The Education of American Girls Part 16

Asiatic Caucasian 1 1.27.

European 1 1.17.

Mongols 1 1.13.

Malays 1 1.08.

Americans 1 1.08.

Negroes 1 1.07.

Besides the prominent fact upon which Welcker insists, this table indicates two others. First, that the anatomical difference in the higher races is too little to explain the general difference in intellectual achievement really observed between the two s.e.xes of these races. Second, that the difference is not in precise proportion to the maximum intelligence attained by the race, but to the social inferiority and subjection of the women; for the Asiatics (Hindoos) stand highest on the scale, the Europeans only second; and the excess of the first over the second, in regard to the point in question, is greater than the excess of the Europeans over the other races named.

The general fact that, beyond certain well-defined limits, the activity of the cerebro-spinal system and its relative predominance over the ganglionic, is to be determined dynamically rather than anatomically, is insisted upon by Layc.o.c.k (_Med. Times and Gaz._, 1862). This writer observes that the large, slowly-nourished brain of a lymphatic man, frequently evolves much less intellectual force than does the smaller, perhaps more compact, brain of another, in whom the circulation is more active, and the nutrition probably more elaborate.

These facts, and many others that might be quoted, are pertinent to our subject, on account of the influence exercised over the ganglionic centres by the development and functional activity of those of thought.

Stimulation of the cerebral hemispheres is one of the most powerful means of counteracting paralysis of the vaso-motor centre, with all its consequences. Habitual activity of these centres--implying, psychologically, habitual activity of thought, physiologically, a more active local circulation--is therefore the best method at our disposal for permanently counteracting tendencies to irregular action in this centre, in the emotional ganglia lying in its vicinity, and in the vaso-motor nerves dependent upon it.

A method of such general supervision does not in itself forbid the co-education of girls and boys; for from this more general point of view, the health of the latter during adolescence really requires precisely the same precautions as that of the former. Attention is less frequently drawn to the precautions required in the case of boys, mainly because such precautions are more frequently observed in regard to them.

But besides, girls arrive at the period of adolescence already enervated by the senseless training of their childhood, on which distinctions of s.e.x have been obtruded long before they are established by nature.

Finally, since peculiarities relating to the s.e.xual organs are inherited, if at all, from the parent of the same s.e.x,[48] the germs of uterine diseases acquired by mothers too frequently exist in daughters, ready to be developed at the earliest opportunity.

As a matter of fact, therefore, the existing generation of girls, especially in New England, too often possess a delicacy of organization greater than that of their brothers, and demanding a special supervision and watchfulness, best bestowed when they are educated apart. For the reasons already detailed at length, we think that such supervision does not necessitate periodical intermittence of study, except in special cases, that const.i.tute a decided minority among the whole. It does necessitate, however, the more difficult task of providing for adequate rest and exercise during every day of the month. It necessitates a more rational system of study, a more profound training, a more intelligent view of the real character of intellectual life, and of the exercises required to develop it. It necessitates a concentration of intellectual effort into four or six hours out of the twenty-four, instead of a useless diffusion of intellectual peddling over ten or twelve. It necessitates an extension of the term of years allowed for education, and the giving up the fashionable notion that a girl is to be "finished"

at seventeen or eighteen, while her brother continues to pursue his studies until twenty-two or twenty-five. It necessitates, finally, the most careful individual adjustment to each different case; and to all its peculiarities, mental, moral, and physical--quite as frequently, therefore, necessitates the education of girls apart from one another as apart from boys.

But this necessity is not permanent. Dr. Clarke himself admits that if the one precaution upon which he insists be observed during the first years of adolescence, it will become unnecessary when the const.i.tution is formed. But neither Dr. Clarke nor his reviewers seem to see that this admission annihilates the only objection made by him to the co-education of the s.e.xes. For that is especially demanded as the only means by which women may be enabled to enjoy a technically superior education, as distinguished from the primary and secondary, and such education does not begin until eighteen. A university education is too expensive to be duplicated in any state; it moreover represents the collective intellectual force of society, and as such cannot rationally be cut in two. Indeed, as such, cannot logically exclude women from men's schools, which are thereby left as imperfect and incomplete as would be the new universities to be constructed exclusively for women.

During the neutral period of childhood, girls and boys should be educated together, because, as s.e.x does not, properly speaking, exist, it is absurd to base any distinctions upon it, and the attempt, like all absurdities, is liable to lead to really disastrous consequences. During the period of adolescence or of the formation of s.e.x, it is well to establish a separate education, during which the character of each may be defined and consolidated. This separation is needed by the moral and the physical training rather than by the intellectual. Were it, as is usually a.s.sumed, necessary for boys to exercise and for girls to sit still, the need of separation would be much less than it is, for the boys could be sent to the gymnasium while the girls remained in the school room. But systematic exercise is even more necessary for the latter than for the former, because they are likely to take it spontaneously. These exercises must differ in kind and in intensity from those performed by boys, and for this and other reasons, are best pursued alone.

The moral differentiation of the s.e.xes requires separate education, for a.n.a.logous reasons. Moral differences, though less marked than physical, are more so than intellectual, and any system of education that might be supposed to efface these, would be an injury to society, that requires, not uniformity, but increasing complexity, by means of increasing variety of character among its members. Thus the education of adolescent girls should include certain training in the care of children, and other duties that either permanently, or for the time being, must fall to them and not to boys. But a more important moral reason for separate education consists in the desirability of prolonging as late as possible, the first unconsciousness of s.e.x. At this age the stimulus derived from co-education, acting upon imperfect organizations, is liable to be other than intellectual--liable to excite emotions equally ridiculous and painful from their pre-maturity, and therefore to increase the very danger most to be averted from this period of life--the excessive development of the emotional functions and organs of the nervous system.

But, by the age of eighteen, the reasons against the co-education of the s.e.xes have ceased to exist, and imperative reasons in its favor have come into play. The first we have already indicated. Unless the education of girls be continued beyond the conventional retiring-point of eighteen, and unless they be permitted access to the State Universities, they cannot partic.i.p.ate in the highest intellectual education of the race. This cannot be carried on by private teachers, in isolated cla.s.ses, under uncontrolled authorities. It must be public, national, supreme--for it represents the collective intellectual force of the nation; it is the work of society, and fits for society; and the social influences presiding over its instruction are as important as is the technical knowledge conveyed in its system. Only the best minds should be employed in its service, and in any State these are not sufficiently numerous for the wants of indefinitely multiplied schools.

But, further, if girls may be educated, and better educated, apart from boys, it is scarcely possible to give women an intellectual training apart from men, certainly in the present generation. What may be lost to men by exclusion from the intellectual companionship of women, may perhaps be beyond the scope of our present subject to inquire. But the loss sustained by women, who, shut up in female academies, attempt, or pretend to make the attempt, to obtain a "college education," is conspicuous beyond possibility of cavil. The same peculiarities that render women, as a rule, less original, are justly said to make them more receptive, more malleable, more exquisitely adjustable to the least variation of external circ.u.mstance, or difference in the intellectual calibre of their a.s.sociates or masters. Their own intellects are quickened to activity or repressed into torpor, by influences that would have little effect upon the less impressionable, more self-poised minds of men. These facts, upon which great emphasis has often been laid, should only lead to one inference, namely, that the education and intellectual capacity of women is likely to remain at the point, or advance to the degree at which men may consider it desirable for it to exist; if, therefore, certain conditions are seen to favor this advancement to an extraordinary degree, and others to r.e.t.a.r.d it in a manner as extraordinary; if, in addition to results already achieved by the increased education of women, others far greater may be foreseen, when that education shall have become really equal to that now accessible to men; it becomes imperative to concede the conditions in question, unless some equally imperative counter indication can be shown to exist. Reasons of an entirely different order exist, we think, in the fact that at this age the s.e.xes naturally seek each other's society, as much as they avoided it before. It is difficult to see why this tendency requires to be counteracted, except on some monastic principle that is an unconscious "survival" from the middle ages. Thwarting this tendency leads often to immorality in the one s.e.x--to languor, and mental, moral, and physical debility in the other.

Dr. Clarke places his counter indication almost exclusively in the supposed necessity for a periodical intermittence in the intellectual work of women, that could not, therefore, be brought into harmony with that of men. But, as we have seen, Dr. Clarke himself admits that such necessity is scarcely imperative except under the age of eighteen or nineteen, and the period of study for which co-education is really desirable, indeed, necessary, does not begin until that age. Moreover, Dr. Clarke draws his examples, not from students who have been educated at mixed schools, but from those who have attended ordinary girls'

boarding-schools; so that no proof is adduced of any special influence of co-education, unless the general statement that "co-education is intellectually a success, physically a failure," can be considered as such proof, which we do not believe. Since, according to Dr. Clarke's own argument, the argument does not apply to the particular point of controversy upon which it has been made to bear with most force, it is superfluous to return to our own reasonings, whereby we believe to have shown that the dangers signalized, though they exist, menace the minority and not the majority; that they are then attributable, not to mental exertion, but to the coincidences of mental exertion as at present conducted; that they are to be averted, not by a single manoeuvre, but by a general system of training, that should include, instead of excluding, special attention to intellectual development; that the results of such training would remain, after the consolidation of the physical health and the termination of the period of growth had rendered further training unnecessary; whereas, the peculiar precaution suggested by Dr. Clarke, would rather tend to create a habit of body that would persist throughout life, to immense inconvenience.

MARY PUTNAM JACOBI.

110 West Thirty-fourth street, New York.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] The development of reproductive cells in special glandular apparatus at the period of p.u.b.erty, is evidently not peculiar to one s.e.x, but is a physiological fact necessarily common to both. The peculiarity in the female consists in the _greater degree_ of periodicity in the complete development of such cells, in the periodical congestions of a secondary organ, the uterus, and in the loss of blood effected by these.

[34] Thus Herbert Spencer remarks that the mental development of women must be arrested earlier than that of men, in order to leave a margin for reproduction.

[35] Absence of menstruation.

[36] Excessive menstrual hemorrhage.

[37] I use the term efficient in a technical sense, as meaning all-sufficient to produce the given effect, without the intervention of any other cause.

[38] "Menorrhagic chlorosis" of Trousseau.

[39] For it is known that vaso-motor paralysis is not of itself sufficient to induce haemorrhage, unless the tension of the blood-current be coincidently raised. See Bouchard, _Pathogenie des Haemorrhagies_.

[40] The "uterine epistaxis" of malignant fevers are evidently foreign to our subject, as also the haemorrhages of subinvolution, or of the menopause. The haemorrhages from anemia are, on the other hand, so frequent, as to explain the majority of such cases as Dr. Clarke's.

[41] Meadows observes: "It is not the ovary which is an appendix to the uterus, but the uterus which is an appendix to the ovary."

[42] Corpora quadrigemina.

[43] Corpora striata.

[44] Thalami optici and corpora striata.

[45] Hereditary disease, dependent on an imperfect development of blood vessels, and characterized by a remarkable tendency to bleed from any blood-vessel that accident may have opened. This disease is nearly confined to men, but the women in the same families often suffer from profuse menstruation.

[46] For we purposely leave out of sight innumerable facts in regard to its influence on nutrition, temperature, etc.

[47] Quoted by Welcker, _Untersuchungen uber den Wachsthuum und Bau des Menschlichen Schadels_. Halle, 1862.

[48] Lucas. Traite de l'heredite.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

"Recognizing the equality of both s.e.xes to the highest educational advantages," for four years the doors of the University of Michigan have been "open to all students."

"The University is organized in three departments, as follows: the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts; the Department of Medicine and Surgery; the Department of Law. Each department has its Faculty of Instruction, who are charged with its special management."

Eager to avail themselves of the advantages here offered in such a "broad, generous, and hospitable spirit," a number of women from different parts of the country have matriculated, and are or have been pursuing studies in common with students of the other s.e.x.

During the four years three women have graduated from the Literary Department, four from the Law, and twenty-one from the Medical. At the present time there are in the first department above mentioned, fifty women; in the second, five; and in the third, thirty-eight.

Of those in the Law and Medical Departments I can say comparatively little. The general impression is, that they have endured the work quite as well as the men; and it is a fact, that a number of the women who entered the Medical Department, with four lectures per day to attend, and all the work of the laboratory and dissecting-room to perform, have steadily improved in health from the time of entering until leaving; while those who were well at the beginning of their college work, have in no case suffered a deterioration of health from their intellectual labor. One of these women, Miss Emma Call, of Boston, graduated last year, the first in her cla.s.s.

Thus far the women-graduates from this department have generally taken positions in their profession which they are filling with usefulness, if not with honor; and in which, as far as powers of endurance are concerned, they are showing themselves able to compete with male physicians. There seems to be an impression prevalent among them--and perhaps it is not peculiar to their s.e.x alone--that the physician should be the physiological educator as well as the healer of the race, that his or her duty is to teach people how to use the "ounce of prevention"

as well as the "pound of cure," and that, through the mutual labors of the two s.e.xes, more than in any other way, is to be brought about the long-desired, and much-needed, health reform.

Although it may yet be too early to form an estimate of the effect of this system of "identical co-education" upon the health of the women who have graduated from this University, we believe that there has been only one case of protracted illness, and there is no reason for a.s.serting that this was caused by intellectual labor--at least, in this inst.i.tution, since the lady was here only six months--having taken her previous course elsewhere--and is a graduate from the Law Department.

Of those who have graduated from the Literary Department, we have positive information that as yet they have suffered no "penalties" from their "severe and long-continued mental labor," and they were, on graduating, as well as on entering. One woman who matriculated with the present senior cla.s.s, took the whole course in three years, went forth in better health than when she entered, and is at present the princ.i.p.al of the High School at Mankato, Minn., while another is still prosecuting her studies, and contemplates taking a course of law.

In regard to those at present in the Literary Department, it is impossible to get at any statistics as to excused absences, which will show the average attendance of one s.e.x as compared with that of the other, and from which inferences can be deduced in regard to the health of the women-students; for the university authorities--not having dreamed that there was a "new natural law" to be revealed, which should a.s.sert that the course of "identical co-education" is conducive to health and usefulness for the one s.e.x, and to premature decay and the hospital or cemetery for the other--have not preserved the records of excused absences. The professors a.s.sert that non-attendance upon recitations, on account of ill-health, has been no greater on the part of the young women than of the young men, and that in many cases, the attendance of the former has been better than that of the latter; yet there is nothing, perhaps, except personal acquaintance and observation, which can reveal the true condition of the present health of the women of the Literary Department of Michigan University, and the manner in which it has been affected by the intellectual labors they have undergone.

In the present graduating cla.s.s, there are eight women who have been, at all times during the college course, as well as an equal number of their cla.s.smates, or the same number of women in any pursuit in life.

One of these, who is not only the 'picture of health,' but who is perfectly healthy, was only sixteen years of age when she entered. Two other young women, who have ranked with the first of their cla.s.s in scholarship, and who have been in excellent health during the entire course, with the exception of slight illnesses in their freshman year--not caused by study--who are now among the most healthy of their cla.s.s, have, in addition to their college work, nearly defrayed their expenses by teaching during the vacations, by giving private instruction after study hours, and by working in various other ways. They have not, in this fourth year of almost double duty, any lurking disease which threatens to impair or to destroy their usefulness in the future, and they are as strong, ambitious, and happy as when they entered.