The Education of American Girls Part 9

As to habits, they were taught regularity, order, cleanliness, and the self-denial in small matters which would prevent then from annoying one another.

As to manners, the courtesy shown by so finished a gentlewoman as Miss Lyman, not only in all her intercourse with the Faculty and the teachers, but to the pupils, in all the minute details of official and social intercourse, took effect, as no lessons born of foreign travel or intercourse with the world could ever have done. It was courtesy growing out of character and conscience; it was not the mere dictation of custom.

To live with such regularity as Va.s.sar enforced for four years, made it almost certain that these pupils would never fail of that divine blessing for the rest of their lives. Their meals were served at the minute, their rising and retiring were at the proper hours, and sleep was as secure as good health, cheerful minds, and moderate excitement could make it.

Their food was of the best material, of good variety, and most careful preparation. It is not too much to say, that none of the girls could ever have seen in their own homes such perfect bread and b.u.t.ter, so abundant milk and meat, or simple delicacies so carefully served without interruption for four years.

Their exercise was watched by the resident physician, and every flagging step or indifferent recitation was supposed to have two possible bearings, one upon the goodwill of the student, the other upon some incipient physical derangement.

Their study hours were carefully regulated by teachers who knew what girls could properly accomplish, and when a question arose it was decided in the only proper way--practically. I was present once when a pupil complained to Hannah Lyman of the impossibility of preparing a lesson in arithmetic in the prescribed time. That night Miss Lyman sat late over her own slate, and by going slowly through every process required of the pupil, justified the complaint and corrected the error.

In all table manners and social life, the girls at Va.s.sar had the highest standard constantly before them, and when they went out into the world at the end of four years, they carried into their varied homes wholly new ideas about dress, food, proprieties, and life.

The conditions of a girl's successful growth, we are told, are to be found in--

1. Abundant and wholesome food.

2. Care in all relating to her health.

3. Work so apportioned as to leave room for growth, beyond the mere repair of tissue, and-- 4. Sleep.

In no homes that I know in America, are all these points so completely secured as at Va.s.sar.

Every year, about one hundred girls leave this inst.i.tution, to take their positions in life. Some of them are to be teachers, some mothers, some housekeepers for father or brother, but they will not go to either of these lives, ignorant of that upon which family comfort depends.

Never again will they be content with sour bread or a soiled table-cloth; never again will they mistake arrogant self-a.s.sertion for good-breeding, or a dull, half-furnished "living-room" for a cheerful parlor. They have all been taught the virtue which lies in mother earth, and the fragrance she gives to her flowers; they know the health and power given by the labor of their hands and the use of their feet.

Fortunately, the girls at Va.s.sar come under few of the precautions required for growing girls[32] but of those who are younger, it may be said that the impending maidenhood sometimes makes such heavy draughts upon the circulation, that a girl's real safety is found in steady study or persistent manual labor; the diversion of blood to brain or muscles relieving the more sensitive growing organs.

"I have longed to put my word into this discussion," wrote an experienced teacher to me from the city of Portland the other day, "for I hold that hysterics are born of silly mothers and fashionable follies, and I find them easily cured by equal doses of ridicule and arithmetic."

The 'arithmetic,' or other severe study that corrects or prevents morbid notions, that diverts a girl's thoughts from herself; her functions, and her future, is in most cases the best medicine.

Of this developing period of life it may be even more safely said than of any other, that "constant employment is constant enjoyment," and this employment, though steady, must be varied, so as to shift the effort from one set of powers or muscles to another.

I am not one of those who believe that girls require more care than boys through this period, if the laws of life are properly observed in both cases; and I think that when women and mothers come to utter words of the same scientific weight on this subject, their testimony will differ entirely from that of the leading physicians who now hold the public ear.

It is claimed that man is made for sustained, and woman for periodic effort. It is by no means certain that this is so, and if it be indeed a law of organization, then it must be a law which will dominate the whole life. It will not only keep a girl back from mastering her tools until the time for using them is pa.s.sed, but it will interfere with her steady use of them through her whole life, shut her out from the markets of the world, and unfit her for all steady, consecutive duty, either public or private.

Let no girl be deterred from steady and faithful work in the vain fear that she will uns.e.x herself, and to a loving mother's needful anxieties let not this superfluous care be added. True, we may all make mistakes as to what is desirable, needful, or possible, but to the humble seeker after the right way, a clear sight will always come, and to the preposterous cautions, born of a morbid and unwise interference with the courses of life, I oppose these words quoted from that "physiology of Moses," which it is said that we have not outgrown: "Ye shall not offer unto the Lord that which is bruised or crushed or broken or cut;" these words are true, whether spoken of a dove's feathers or a girl's soul; or the still later and wiser words, "Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."

The foundations of true manhood and true womanhood are fortunately laid too deep for our meddling. It is true that we may destroy the perfume of life, for men and women, by mistaken efforts and perverse guidance, but the fruit of our error is not immortal, and it is never too late to retrieve our false steps.

So far from losing what is best in either s.e.x, as we advance in life, we may be sure that increasing years will find it intensified; that so long as men and women live, they may, if they desire, they _must_, if they are faithful, grow more manly and more womanly. If they draw nearer to each other, as they sit hand in hand looking towards the sunset, it is only because they are both heirs of the immortal, seeking and gaining the same end.

It is impossible to dismiss these considerations without touching afresh the subject of co-education. But we need not rest upon the family fact or the old common school system.

Oberlin was the pioneer in the system of co-education, a system into which she was forced, not so much by fanatical theories as by the cruel hand of poverty. For forty-one years she has held up her banner in the wilderness, and in 1868 I found her with nearly twelve hundred pupils.

It was very largely to her men and women that the country owed its safety in the last war. As governors of States, generals of armies, and mothers of families, or teachers of schools, they kept the nation to its duty. From this beginning twenty-five colleges had sprung in 1868. It is nothing to the argument that these colleges may not present as high a standard of cla.s.sical attainment as Harvard or Yale, if that should turn out to be the fact. For more than thirty years a large number of them have been proving the possibility of co-education, and their graduates are not the unhappy childless women of Ma.s.sachusetts, but the happy and healthy women of the West, who are strong in proportion as they are busy, and whose "children are plenty as blackberries." Beside these twenty-five colleges, Antioch has been working steadily for twenty-four years, and in addition to the small inst.i.tutions scattered all through New York and the Middle States, Cornell has lately opened her doors to the same system. All those who have practical experience of its results know how much wiser, sweeter, and more serene is the life that is shaped by its methods.

It is a subject on which argument is alike useless and undesirable. We must observe and be guided by the practical result.

We are told that public duties are more exacting than private. No woman will be found to believe it. It may be often difficult to estimate the heavy stake that underlies the small duty.

"A man must labor till set of sun, But a woman's work is never done;"

and while this distich hints at the truth, it is certain that private life will continue to make upon her as heavy demands as the human const.i.tution will bear. For every reason then, a healthy mind in a healthy body is the first thing to be sought. It is to be borne in mind that the first thing Nature sets us to do, is committing to memory--and experience will show that this is the natural first function of the young scholar. Three languages can be better learned under eight years of age, than the simplest lessons in grammar, arithmetic, or history--unless these are confined to rules, tables, or dates, which may be most profitably committed, exactly as "Mother Goose" is. I take pains to allude to this, because I think great harm has been done of late by the axiom that a child should not learn anything but what it understands.

This is not true of any of us, young or old. We must learn many things before we can understand one; and nothing is so unsuited to young brains, as prolonged efforts to understand. Intellectual processes differ after we become old enough to understand; not only in the two s.e.xes, but in every two individuals. Of this fact we must take heed, or all comfort will be destroyed and much unnecessary work done.

How then are we to lay the foundations of a sincere education? We must begin with the religious, the moral, and the emotional nature. We must sustain the relations G.o.d imposes on parent and child.

We must bring the child face to face with the fact that this is a "hard"

world. By that I mean, a world in which difficulties are to be fairly met--not shirked, set aside, or "got round."

To help her to endure this hardness to the end, she must be taught a simple trust in G.o.d, and an obedient but by no means slavish deference towards parents, teachers, and elders.

Without this trust and this obedience, every child leads an unhappy and unnatural life; and their existence may be made sure without one word of dogmatic teaching. Having given to the well-poised mind these inward helps, which all true growth requires, we must secure simple food, easy dress, regular meals, and the proper quant.i.ty of sleep.

The child is then prepared for the steady work of mind and body which will develop both.

While we do everything to make knowledge attractive and to stimulate thought when the time for thought arrives, we must be careful never to yield to the superficial demands of our people. The Kindergarten, which is refreshment and help to the plodding German child, may become a snare to the light-minded American.

When the period of development arrives, study should be carefully watched to make sure there is no overwork; the character of the reading and the lessons should be guided, so that neither may tend to excite a precocious development of the pa.s.sions or the senses.

Anatomy may be profitably studied at this period; but just as the specialist turned his patient away from his loaded shelves, lest her own maladies should be increased by a morbid study of their source, I would keep developing girls and boys from a careful study of their own functions.

If they are trained to quiet obedience, they will grow up in health precisely in proportion to the skill with which their thoughts are diverted from themselves to subjects of wider interest and more entertaining suggestion.

In conclusion I must say, that education is to be adapted neither to boys nor to girls, but to individuals.

The mother, or the teacher, has learned little who attempts to train any two children alike, whether as regards the books they are to study, the time it is to take, the att.i.tudes they are to a.s.sume, or the amus.e.m.e.nts they are to be allowed.

CAROLINE H. DALL.

141 Warren Avenue, Boston.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Pupils usually enter at or after the age of eighteen.

EFFECTS OF MENTAL GROWTH.

"Clear away the parasitic forms That seem to keep her up, but drag her down; Leave her s.p.a.ce to bourgeon out of all Within her."

EFFECTS OF MENTAL GROWTH