The Education of American Girls Part 1

The Education of American Girls.

by Anna Callender Brackett.

PREFACE.

The Table of Contents sufficiently indicates the purpose and aim of this book. The essays are the thoughts of American women, of wide and varied experience, both professional and otherwise; no one writer being responsible for the work of another. The connecting link is the common interest. Some of the names need no introduction. The author of Essay IV. has had an unusually long and varied experience in the education and care of Western girls, in schools and colleges. The author of the essay on English Girls is a graduate of Antioch, has taught for many years in different sections of this country, and has had unusual opportunities, for several years, of observing English methods and results.

The essays on the first four inst.i.tutions, whose names they bear, come with the official sanction of the presiding officers of those inst.i.tutions, who vouch for the correctness of the statements. Of these, VII. is by a member of the present Senior Cla.s.s of the University, who has inst.i.tuted very exact personal inquiries among the women-students.

The author of VIII. is the librarian of Mt. Holyoke Seminary. The writer of the report from Oberlin is a graduate--a teacher of wide experience, and has been for three or four years the Princ.i.p.al of the Ladies'

Department of the college. The resident physician at Va.s.sar is too well known as such, to need any introduction.

There are many other inst.i.tutions whose statistics would be equally valuable, such, for instance, as the Northwestern University of Illinois, which has not only opened its doors to girl-students, but has placed women on the Board of Trustees, and in the Faculty.

From Antioch, which we desired to have fully represented, we have been disappointed in obtaining statistics, which may, however, hereafter be embodied in a second edition. In place thereof, we give the brief statement of facts found under the name of the inst.i.tution, supplied by a friend.

With reference to my own part of the volume, if the words on "Physical Education" far outnumber those on the "Culture of the Intellect," and the "Culture of the Will," it can only be said that the American nation are far more liable to overlook the former than the latter two, and that the number of pages covered is by no means to be taken as an index of the relative importance of the divisions in themselves. Of the imperfection of all three, no one can be more conscious than their author. The subject is too large for any such partial treatment.

To friends, medical, clerical, and unprofessional, who have kindly given me the benefit of their criticism on different parts of the introductory essay, my thanks are due. Especially do I recognize my obligation to Dr. W. Gill Wylie, of this city, whose line of study and practice has made his criticism of great value.

I cannot refrain from adding that I am fully aware of the one-sided nature of the training acquired in the profession of teaching.

Civilization, implying, as it does, division of labor, necessarily renders all persons more or less one-sided. In the teaching profession, the voluntary holding of the mind for many hours of each day in the position required for the work of educating uneducated minds, the constant effort to state facts clearly, distinctly, and freed from unnecessary details, almost universally induce a straightforwardness of speech, which savors, to others who are not immature, of brusqueness and positiveness, if it may not deserve the harsher names of asperity and arrogance. It is not these in essence, though it appear to be so, and thus teachers often give offense and excite opposition when these results are farthest from their intention. In the case of these essays, this professional tendency may also have been aggravated by the circ.u.mstances under which they have been written, the only hours available for the purpose having been the last three evening hours of days whose freshness was claimed by actual teaching, and the morning hours of a short vacation.

I do not offer these explanations as an apology, simply as an explanation. No apology has the power to make good a failure in courtesy. If pa.s.sages failing in this be discovered, it will be cause for grat.i.tude and not for offense if they are pointed out.

The spirit which has prompted the severe labor has been that which seeks for the Truth, and endeavors to express it, in hopes that more perfect statements may be elicited.

With these words, I submit the result to the intelligent women of America, asking only that the screen of the honest purpose may be interposed between the reader and any glaring faults of manner or expression.

ANNA C. BRACKETT.

117 East 36th street, New York City, January, 1874.

THE

EDUCATION OF AMERICAN

GIRLS.

There seems to be at present no subject more capable of exciting and holding attention among thoughtful people in America, than the question of the Education of Girls. We may answer it as we will, we may refuse to answer it, but it will not be postponed, and it will be heard; and until it is answered on more rational grounds than that of previous custom, or of preconceived opinion, it may be expected to present itself at every turn, to crop out of every stratum of civilized thought. Nor is woman to blame if the question of her education occupies so much attention. The demands made are not hers--the continual agitation is not primarily of her creating. It is simply the tendency of the age, of which it is only the index. It would be as much out of place to blame the weights of a clock for the moving of the hands, while, acted upon by an unseen, but constant force, they descend slowly but steadily towards the earth.

That this is true, is attested by the widely-spread discussion and the contemporaneous attempts at reform in widely-separated countries. While the women in America are striving for a more complete development of their powers, the English women are, in their own way, and quite independently, forcing their right at least to be examined if not to be taught, and the Russian women are a.s.serting that the one object toward which they will bend all their efforts of reform is "the securing of a solid education from the foundation up." When the water in the Scotch lakes rises and falls, as the quay in Lisbon sinks, we know that the cause of both must lie far below, and be independent of either locality.

The agitation of itself is wearisome, but its existence proves that it must be quieted, and it can be so quieted only by a rational solution, for every irrational decision, being from its nature self-contradictory, has for its chief mission to destroy itself. As long as it continues, we may be sure that the true solution has not been attained, and for our hope we may remember that we

"have seen all winter long the thorn First show itself intractable and fierce, And after, bear the rose upon its top."

We, however, are chiefly concerned with the education of our own girls, of girls in America. Born and bred in a continent separated by miles of ocean from the traditions of Europe, they may not unnaturally be expected to be of a peculiar type. They live under peculiar conditions of descent, of climate, of government, and are hence very different from their European sisters. No testimony is more concurrent than that of observant foreigners on this point. More nervous, more sensitive, more rapidly developed in thinking power, they scarcely need to be stimulated so much as restrained; while, born of mixed races, and reared in this grand meeting-ground of all nations, they gain at home, in some degree, that breadth which can be attained in other countries only by travel.

Our girls are more frank in their manners, but we nowhere find girls so capable of teaching intrusion and impertinence their proper places, and they combine the French nerve and force with the Teutonic simplicity and truthfulness. Less accustomed to leading-strings, they walk more firmly on their own feet, and, breathing in the universal spirit of free inquiry, they are less in danger of becoming unreasonable and capricious.

Such is the material, physical and mental, which we have to fas.h.i.+on into womanhood by means of education. But is it not manifest in the outset, that no system based on European life can be adequate to the solution of such a problem? Our American girls, if treated as it is perfectly correct to treat French or German girls, are thwarted and perverted into something which has all the faults of the German and French girl, without her excellencies. Our girls will not blindly obey what seem to them arbitrary rules, and we can rule them only by winning their conviction. In other words, they will rule themselves, and it therefore behooves us to see that they are so educated that they shall do this wisely. They are not continually under the eye of a guardian. They are left to themselves to a degree which would be deemed in other countries impracticable and dangerous. We cannot follow them everywhere, and therefore, more than in any other country must we educate them, so that they will follow and rule themselves. But no platform of premise and conclusion, however logical and exact, is broad enough to place under an uneducated mind. Nothing deserving the name of conviction can have a place in such. Prejudices, notions, prescriptive rules, may exist there, but these are not sufficient as guides of conduct.

Education, of course, signifies, as a glance at the etymology of the word shows us, a development--an unfolding of innate capacities. In its process it is the gradual transition from a state of entire dependence, as at birth, to a state of independence, as in adult life. Being a general term, it includes all the faculties of the human being, those of his mortal, and of his immortal part. It is a training, as well of the continually changing body, which he only borrows for temporary use from material nature, and whose final separation is its destruction, as of the changeless essence in which consists his ident.i.ty, and which, from its very nature, is necessarily immortal. The education of a girl is properly said to be finished when the pupil has attained a completely fas.h.i.+oned will, which will know how to control and direct her among the exigencies of life, mental power to judge and care for herself in every way, and a perfectly developed body. However true it may be, that life itself, by means of daily exigencies, will shape the Will into habits, will develop to some extent the intelligence, and that the forces of nature will fas.h.i.+on the body into maturity; we apply the term Education only to the voluntary training of one human being who is undeveloped, by another who is developed, and it is in this sense alone that the process can concern us. For convenience, then, the subject will be considered under three main heads, corresponding to the triple statement made above.

Especially is it desirable to place all that one may have to say of the education of girls in America on some proved, rational basis, for in no country is the work of education carried on in so purely empirical a way. We are deeply impressed with its necessity; we are eager in our efforts, but we are always in the condition of one "whom too great eagerness bewilders." We are ready to drift in any direction on the subject. We adopt every new idea that presents itself. We recognize our errors in one direction, and in our efforts to prevent those we fall into quite as dangerous ones on the other side. More than in any other country, then, it were well for us to follow in the paths already laid out by the thinkers of Germany. I shall, therefore, make no apology for using as guide the main divisions of the great philosophers of that nation, who alone, in modern times, have made for Education a place among the sciences. Truth is of no country, but belongs to whoever can comprehend it.

Nor do I apologize for speaking of what may be called small things nor for dealing with minor details. "When the fame of Herac.l.i.tus was celebrated throughout Greece, there were certain persons that had a curiosity to see so great a man. They came, and as it happened, found him warming himself in a kitchen. The meanness of the place occasioned them to stop, upon which the philosopher thus accosted them: 'Enter,'

said he, 'boldly, for here too there are G.o.ds!'" Following so ancient and wise an authority, I also say to myself in speaking of these things which seem small and mean: Enter boldly, for here too there are G.o.ds; nay, perchance we shall thereby enter the very temple of the G.o.ddess Hygeia herself.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION,

OR,

THE CULTURE OF THE BODY.

"Haec ante exitium primis dant signa diebus."--Virgil.

"Now my belief is--and this is a matter upon which I should like to have your opinion, but my own belief is--not that the good body improves the soul, but that the good soul improves the body.

What do you say?"--PLATO, REP. BOOK III.

If we could literally translate the German word _Fertigkeiten_ into Readinesses, and use it as a good English word, we should then have a term under which to group many arts of which a fully educated woman should have some knowledge--I mean cooking, sewing, sweeping, dusting, etc. When a woman is mistress of these, she is called _capable_, that good old word, heard oftener in New England than elsewhere, which carries with it a sweet savor of comfort and rest. Some knowledge of these should undoubtedly const.i.tute a part of the education of our girls; but the "how much" is a quant.i.ty which varies very materially as the years go by. For instance, the art of knitting stockings was considered in the days of our grandmothers one to which much time must be devoted, and those of us who were born in New England doubtless well recollect the time when, to the music of the tall old kitchen clock, we slowly, laboriously and yet triumphantly, "bound off" our first heel, or "narrowed off" our first toe.

But weaving machines can do this work now with far greater precision; and while stockings are so good and so cheap, is it worth while for our girls to spend long hours in the slow process of looping st.i.tches into each other? Would not the same time be better spent in the open air and the suns.h.i.+ne, than in-doors, with cramped fingers and bent back over the knitting-needles?

Of Sewing, nearly the same might be said, since the invention of machines for the purpose. Sewing is a fine art, and those of us who can boast of being neat seamstresses do confess to a certain degree of pride in the boast. But the satisfaction arises from the well-doing, and not from the fact that it is Sewing well done; for anything well and thoroughly done, even if it be only boot-blacking on a street corner, or throwing paper torpedoes in a theatre orchestra to imitate the crack of a whip in the "Postilion Galop," gives to its doer the same sense of self-satisfaction. It would be folly now, as it may have been in old times, for our girls to spend their hours and try their eyes over back-st.i.tching for collars, etc., when any one out of a hundred cheap machines can do it not only in less time but far better, and the money which could be saved in many ways, by wisdom in housekeeping and caring for the health of children, would buy a machine for every family. This matter of st.i.tching being done for us, then, we may say that the other varieties of sewing required are very few: "sewing over-and-over," or "top-st.i.tching" as the Irish call it, hemming, b.u.t.ton sewing, b.u.t.ton-hole making, and gathering. Indeed, hemming, including felling, might be also omitted, as, with a very few exceptions, hems and fells are also handed over to the rapid machine; and "over-casting" is but a variety of "top-st.i.tching." There are then only four things which a girl really needs to be taught to do, so far as the mere manual facility goes--"to sew over-and-over;" to put on a b.u.t.ton; to gather, including "stroking" or "laying," and to make a b.u.t.ton-hole. Does it not seem as if an intelligent girl of fourteen or fifteen could be taught these in twelve lessons of one hour each? Only practice can give rapidity and perfection; but at the age mentioned, the girl's hand has been pretty thoroughly educated to obey her will, and but very little time is needed to turn the acquired control into this peculiar activity, while, with the untrained muscles of the little child, much more time is required and much fretfulness engendered, born of the confined position and the almost insuperable difficulty of the achievement.

Above the mere manual labor, however, there comes another work which always has to be done for the child, and is therefore of no educational value for her: I mean the "fitting" and "basting." They cannot be intrusted to the child, for the simple reason that they involve not merely manual dexterity, but also an exercise of the judgment, which in the child has not yet become sufficiently developed. But when the girl has lived fourteen years, we will say, and has been trained in other ways into habits of neatness and order, she has also acquired judgment enough for the purpose, and needs only a few words of direction. The sewing of bands to gathers, the covering of cord, the cording of neck or belt, the arrangement of two edges for felling, the putting on of bindings, belong, so to speak, to the syntax of the art of sewing, and come under this division, which must, perforce, be left till maturer years than those of childhood. There is still a sphere above this, the three corresponding exactly to apprentices.h.i.+p, journeymans.h.i.+p and masters.h.i.+p, in learning a trade. The third and last sphere is that of "cutting," and this demands simply and only, judgment and caution. There are a few general statements which must be given, as, for instance, "the right way of the cloth," in which the parts of the garment should be cut, etc.; but these being once learned--and a lesson of one hour would be a large allowance for this purpose--the good cutter is the one who has the most exact eye for measurement--trained already in school by drawing, writing, etc.--the best power of calculation--trained by arithmetic, algebra, etc.--and the best observation and judgment--trained by every study she has pursued under a good teacher.

As to sewing, considered as a physical exercise, it may almost be p.r.o.nounced bad in its very nature; considered as a mental exercise, in its higher spheres, it is excellent, because it calls for the activity of thought; but after the cutting and fitting are done, it is undoubtedly bad, leaving the mind free to wander wherever it will. The constant, mechanical drawing through of the needle, like the listening to a very dull address, seems to induce a kind of morbid intellectual acuteness, or nervousness. If the inner thought is entirely serene and happy, this may do no harm; but if it is not, if there is any internal annoyance or grief, the mind turns it over and over, till, like a snow-ball, it grows to a mountainous ma.s.s, and too heavy to be borne with patience. I think many women will testify, from a woman's experience, that there are times when an afternoon spent in sewing gives some idea of incipient insanity. This lengthy discussion of the woman's art of sewing can only be excused on the ground that it touches the question of physical and mental health. As a means of support, the needle can hardly be spoken of now.

As to Cooking, the same in substance might be said. It is perhaps a little more mechanical in its nature, though of that I am not positive; but if a girl is educated into a full development of what is known as common sense, she can turn that common sense in this direction as well as in any other, if the necessity arises. The parts of cooking which call for judgment--such, for instance, as whether cake is stiff enough or not, whether the oven is hot enough, safely to intrust the mixture to its care, whether the bread is sufficiently risen--require the same kind of trained senses as that by which the workman in the manufacture of steel decides as to the precise color and shade at which he must withdraw it for use. To quote from an English woman:[1] "Cookery is not a branch of general education for women or for men, but for technical instruction for those who are to follow the profession of cookery; and those who attempt to make it a branch of study for women generally, will be but helping to waste time and money, and adding to that sort of amateur tinkering in domestic work which is one of the princ.i.p.al causes of the inefficiency of our domestic servants * * * The intellectual and moral habits necessary to form a good cook and housekeeper are thoughtfulness, method, delicacy and accuracy of perception, good judgment, and the power of readily adapting means to ends, which, with Americans, is termed 'faculty,' and with Englishmen bears the homelier name of 'handiness.' Morally, they are conscientiousness, command of temper, industry and perseverance; and these are the very qualities a good school education must develop and cultivate. The object of such an education is not to put into the pupils so much History, Geography, French or Science, but, through these studies, to draw out their intelligence, train them to observe facts correctly, and draw accurate inferences from their observation, which const.i.tutes good judgment, and teach them to think, and to apply thought easily to new forms of knowledge. Morally, the discipline of a good school tends directly to form the habits I mentioned above. The pupils are trained to steady industry and perseverance, to scorn dishonest work, and to control temper. The girls who leave school so trained, though they may know nothing of cooking or housekeeping, will become infinitely better cooks and housekeepers, as soon as they have a motive for doing so, than the uneducated woman, who has learned only the technical rules of her craft."

Every girl ought certainly also to know how to drive a nail, to put in and take out a screw, and to do various other things of the same kind, as well as to sweep and to dust; but of all these "readinesses," if I may be permitted the word, the same thing may be said. I have spoken of them under Physical education, as their most appropriate place.

Pa.s.sing now to the more definite consideration of Physical education, it will be convenient to consider this division of the subject under three heads, as I have to speak of

1. Repair, 2. Exercise, 3. s.e.xual Education.

REPAIR.