A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at SchoolBeecher, Catharine Esther
General
A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Home economics
Many, who are not aware of the great economy secured by a proper
division of labor, will not understand how so extensive a course can be
properly completed in three years. But in this Institution, none are
received under fourteen; and a certain amount of previous acquisition is
required, in order to admission, as is done in our colleges. This
secures a diminution of classes, so that but few studies are pursued at
one time; while the number of well-qualified teachers is so adequate,
that full time is afforded for all needful instruction and illustration.
Where teachers have so many classes, that they merely have time to find
out what the pupils learn from books, without any aid from their
teachers, the acquisitions of the pupils are vague and imperfect, and
soon pass away; so that an immense amount of expense, time, and labor,
is spent in acquiring or recalling what is lost about as fast as it is
gained.
Parents are little aware of the immense waste incurred by the present
mode of conducting female education. In the wealthy classes, young girls
are sent to school, as a matter of course, year after year, confined,
for six hours a day, to the schoolhouse, and required to add some time
out of school to learning their lessons. Thus, during the most critical
period of life, they are for a long time immured in a room, filled with
an atmosphere vitiated by many breaths, and are constantly kept under
some sort of responsibility in regard to mental effort. Their studies
are pursued at random, often changed with changing schools, while book
after book (heavily taxing the parent's purse) is conned awhile, and
then supplanted by others. Teachers have usually so many pupils, and
such a variety of branches to teach, that little time can be afforded to
each pupil; while scholars, at this thoughtless period of life, feeling
sure of going to school as long as they please, manifest little interest
in their pursuits.
The writer believes that the actual amount of education, permanently
secured by most young ladies from the age of ten to fourteen, could all
be acquired in one year, at the Institution described, by a young lady
at the age of fifteen or sixteen.
Instead of such a course as the common one, if mothers would keep their
daughters as their domestic assistants, until they are fourteen,
requiring them to study one lesson, and go out, once a day, to recite it
to a teacher, it would abundantly prepare them, after their
constitutions are firmly established, to enter such an institution,
where, in three years, they could secure more, than almost any young
lady in the Country now gains by giving the whole of her youth to school
pursuits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account