquire equal mental power, but common intellectual tastes. Men and women are able to be, and are, the companions of each other.
Our girls have a longing for an active life not felt by the girls in any other country. Wives share the hopes, fears, and anxieties of their husbands. They are eager to gain wealth and friends as a means to improve their social position. They economize in the family expenditure; they employ few or no servants, and do plain sewing, dressmaking, and millinery. Education and a variedexperience gives our women a “faculty” for doing anything, and there is no national sentiment in the matter of either health or respectability to keep then from doing everything. As fast as the daughters grow up, they are drawn into this ceaseless activity. Besides the lessons there is house-work in the morning, and sewing till into the late evening.
We are a rich nation, but we are not a nation of rich individuals. Domestic service is expensive, and of poor quality, for no one is willing to occupy the position of a menial who can find anything else to do.
The intelligence of our women, combined with the necessity in our society of producing a good personal impression, together with the habit of applying their intelligence to the construction and arrangement of articles of dress, have developed among us a very high order of taste in these matters, and the skilled labor that can satisfy it, is necessarily very costly.
Our women spend all they can afford in buying these materials, and save, in using their own intelligence and hands in making them up.
Very few, in considering the work of our women, take into account the real brain-power expended in this triple combination of economy, taste, and execution. Emerson somewhere in hisEnglish Traitssays, referring to the English aristocracy:—“It is surprising how much brain can go into fine manners.”
It would be very pertinent to say of American women, “It is surprising how much brain-work can go into fine dressing,” and our girls join their mothers in this worry and work at a very early age. Passing from work to society, the strain upon our women is no less. Social gatherings occur irregularly, have irregular hours, and anirregular regimen of food, and every one feels a keen stimulus to be both agreeable and brilliant. English faces at a party look as they do at church, and as they do at Madame Tussaud's. Contrast with them the smiles, luminous eyes, and pretty cant or toss of the head of the carefully-dressed American woman, and think of the work to be done the next day.
In place of a health-seeking instinct in America, we have a feeling which says, “I do not mind how hard a strain I have, provided I can hold out till I get through it.” We are too much employed to think much of the discomfort of moderate fatigue and ill-health. Neither have we sufficient feeling respecting the permanence of the family to lead us to plan for a succession of descendants. An American says, “I had rather have forty-five or fifty years of active, satisfactory life, than sixty or seventy years of a comfortable, dawdling existence;” and, if we look at the case only as it affects himself, we cannot especially condemn the reasoning, but when we consider the constitution that this overstrained life bequeathes to the children, it assumes a different aspect.
Being accustomed to see an attenuated, sickly physique in our leading and best-bred families, the eye is mis-educated; we establish a false ideal for women, and become comparatively indifferent to a fine physique in men. Men do not marry with a view of founding or continuing a family name, and their sentiment of gallantry inclines them to be fond of protecting a weak woman.
Irregular habits are to some degree a necessity with us, and the greatest misfortune is, that we get used to the irregularity, and take little pains to avoid it. We have some rules in regard to diet and digestion, but theyare for the most part practised only by those who have acquired ills, and are not very frequently applied in the rearing of children.
The extremes of climate, and our uninviting roads, discourage open air exercise, and comparatively few have much time to go out.
Our children do some more work at school than English children, and they have a good deal more of their time wasted in our system of text-books and “recitations,” a word not known in England in the sense in which we use it, which requires that the able and conscientious pupils of the class shall look on while the weak and indolent ones are being drilled; which plan, judging from my own experience at school and college, I feel justified in saying, involves for them not only a waste of from one to three hours a day, but a fatigue fully or nearly equal to the same amount of time spent in study. We put great pressure upon class rank, the value of which is determined by the daily marks. This forces pupils into a very high degree of regularity in their work; at the same time it has most effect upon the most conscientious pupils; if it does not lead them to overdo in work, it is liable to make them overworry about the work, and girls suffer far more from this overworry than boys.
In considering the relation between the health of the country and the education, the few women who have had a university course of study need not be taken into account. Most of them have reached an age when people are allowed to decide upon their own habits, and, as a matter of fact, these habits have been determined by stern necessities, by the hard, money-getting circumstances that surround women, rather than by choice.At Antioch College, with few exceptions, they were women who were looking forward to self-support, and who were borrowing the whole, or a part of the money required for their current expenses, on the promise of repaying it with the wages of their subsequent work.
Many of them were absent a part of the year, teaching, were giving private lessons, or were teaching classes in the preparatory school connected with the college; and, if a few hours of leisure were left after all this employment, they were likely to be spent upon extra studies; aside from this, they did their own sewing, and many of them boarded themselves. They often overworked, but it was the necessities of their lives that were driving them, and not the curriculum of Antioch College. However, if the English feeling respecting health, and the means of preserving it, prevailed in our country, these mistakes would less frequently occur.
Unquestionably our whole nation needs some escape from its exhausting activities. We need either less work, or some more skilful combination of the different varieties of work, that will secure us more rest, and, except in a small circle of wealth, our women, as a rule, need this rest more than the men. We need repose, freedom from anxiety perhaps, more even than freedom from work. How are we to get it?
We cannot have back the caste condition of society, nor would we desire it. We cannot stop the progress of our system of free education, nor would we be willing to do it. We cannot set aside the practice and belief in equality of education for men and women; men would not like it, and women would not permit it. There are many things that can be done that will conduce to the desiredresult, and the best among them for women is, to organize women's work.
The education is not a mistake; the fault lies in this, that the industries of women have not kept pace with their advancing education. They have been exempt from bread-winning to a degree unknown in the old countries, and the average education is far higher than exists elsewhere among women. They have startled the world a little by attempting a few of the intellectual industries hitherto monopolized by men, and, though the opening of the professions, or, indeed, all lines of human industry, to women, is not to be undervalued, of almost infinitely greater importance is the application of scientific economical principles to the large sphere of work already in their hands, and which is remaining in a disastrously undeveloped condition, just because it is in their hands. The low rate of female wages leaves them the monopoly of it, and they dawdle along in the ways of their grandmothers, out of sight behind the advancing masculine industries.
It is surprising to foreigners that in the application of the division of labor principle to domestic work, we are actually behind them, that we still permit such excess of work and excess of waste in our domestic arrangements. Cooking and sewing, the two leading branches of domestic industry, are with them to a very large degree trades, while nursing and laundry-work are trades in a far greater degree than with us.
Upon this point of the organization of domestic industry, though one that I have long been considering, I can do no better than to refer to the suggestive article of Mrs. E. M. King in theContemporary Reviewfor December, 1873. The substance of this article was presented at thelast meeting of the British Association. The Right Honorable Mr. Forster occupied the chair, and at the close of the discussion remarked that he should not like to give up his private home. Now, it is not to be supposed that Royalty would at once give up its palaces to rush into the society of a set of co-operative homes, nor that Right Honorables with “large fortunes” would make close bargains in domestic service. The scheme at the outset would recommend itself only to those whose incomes did not provide an adequate supply for their wants on the present wasteful plan of domestic life, and who saw in this system a means to secure larger returns for their outlay of money, and it could advance in favor only as it fulfilled this promise.
Seeing a trustworthy principle of economy in the plan, theSpectatorturned pale, and declaimed against the destruction of the time-honored English homes; and London builders began to consult Mrs. King in regard to the house arrangements for carrying out her plan.
There will be no difficulty in preserving the desired privacy for the family, though the wearying privacy of many English homes leads not a few to think it is not worth preserving in the English degree.
Adopt and apply the plan of which Mrs. King suggests an outline, press the division of labor principle in woman's work as far as it will go, and the wives and daughters who make our homes will not break down from overwork.
The readiest and surest corrective for the excessive greed of our girls for society is to carry on the system of co-education. This supplies a temperate gratification to the social appetites, induces girls to remain longer in school, and to do more thorough work, thus securing to them other sources of pleasure than social amusements and the companionship of friends. The process of co-education tends to develop a well-balanced character, and to put into it a trustworthy ballast, which American girls cannot afford to do without. For confirmation of this, one need only read the reports of any school judiciously managed on this plan, or he need only use his eyes in comparing the past school days with those of girls educated in the high schools and private schools of our Western cities. Of course girls of the present average habits and inherited tendencies must not be pressed up to quite the same degree of work that may be safely required of their brothers, who have fewer domestic demands upon their time, more out-of-door exercise, a freer style of dress, and, in general, healthier habits of life. Many a girl who takes especial care of herself—and, as a rule, the able girls do this—or who has especial care from her mother, may safely do what the best boys do without especial care.
But so long as girls require from one hour and a half to three hours a day, to be, or to develop themselves into, the conventional girl, and boys require only about one-third of that time to get themselves up into the conventional pattern for a boy, girls must either be superior to boys to begin with, or they must economize their power better, if they are able to do as much school-work in a year as boys; that is, if girls must consume power in all the ways that constitute the approved specialties of girls, they cannot do the whole work of boys without doing much more than boys do.
Whether the future has possibilities for girls that will give no occasion for this deficit of available power for school-work, it is impossible to say. Oberlin College and Michigan University report that the young womenare no more frequently absent from their classes on account of ill-health than the young men. But it must be remembered that the women are few in number, and in some important respects more above the average of women than the young men are above the average of young men. Especially in the respect of a prudent care for their health their necessities have made them wise—and this will be the character of most of the women who go to college for some time to come. Our schools, too, show as high an average of work for girls as for boys, but this must not be wholly put down to equal resources. Girls, on the average, are more anxious for approval than boys are, and if work is assigned them, in spite of disadvantages they are quite as likely to do it as boys are.
Nor are we to suppose that the best average education for the present girls would show just the same average in direction as the best average education for boys.
Oberlin, the oldest experiment in co-education at college, arranges its plans with especial reference to the average differences between the quantity and direction of the school-work at present demanded for men and women. It has its “Ladies' Course,” as well as its University Course. The young women are allowed to pursue the University Course, though out of the four or five hundred young women who are in attendance, those who have taken degrees give only an average of about two in a year. At Antioch there was a large range of optional subjects, and among them was Greek, which the Western young men were about as much disposed to omit as the young women. The curriculums of the Western high schools have also a wide optional margin.
The growing educational sentiment is setting aside the old idea that it is well for all boys to pursue the same line of study, independent of tastes, and past and prospective circumstances in life; and another still more pernicious notion is sure soon to give way, that boys and young men, of whatever physical and brain power, are to be put through a definite course of study in just the same time. No one thinks it much of a guarantee for a man's scholarship that he holds an A.B. or an A.M. degree. This only assures us that he has spent four years at some institution that has a right to confer these degrees. When our system of schools and colleges is sufficiently flexible to meet the varying needs of boys and young men, we shall not find that it lacks anything to adapt it to the varying needs of boys and girls, or men and women. Men furnish us with examples through the whole scale of physical power and mental aptitude, and so do women.