Part 10 (2/2)
Ha the wohly intellectual have been the least ood reason that they have been too busy with the work of their own brains to meddle hat concerned other people Nor have such women been less the helps, fitted, if need be, to act as ”breakwaters” to protect the calreat work On the contrary, the discipline acquired in study and thought has been turned to account in this way, as well as in any other
Mr Haives another friend's view of the education needful for a woman,--”one of the most intellectualof his intellectual existence whatever” His theory was ”that woht; it is not good for them”
So Dr Clarke evidently thinks, and thinks he proves it physiologically
The existence of the terrible evils he depicts is not to be doubted; and she would be less than a true wo, and exaainst the follies and sins of school or social life that induce such evils: but that it was eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge--”persistent brain-work” even--that furnished Dr
Clarke's cases, ”chiefly clinical,” an experience of teaching extending over forty years would forbid me to believe
As a woman, I have heard the sreat, froh it was not fro of the body--as any that Dr Clarke describes
In our pity for physical suffering, sohs a about the household ways In that dark house where she was born”
Indeed, the supposition of Dr Clarke that psychical influences ht upon some sad cases of invalidism which I have known, and where disease may quite as probably have been induced by soul-loneliness--intellectual starvation--as by the brain-hich, in his cases, he assumes to be the cause
In the new education which is preparing for our girls, I trust regard will be paid to training physicians for the souls of women, as well as for their bodies, and there will surely be needed that very ”feminine subtlety” that divines, if it does not reason out, a cause ”I believe in educating women to be physicians since I have read that book, if I never did before,” has been the exclamation of many women who have read it We oical, as well as physiological--capable of tracing psychical, as well as physical, causes We want teachers so educated, woh a love of it, as Florence Nightingale was led through seven years' preparation for her work--as a naturalist or an artist is drawn to his work We o committees, who kno to estiive tiht, and study to their duties
The science of education is, to-day, where the science of geology was fifty years ago We are just beginning to think of it as a science Men and wo up to its deanizations, temperaments, and idiosyncracies, can no athered froh the same culture, and in the saathers in our schools, is in soned by God, in its complicated mechanism, to perform its particular part, to yield its own particular tone in the diapason of life; and I shudder when I think how rudely it is often played upon by untaught teachers--teachers who have drifted to their work, or resorted to it as a teht of studying its principles, as physicians, lawyers, artists, study the principles of their professions Played upon by the unskilled hands of those who have never troubled themselves to study the physical, much less the psychic delicacy of this wonderful human instrument, the only wonder is, that society should yield the harmonies it does No! women need to think more, not less; to increase, not diery of it, whether it involve teaching, writing, study, the work of a profession, or house-work, by breathing into it the living spirit of love, which sanctifies and ennobles whatever the hands or the brain find to do
As regards different land Acadean to be established froo, and are now h Schools But they were the initiate of a very iirls In their earliest educational plans, our fathers had not taken their girls h not planned with any special reference to giving the girls of the New England villages and the rural districts the opportunities of education, at once established a syste men met on terms of as entire equality as any co-educational plan has ever since contemplated The academy edifice was most frequently built by voluntary subscription froe of trustees, so chosen as to avoid any sectarian bias or rivalry in its enerally crowned sorounds could be obtained The school was usually under charge of a gentleraduate--and a lady assistant The course of study, aside froely elective These schools were as perfect educational republics as can be i women met in their classes, on terms of entire equality and respect for each other There were few rules in the school, and as to government, the pupils were mostly put upon their honor The course of study was frequently identical, and with the exception of the Greek--soely so
My own course was precisely that of the young h Greek, to which I was persuaded by h a cruelat school what their mothers said at hoet up petitions to open the doors of our State University to girls ”anted to be men” I felt these jokes so keenly, that at first I pursuedout of school But, cheered by ement, I lived down jokes, and went into the class with the young men, kept up with thee, and beyond, until a call from one of our Female Seminaries for a teacher ”who had been educated by a lad to have extended through college
And that without ”wishi+ng to be a ratify a love of study, which was just as natural to me as to those I had thus far studied with The daily hours of school were h schools, and we had recitations always, as usual, up to twelve o'clock on Saturday, while the number of recitations a student was allowed to have, nearly always exceeded the nuh schools I have never in any schools known h and persistent study than was perforirls was invariably as high as that of the young men Such recitations as we had in History, Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, were like a life elixir; ent from theained bodily strength as well as mental clearness and force They had infused life
And where are the girls, who, forty, even fifty years ago, erous system of co-education in the Academies? There has surely been sufficient time to test its physical effects on thehout the world, a host of noble wo brain-work still
If ive the history of scores of them ere educated mostly in those academies, and who have continued study and brain-work ever since--who have borne children, reared fae of women who have lived in ease and idleness--quite as healthy as women devoted alone to do list of old associates which Dr Clarke's book has led me to call tothose who did ”run well for a time,” but they have turned back and ceased mental labor Some have fallen into worldliness and a fashi+onable life, and are broken down under it Others, restricted to soht, have not dared to open their eyes to the light of any new day that is dawning on the world, until, ceasing to grow, they have, according to a law of nature, fallen into decay, invalidis this subject before several experienced persons, teachers, and one a physician, in the light in which I have ai it before my readers, I have asked, ”And were these cases of invalidis) from your best scholars? Were they, in short, persons still continuing to grow?” Stopping a iven precisely the saht of that before, but they were not”
There are sos that characterized methods, of study in those acadeo, that irls studied harder, had h h schools, they seldo places This gave them freedom of position, liberty to sit or stand or walk, when they were at work on a difficult problee which any one who has been a close student in later life, e which I have recently heard young ladies in our university say, they could hardly conceive of before they went to the university froh school where they fitted This also led them almost every hour into the open air, and to take a little exercise, as the girls in our university and in so a visible and irls in the university above that of the girls in the High schools
Again, they had seldoht of stairs to cli these, burdened with skirts that weigh five, six, and even seven pounds, such as I know froirls of the present tihts of stairs! Let any woman undertake this with her ar the, heavy skirt, with itsto lift them with a movement of her hips and pinioned arms, and yet feels herself liable every instant to be thrown from her balance by all this encumbrance--let her undertake this, and she will learn that there is so the health of our school girls Again, let her take her stand at the top of one of these long flights of stairs--the last in the building, perhaps--reaching up to the floor where the High school rooms are almost always located; let her watch the flushed faces of a class of girls co, almost breathless efforts hich some of them achieve the last few steps; and when they have acco to the post of the balustrade, or leaning speechless against the wall until she can recover breath to proceed another step; let her do this, and she will get another insight into the causes of invalidisraduates of our schools ”How can a mother rest when she doesn't knohere her boys are?” we often hear asked How can a irls are, or by what dangerous steps they have gone where they are? How can she rest? Simply, in most instances, because she has not herself been educated to any coer her child is in
Neither did school-girls, in that earlier time, perform their brain labor under an outside pressure scarcely less than that of one of those iron heluide assures us, with an e that he does not expect us to believe it, were actually worn by soincourt, or solish And how those old warriors did bear up under a head-gear weighing ten or twelve pounds, to fight the battles of their age, I have been best able to coe can bear up under and live at all, much more, study
I have a friend, an old pupil, a truly intellectual woman, who has not broken down under much more brain-work, since she left school, than she ever perforreatly enjoys her intellectual tastes, and, without stint or jealousy, encourages them; only he would not have her ”odd,” nor so very different from ”other ladies of our acquaintance” He would have her study; he ”doesn't believe a woman should fall back in her intellectual life any more than a man” He would have her paint, and practise, and study; and since he provides abundant help, he thinks she may He will buy any book, or set of books, to aid her; but he would have her wear her hair as ”other ladies wear theirs, and not give occasion for all those flings about woo with their hair about their faces and theenerally ”And why can't she wear her hair put up?” ”Sit down, and I will tell you why,” she said, one day, rather out of sorts; he did not yield very ready compliance But she persuaded him to peran by twisting his abundant curls into a knot as tight as could well be held by a strong hair-pin This was the ”underpinning” on which to rear the structure So, with ”switch” upon ”switch,” and ”braid” surrounding ”braid,” a ”frizz” here and a ”frizz” there, with a fes for capitals, and a few curls for strea-rods, the toas finished, in less than half the tieous position she enjoyed in her work, that it would take her to rear the same structure on her own head, and it was precisely like what other ladies of their acquaintance wore
”Good gracious!” he exclaimed, ”you do not pretend that women wear all this false pile on their heads!” ”Yes, I not only pretend, but solemnly assure you that I have not exceeded by a braid or a curl what most of the ladies of our acquaintance wear on their heads” ”Well, what do women want to be such fools for?” he asked impatiently ”What did you want me to be such a fool for?” she answered ”Well, take down the thing and let o,” he said, ”you h for one day” ”No, stay and let us read that chapter of Mill on 'Liberty' that ere going to read together sometime,” she said ”Liberty! I think so I wouldn't wear that thing half a day for all the profits of o, for I think if I have taught you _why_, with all that toggery on h for one day,” she said
Think of a girl thus burdened working through a proble, in her mind, an analysis of it, which will be called for in five ive clearly, with its heads and deductions, an abstract of a chapter in soets used to it and thinks nothing about it,” and she thinks, no doubt, that what she says is quite true But go to her roo after the world is shut out, and you will, in all probability, find her with her wrapper on and her ”braids” and ”switches” off, and she will tell you, without thinking, what is nearer the truth--that you et, and she can study so much better in this hen she feels perfectly comfortable” A straill tell which way the wind blows, and straws of hair-pins, during months of pain and feebleness, may, in after life, tell which way the wind has blown
Just in face of soher education of our girls, I place soes which I have received The following is froh reputation, Superintendent of Public Schools in one of our large cities, a gentle as few have done, and added to the usual attainiven hied in his profession, without a term's remission, for thirty years:
”It is not hard study that breaks down the health of our girls, but the circumstances under which they study, the demands of society and its thousand social follies, with all their excitements It is the foolish ahters acco them to carry on five or six branches at a time instead of two or three These, and so down the health of girls at school, than irls to master the several branches, is fully equal to that of the boys, and when an airls, we have gone as far as is profitable for boys Boys also break down in study, from some of the evils of society As to co-education of the sexes, , all convince me that it is the best way If there are incidental evils in such a course, they are only incidental, and I can find those of equal, or, I think, of greater an has tried the experihly and extensively as any State in the Union--as any territory of equal extent in the world Her six colleges, her University, her Nor--with the exception of the Michigan Fe ladies' private schools--are open to youngwomen on the same terms There are no separate roads for the sexes up the Hill of Science, frohest professional school