The Education of American Girls Part 4

[16] On this statement we may perhaps rest, as our present distinct object is to ill.u.s.trate mind, and not matter; though any reader will, of course, be ent.i.tled to his own "mental reservations" on the other side, and his own ideas on the subject of Attraction, etc.

[17] When those who are supposed to be the educated women of America are really educated, we shall not be pained through our sympathies, in view of such wide-spread evil as the following paragraph from a recent editorial of a leading New York journal would seem to attest.

"It must be confessed, we fear, that wives and mothers are responsible for no little of our too general disinclination for that steady, persevering pursuit of high intellectual aims, of which Aga.s.siz was such a bright example. They are naturally ambitious of the outward signs of social position, and also, on account of those they love, eager for the solid advantages to be obtained by money. They are not content if they cannot be dressed as finely and 'receive' as elegantly as their friends do; and, also, they fret if their children do not have such advantages of education and a.s.sociation as will secure for them an enviable future.

And thus, husbands and fathers are driven, not only to ceaseless labor--that they would bear willingly--but to the abandonment of their best-loved pursuits, and their highest, most cherished purposes. Thus, money-productiveness comes to be the test of the value of all intellectual labor, even with men who would gladly devote their lives to science or to literature, and perhaps be willing, for themselves, even to be poor in a society in which poverty is almost a reproach. Thus it is that high aspirations are checked, and that strong resolves are broken. And thus it will be, until we have advanced to such a point of civilization and culture that we shall award that something which is only expressed by the word 'consideration' to other eminence than that which is attained in politics or in trade."

I venture the question with extreme diffidence, but would not this broader education of future wives and mothers save perhaps so much new legislation on the subject of divorce as is now in progress in those parts of the country most characteristically American?

[18] "We are imperfect beings, and in nothing more imperfect than in our power of appreciating each other's mental suffering. We see the odd contortions to which they give rise without seeing the reasons for them, and they are to us fit subjects for caricature. We all know Mrs.

Pardiggle and Mrs. Jellyby, but few who have not borne it, know the pain of the pressure from within that forces natural activity into such distorted motion."--Mary Taylor, _First Duty of Women._

[19] "Young America is conceited, disrespectful, does not honor over-much his mother. Commonly he soon outstrips, or thinks he outstrips, her mental attainments. Her stature dwindles as his increases. At best, in his fancied greatness, he pities while he loves her. But what if she has traversed every inch of these intellectual regions before him, has scaled those heights, has conquered those enemies, has looked deeper into those mysteries, is superior at every point, can in an instant flood his darkness with light, sweeps with steady gaze the circ.u.mference of his groping thought, and shows him ever an angelic intellect as well as a mother's heart! With such a mother, filial love would almost become worship.

"How much of Francis Bacon's greatness was due to his mother, who was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward VI.? Every evening when Sir Anthony came home, he taught his daughter the lessons he had given to his royal pupil. Anne Cooke mastered Latin, Greek, and Italian, and became eminent as a scholar and translator, and she taught her son. A suggestion of Bacon's reverence for her, some conception of what he felt that he owed her, may be gained from the touching request in his will that he might be buried by her side. 'For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church at Gorhambury, for there is the grave of my mother.'"--_Address of Homer B. Sprague, at the laying of the corner-stone of Sage College, Cornell University._

[20] For a full and masterly discussion of this subject, its evils and remedies, I must refer to the report on the St. Louis Public Schools for the year 1871-2, by Wm. T. Harris, Superintendent, p. 80 _et seq._

[21] A Mary Taylor, _First Duty of Women_, p. 93, Emily Faithfull, London, 1870.

[22] Extracts from the last two Reports of the President of Michigan University on this point will be found in the Appendix.

[23] On the subject of Co-education, I refer again to the Report of Wm.

T. Harris, Superintendent of the Public Schools of St. Louis, for 1869-70, p. 17 _et seq._, where the actual effects, physical, mental and moral are given in detail.

"The one that received the seed into the good ground is the one that heareth the word and understandeth it."

MORAL EDUCATION;

OR,

THE CULTURE OF THE WILL.

"In hire is hye bewte withouten pryde, Youthe withouten grefhed or folye; To all her werkes vertue is her gyde, Humblesse hath slayen in her, tyrrannye, She is mirrour of alle curtesye; Hir perte is verray chambre of holynesse, Her hand mynistre of fredom and almesse."

--CHAUCER, MAN OF LAWES TALE.

The thorough education of the Will is that which renders the pupil

1. Civilized, 2. Moral, 3. Religious.

If educated into a civilized being, she learns to subject her own natural and unregulated--her savage will, we might say--to the customs and habits of civilized society. If educated into a moral being, she learns to subject her will, not to the idea of what is agreeable or useful, but to the idea of what is simply right. If educated into a religious being, she learns to submit her will to the Divine Will, and in her relation to G.o.d, she first becomes freed from the bonds of all finite and transitory things, and attains to the region where perfect obedience and perfect freedom coincide.[24] A woman who is virtuous, so to speak, with regard to the first, might be characterized as polite; she who is virtuous in regard to the second, as conscientious; and she who is virtuous in regard to the third, as humble. She who is all these may be said to have been thoroughly educated as to her Will. The culture of the Will may be, then,

1. Social, 2. Moral, 3. Religious.

In this realm, as in that of the intellect, the process of education consists in developing a spiritual being out of a natural being. It is the clothing, or rather, the informing of the natural with the spiritual. The part of education which relates to the social life is almost entirely given to the parents; and generally, from the great demands which business makes on the father, it falls almost wholly into the hands of the mother. It is she who must train the little girl into habits of neatness, of obedience, of order, of regularity, of punctuality--small virtues, but the foundation stones of a moral character, and into habits of unselfishness and of politeness.

_Social Culture._--Neatness in person, as in dress, is not natural to the woman of a savage tribe, neither is it a characteristic of hermits.

It is the product of civilized society. It is a recognition, in some sense, of the equality of others to one's self, a bending of the undisciplined will to the pleasure and satisfaction of others. Like all other habits, it becomes, in time, agreeable to the person who practises it, but the first training into it, is a painful struggle.

Do we not all remember that in the picture painted by the melancholy Jacques of the shadow side of human existence, the "_shining_ morning face" of the child was not forgotten as one of the shadow tints of that stage of life?

The education into habits of neatness is almost entirely in the hands of the mother or of her deputies. She herself then must be thoroughly educated into it, and it were well that she remembered and taught her daughters to remember, that real neatness includes the unseen as well as the seen. Neatness has a moral significance not to be despised, for though it is true that the dress is an index of the character, and that external neatness habitually covering untidy underclothing, is only typical of some moral unsoundness, it is equally true that there is an influence in the other direction, from the external, inwards. The habit of neatness furnishes soil in which the tree of self-respect may begin its growth. Do we not all know that a child behaves better in clean clothes than in soiled ones? And has there not been a perceptible elevation in the real character of the city police since they were dressed in neat uniforms? I know that the fact that they are in _uniform_ touches another point, and yet it is not all. If instead of setting the beggar on horseback, we clothe him in clean and neat garments, we all know that we have given him an impulse in the direction of the good.

Obedience is perhaps the next habit to be spoken of. Unquestioning obedience we must demand from the child for her own safety. It may often be a question of life and death whether the little girl runs when she is called, or throws away something which she has in her hand, instead of putting it into her mouth. But has not this habit of obedience a higher office than this? It is the first yielding of the untrained will to rightful authority, and as such, has an immense significance. The mother who cannot train her daughters and sons to obedience were better childless, for she is but giving to her country elements of weakness, not elements of strength. She is furnishing future inmates for jails, penitentiaries, and prisons, and putting arms into the hands of the enemies of law and order. And yet, how can a woman who has no clear ideas herself of what should be demanded and enforced, and hardly a sufficient command of language to express directions clearly, who was never taught herself to obey, and who has no definite idea of what end she really wishes to attain, educate her children into obedience? A sense of exact justice, a persistent attention, and a consistent thought are necessary. Has the education which we have been giving our girls tended to develop these? Are they not "developed only by mental work in those very directions which have scarcely heretofore formed a part of the education of our girls?" Does not the welfare of the country imperatively demand that we give those who are to be the only educators of the children in their first and decisive years, a thorough, slow, a well-founded and finished education?

Order, in any of its manifestations, is not natural to the race. But the very nature of civilization forces it upon us. We may yield our will at first to its demands, or we may oppose, but it will not take a very long time in the latter case for the demands of social life to give us so great an amount of annoyance, that the pain of the inconvenience incurred will far outweigh the pleasure of lawlessness in this respect.

Here, also, the mother is supreme, though the teacher should come to her aid very effectually when the school-days begin, and here I touch a subject which demands a little more attention than has. .h.i.therto been paid to it, for too much cannot be said of the great significance of rules as educators in girls' schools. It is allowed in very large schools, and where boys and girls are brought together, that there must be strict rules, because large ma.s.ses cannot be successfully managed without; but it is generally taken for granted in a girls' school, and where the numbers are small, that very little or no discipline is required or even desirable. This view follows logically enough if one a.s.sumes that the object of discipline is the present good of the school as a whole. But if we a.s.sume that its prime object is the future benefit of the pupils, individually, it will follow that the size of the school is not an element which should enter into the question at all, and this is the basis which I a.s.sert to be the only true one.

I do not deny that there may be too many rules. One may endeavor to hedge pupils around with arbitrary prohibitions, but any attempt at this, like any other unreasonable action, will soon result in its opposite, so that the two extremes are ultimately the same in effect.

Many persons speak and act as if they believed rules to be in themselves only a necessary evil, of which the less we have the better, and an entire absence of which would be the desirable state. Rousseau might be said to be the leader of this cla.s.s, educationally speaking, for this is pre-eminently the doctrine which he teaches, though I fancy that those who object most to rules are not often aware that they are arraying themselves under his banner.

That school-work should go on in regular routine, that a regular order should be established, and that no slight cause should be suffered to break this, that there should be some well-defined and regular order in which pupils should come to and go from their hourly duties--the importance of these things to quiet and economy of time is as nothing, compared to the results of regulations like these on the intellectual and moral character. The daily and hourly habit in external observances repeats itself in habits of thought and study. Unconsciously, facts are learned, and thoughts take on regular habits, and the impress made by the silent work of years is ineffaceable. It will show itself, in years to come, if we refer only to so-called "practical" things--and this is what our condemners of rules are seeking for,--in well-ordered homes, where each duty has its appointed time, and where the necessary labor goes on so regularly that it is hardly noticeable, except in an absence of all confusion and a permanent sense of quiet;--homes where, because of this regularity, time will remain for higher culture, and the whole family will be elevated thereby.

Closely connected with this matter of regularity is that of Punctuality, which should be no less trained at school into a habit, and the effect of which, on the moral character, is no less important. As far as school goes, punctuality is necessary in order that work be thoroughly done, and that time be saved. But it is not for this reason so much as for the far-reaching influences on the whole character, that the little girl should be made to feel it a matter of importance that she is in her seat when the bell strikes, and that she is ready for her work at the precise minute appointed. Is it not at once seen how a requisition of this kind will gently force her into habits of order? If she suffer for being late, because, when she started for school she could not find her rubbers or gloves, she will be more careful the next day that they are in their proper places. If she is late at recitation because her pencil was not to be found at the call, she will finally conclude that it would be a better plan to keep arithmetic, slate and pencil together; and so, almost insensibly, her books and appointments generally will fall into groups and cla.s.ses in her desk. Not only there, but at home, will the same effect be seen; and not only now, but through all her life, the habit will run. It needs only a moment's reflection to show how great will be the result. Accustomed to collect her thoughts at a certain time, for a certain work, she will have acquired a mastery over them which will make her self-controlled, ready in emergencies, and able to summon her whole mental power at will for any work when it may be necessary.

Again, that silence should be enforced in school may be desirable for the immediate quiet resulting therefrom, but that the continual impulse to talk should be restrained and held in check by the will, till the subjection of impulse to will shall become a daily and hourly habit, is a matter of no less than infinite moment.

And the wise teacher, who must always look beyond the present and immediate result, to its future and mediate consequences, works steadily, through the enforcement of such regulations, on the formation of the character of the child under her influence, basing her action on the rational foundations of the Science of Education, and mindful ever that the so-called intellectual part of her work will not be well performed if these be neglected.

Laws and rules are, to her, not an unfortunate necessity, inseparable from society, but the divinely-appointed means whereby the human soul shall attain perfect development; not a record of rights grudgingly surrendered by the individual for temporal advantage, but the voluntary placing under foot of capricious impulses, that by this renunciation the individual may ascend to his own n.o.blest freedom.

Do not the very weaknesses, habits and failures, which are considered especially feminine, result from the general lack in a proper appreciation of the educational value of strict and exactly enforced rules? It is because little girls have not, in their educative process, been forced to accept the responsibility, and to suffer the results of their own deeds, that they are, in after life, placed in false and ridiculous positions, when they are forced to come in contact, whether in housekeeping or in business, with the rational regulations of business life. They expect, and take, special privileges, and feel themselves aggrieved if these are not accorded; they continually place their own individual opinions or fancies alongside of the necessary laws of trade, as if the two were to be balanced for a single moment; they have not learned that there are times when silence is better than speech, and they seem to think that a polite apology ought to be accepted by the president and directors of a bank, in lieu of the payment at the proper time of a protested note.

That these follies are universally characterized, wherever they occur, by the term "a woman's way of doing business," is sufficient proof that they are characteristic of the majority of women; but that the cause of the trouble lies, not in their nature, but in their education is proved by the fact that wherever women have received a thorough business training, these charming and bewildering feminine characteristics, which render them only a source of confusion, are not found. Co-education is, in this respect, of incalculable good to our American girls, for the necessary laws of rational discipline, in a mixed school, must bear as well on the girls as on the boys, and the result is, if possible, of greater value to the girls than to the boys.

When we tell the little girl that she must not insist on keeping all her playthings tightly hugged to her bosom, and persuade her to allow her sister to look at or play with them, when the little arms are slowly unfolded and the toy half hesitatingly handed over, we behold the bending of a natural will, and one of the first victories of the spiritual being. There is a great struggle going on in the tiny thought.

She is probably too young to be amenable to reasoning, and simply yields to the force of the already acquired habit of obedience, or to the force of her affection.

But if she do not yield, if she still hugs the toys in her natural selfishness, shall we be _educating_ her if by physical pain we force her to drop them? A single ill.u.s.tration and question of this kind will show how large interests are involved in what is seemingly so simple a matter. The question of how we shall deal with her to force her to do what she ought to do, cannot be answered without first determining what is the end in view. Have we simply in mind as an end that the other child shall have some of the toys in that particular instance, or is it the training, the education of the untrained will, of which we are thinking? And yet the question must be decided at once. The pouting child stands there in full possession of all the playthings, her arms rosy with the strain, and the other child, quite as natural, quite as untrained, is perhaps preparing to take her share by violence, and cries aloud for justice. Is it not manifest that every mother--that every woman who may have the care of children, should be so educated that she may guide her conduct in every such emergency by some established principles, and with a clear vision of causes and results? How many such questions come up for settlement in the course of twelve hours, only a woman who has had for a day the charge of two or three young children can know; and how often has she, in the course of half an hour, either from the result of her decision, or from her own reflection, become convinced that she has done exactly the thing which she ought not to have done! This would not be so often the case if our girls were really educated.

We hold a general in the army responsible for the mistakes of execution made under his orders, and if he commit many, we a.s.sert him to be incompetent, half-educated, and demand that he be superseded.

We put a girl who has never had the chance for any study or comprehension of the only thought which could give a rational ground for such decisions, at the head of a family, and when, either in devotion to interests which she practically thinks of greater importance, or in despair at her own want of success, fretted and worried beyond the power of endurance, she fails in nervous health and gives up the care of her children to ignorant nurses, we wonder that American children are so unruly. We sow the wind and we reap the whirlwind, but the sowing was done long ago in the narrow and unfinished education which we gave to our girls, now the mothers.

Politeness does not consist in any outside mannerisms, nor is it simply kindness. It consists, as a wiser than I has said, in treating every person as if she were what she might be, instead of what she actually is. A person tells us what we know not to be true. We do not contradict her, which would be treating her as if she intended to tell a lie, though we may be convinced that such was the actual case, but we treat her as if she intended to be a scrupulously truthful person. We speak not to _her_ then, but to a non-existing ideal of her, when we ask her politely whether she may not be mistaken, or when we do not answer at all, thereby a.s.suming that her statement was correct. Or a self-important salesman insists, very impolitely, because he thereby implies that we know nothing of what we desire, that the piece of goods which we are examining is of charming colors, tastefully combined, and is in fact the very thing which we most need. If we answered him as our natural impulse prompts, "according to his folly," we simply treat him as what he actually is, and we are as impolite as he. The woman who has been educated into true politeness answers him, if she answer him at all, as if he were what he actually is not, a better judge of her needs than she herself is. And so with all cases of politeness.

It is manifest that no manual of manners or etiquette of polite society can be of the slightest avail, and all such would seem beneath notice here, were it not evident from the number of such books published, and the number sold, that there is a large demand for them.

Nothing to an observer can be a more comic sight than the result produced on manners by their faithful study. It is sufficient for us to try to imagine the man who of all our acquaintance is the most truly and exquisitely polite, endeavoring to follow out the cast-iron rules contained in these books, for us to appreciate the difference between the politeness which springs from within and that which is only a shabby veneering. Of American mothers and American teachers what proportion are, by having attained a mastership in this art of politeness, fully able to educate our girls into it? Are we not a sadly uneducated people?

But there is still something else to be done. In the unrestrained and affectionate intercourse of the family, the girl has not felt the necessity of concealing in any degree her real self. She is under an observation that is intelligent and sympathetic, and she is sure of the kindest construction of all her actions. If she talks or laughs loudly, for instance, it is not supposed that this springs from a desire to attract attention, but from the natural, innocent overflowing of healthful spirits, and a forgetfulness of self. But her social education cannot be called finished till she has in some measure been taught to distrust others. She must learn that society is not one vast family, abounding in sympathy, and always ready to put the kindest construction on her words and actions. She must learn this sooner or later. Shall she learn it by mortifying experiences, by finding herself often in absurd and annoying positions, by having her confidence betrayed, and the outspoken utterances resulting from her very purity of thought made the occasion of coa.r.s.e remarks and suspicions; or shall she be guarded against all these by being taught that she must not give all the world credit for being as pure and innocent as she? We must so educate her that she will not lightly give her confidence, or show to uninterested persons too much of her real self. In other words, we must educate her into a reserve, into the gentle, unoffending dignity which holds all but the nearest and dearest at a little distance from herself. This is not teaching deceit. It is only teaching what must be learned, the means of "possessing one's self in peace." The majority of our girls who talk and laugh loudly on Broadway, do not do this to attract attention. They do it simply because their education on this point is not yet completed. A slight indication of the same defect in education is the profusion of endearing pet names, which we find in the published catalogues of girl students. If the girls themselves do not realize the impropriety of thus publishing to a world of careless strangers, the names which family affection has bestowed upon them, should not the teachers who compile the catalogues, direct and overrule their uneducated taste? It is only necessary to imagine the catalogue of Harvard or Yale, printed in the same manner, to make manifest, even to the girls themselves, the want of proper dignity displayed. Men, in their intercourse with the world, learn sooner than women, by the rough teaching of experience, the necessity of fending in their inner selves from the outer world. But both boys and girls might be saved much time and pain, if parents and guardians recognized more clearly that this was a part of education.