Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for GirlsClarke, Edward H. (Edward Hammond)
Science
Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for Girls
Clarke, Edward H. (Edward Hammond)
Women -- Education; Women -- Health and hygiene
It is idle to say that what is right for man is wrong for woman. Pure
reason, abstract right and wrong, have nothing to do with sex: they
neither recognize nor know it. They teach that what is right or wrong
for man is equally right and wrong for woman. Both sexes are bound by
the same code of morals; both are amenable to the same divine law.
Both have a right to do the best they can; or, to speak more justly,
both should feel the duty, and have the opportunity, to do their
best. Each must justify its existence by becoming a complete
development of manhood and womanhood; and each should refuse whatever
limits or dwarfs that development.
The problem of woman's sphere, to use the modern phrase, is not to be
solved by applying to it abstract principles of right and wrong. Its
solution must be obtained from physiology, not from ethics or
metaphysics. The question must be submitted to Agassiz and Huxley, not
to Kant or Calvin, to Church or Pope. Without denying the self-evident
proposition, that whatever a woman can do, she has a right to do, the
question at once arises, What can she do? And this includes the
further question, What can she best do? A girl can hold a plough, and
ply a needle, after a fashion. If she can do both better than a man,
she ought to be both farmer and seamstress; but if, on the whole, her
husband can hold best the plough, and she ply best the needle, they
should divide the labor. He should be master of the plough, and she
mistress of the loom. The _quaestio vexata_ of woman's sphere will be
decided by her organization. This limits her power, and reveals her
divinely-appointed tasks, just as man's organization limits his power,
and reveals his work. In the development of the organization is to be
found the way of strength and power for both sexes. Limitation or
abortion of development leads both to weakness and failure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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