School for girls

“ Private schools in our large cities cannot be said to overwork their pupils. Fifty years ago, when my mother was educated, far more was required of girls at school than was ever possible in my day. Thirty years ago, when my school education ended, far more was possible to me than has ever been required of my daughter. It is the uniform testimony of teachers, that girls now study less, that the hours of recitation are fewer, and that dilatoriness and absences are far more frequently excused than was once the case. ”

“ In many ways the secondary school, in which we may assume our adolescent girl to be, merits the criticism constantly made, that it works its pupils too hard or, perhaps more accurately, that it works them too long. Nothing but the closest coöperation between parents and teachers can afford either of them the necessary data for working out this problem. It can never be anything but an individual problem, since girls will always differ whether school courses do so or not, and adjustment of one to the other must be made every time the combination is effected. ”

“ There is no reason why both school and college may not fit girls for a broad and general usefulness, for "independence and self-support," and at the same time give them the training for that which, with the majority already mentioned, comes to be the great work of their lives. ”

“ If, amid the multiplied schools, whose advertisements now throng our papers, purporting to teach girls every thing, both ancient and modern, high and low, from playing on the harp and working pincushions, up to civil engineering, surveying, and navigation, there were any which could teach them to be women—to have thoughts, opinions, and modes of action of their own—such a school would be worth having. If one half of the good purposes which are in the hearts of the ladies of our nation were only acted out without fear of any body's opinion, we should certainly be a step nearer the millennium. ”

“ It is evident that even this elementary knowledge cannot be given in the earliest years of the education of girls, and that it is only possible to attempt it in schools and school-rooms where they can be kept on for a longer time of study. Every year that can be added to the usual course is of better value, and more appreciated, except by those who are restless to come out as soon as possible. No reference is made here to those exceptional cases in which girls are allowed to begin a course of study at a time when the majority have been obliged to finish their school life. ”

“ For the High Schools are training more and more of the most influential class among the women of England, as the public schools are training the men, and the influence of women must of necessity be of the first importance; for it is they who determine the religious training and the atmosphere of the home, and thus profoundly affect the national character. Let us all alike try to keep before ourselves from day to day and from year to year these high ideals of education which can nowhere be so well attained, both by mistresses and girls, as in a High School. ”

“ National and British Schools for girls are inspected, mistresses are trained, female pupil-teachers are apprenticed, and speaking generally, the education of the daughters of the labouring classes is as carefully watched over as that of their sons. Why is the case altered when we advance a few steps higher in the social scale? With regard to the public schools, the reason is obvious enough. As there are no Etons for girls in existence, they could not be made the subject of investigation. Probably the sisters of public school boys are, for the most part, taught by governesses at home. ”

“ The best class of girls from the country towns everywhere now met each other, and mingled, too, with many girls who had had the opportunities of city life. The teachers in these schools were women of high character and real refinement, and though they were not all accustomed to the usages of society, there were always some among them who were so, and who gave a certain finish to the solid work of the others. The advantages of these boarding-school girls were so far beyond those of the previous generation that the line between mothers and daughters became abnormally broad. ”

“ Clearly, girls cannot be kept at school indefinitely till they marry. When they leave school, say at eighteen, what are they to do next? The answer must chiefly depend on circumstances. Where the resources of the parents are such that there is a reasonable [Pg 73] certainty of an abundant provision for the future, an education corresponding with that given by the universities to young men—in other words, ‘the education of a lady,’ considered irrespectively of any specific uses to which it may afterwards be turned—would appear to be the desideratum. ”

“ Schemes of education in the future will undoubtedly try to remedy the defect of present systems in this respect. If most girls could finish their training in college or professional school at twenty, as some do now, the world would be rewarded by earlier marriages and probably more of them. There would be more children, reared by younger and more enthusiastic mothers. The more difficult professions, which could not be successfully undertaken by the girl of twenty, would then be reserved, as they generally are now, for the women whose ambition is unusually strong and absorbing. ”

“ The high-school girl who can spare time and money for some further training finds a larger field open; but, to make the most of what high school has to offer, her plans should be made as early as possible in the high-school course—at the very beginning if it can be managed. The girl must know what further training she is making ready for, must choose electives in high school to help her make ready, or possibly to offset the specializing of this later work by some general culture she may otherwise miss entirely. ”

“ It is only very recently that anything like adequate knowledge of pupils has begun to be gathered and recorded to throw light upon the home-study question.
School girls naturally divide into fairly well-defined classes: the girl who is overanxious or overconscientious about her work, the girl who intends to comply with rules but has no special anxiety about results, and the girl who habitually takes chances in evading the preparation of lessons. How many parents know at all definitely to which class their girl belongs? ”

“ Our girls' schools, whether public or private, have imposed upon their pupils a boy's regimen; and it is now proposed, in some quarters, to carry this principle still farther, by burdening girls, after they leave school, with a quadrennium of masculine college regimen. And so girls are to learn the alphabet in college, as they have learned it in the grammar-school, just as boys do. ”

“ She knows that not only is our country bigger than any one of its states, but also that every school is bigger than any one of its members whether teacher or student. In a small family at home conditions have been more or less made for her, just as they are for other girls. Yet she knows that the school life is complicated and complex, and it is impossible for her to feel neglected where a more self-centred or spoiled girl fails to see that in this new life she is called upon to play a minor part but nevertheless a part upon which the school must rely for its esprit de corps. ”

“ And its goal is to help more girls around the world go to school and stay in school. Right now, 62 million girls who should be in school, are not. And that’s not an accident. It’s the direct result of barriers, large and small, that stand in the way of girls who want to learn. ”

“ What the school is able to do for the girl depends very largely upon the girl herself. The majority of people with whom she comes in contact do not take that into consideration, and the school is held unfairly responsible for the girl. All any school can do is to use the material it finds. Some one has said, with harsh but true emphasis, that a college does not make a fool, it simply helps in the development of one. As an illustration of its limitations, a school sends out two girls from the same class; one girl it is proud to have taken as a type, the other it is sorry to have represent it. ”

“ III SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHING The girls' secondary day schools of this country, largely built up in the first place by the individual pioneer work of broad-minded women during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, are now in most cases coming, if not under State control, at least into the sphere of State influence. These women educationists in some cases worked on old foundations, in others obtained from guilds or governors a share for girls' education of funds previously allocated to various benefactions or to the education of boys only. ”

“ It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition; but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously [167] behind her brother. In 1774 a few rash innovators conceived the project of an advanced school for girls; one that should approach from afar a college standard, and teach with thoroughness what it taught at all; one that might be trusted to broaden the intelligence of women, without lessening their much-prized femininity. ”

“ Let schemes of examination and inspection designed to raise the character of boys' schools be extended to girls also. In a word, let female education be encouraged—let it be understood that the public really cares whether the work is done well or ill—and the minor practical questions will ere long find for themselves a satisfactory solution.
↑ In fairness to the schools it ought perhaps to be remarked that they are moulded by public opinion. Many school-mistresses supply what society demands, very much against their own judgment and inclination. ”

“ A very usual course seems to be for girls to spend their early years in a haphazard kind of way, either at home, or in not very regular attendance at an inferior school; after which they are sent for a year or two to a school or college to finish. The heads of schools complain with one voice that they are called upon to 'finish' what has never been begun, and that to attempt to give anything like a sound education, in the short time at their disposal, is perfectly hopeless. ”

“ During the period of adolescence or of the formation of sex, 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 assumed, 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. ”

“ A similar change has taken place in the education of girls; every year more of those who would formerly have received their education entirely from governesses and masters at home, or at most gone to a very small boarding school, are studying as day-pupils at large schools and colleges, or living in boarding-houses. ”

“ I do not wish to protract this discussion of the possibilities in physical development in our girls' schools; but I will say, after such opportunities for observation as no other man on either continent has enjoyed, that it is my deliberate conviction that ninety-nine in every hundred girls, may be so developed, physically, in two years of school life, that they can walk ten miles without fatigue, be free from aches and weaknesses, and be nobly fitted for the grave responsibilities of citizenship and motherhood. ”

“ It will be time enough to talk of doing away with a portion of the girls' school year when the schools have fulfilled their high mission, when they have sent out a large body of American women prepared, not for a single profession, even the high feminine vocation of pedagogy, but equipped for her highest, most general and congenial functions as the source and centre of the home. ”

“ That this great work should at least be well begun during the period allotted to secondary instruction, is especially necessary in the case of women, because with this first stage their education ends. I do not mean, of course, that a girl necessarily lays aside all study on leaving school, any more than a man does on taking his degree, but that the end of the school course is the same kind of educational terminus to a woman that graduation is to a man. When a girl leaves school, her strictly professional studies assume a greater prominence. ”

“ At the same time, while we in our larger world feel under fixed laws, we yet believe in a special providence which arranges for our welfare, even though we are unconscious of its action; the teacher should play the part of unseen providence to the child.
It is perfectly possible in a high school to consider each individual girl, and to arrange matters more or less for her interests, though this possibility rests on the fact that exceptional cases are not proper subjects for high school education. ”

“ No longer confined to the narrow circle of home and family friends, the child may lose all the tiny beginnings of desired virtues in this larger life. Or, on the contrary, when the school recognizes and continues home training, or supplies what has not been given, these foundation virtues may be so applied to the old problems in new places as to form a foundation for the life conduct of the girl and the woman that is to be.
Take the question of sex knowledge, so widely agitated of late. We cannot guard our girls against contact with some who will exert a harmful influence. ”