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
Perhaps it should be mentioned in this connection, that, throughout
this paper, education is not used in the limited and technical sense
of intellectual or mental training alone. By saying there is a boy's
way of study and a girl's way of study, it is not asserted that the
intellectual process which masters Juvenal, German, or chemistry, is
different for the two sexes. Education is here intended to include
what its etymology indicates, the drawing out and development of every
part of the system; and this necessarily includes the whole manner of
life, physical and psychical, during the educational period.
"Education," says Worcester, "comprehends all that series of
instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the
understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits, of
youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations." It has
been and is the misfortune of this country, and particularly of New
England, that education, stripped of this, its proper signification,
has popularly stood for studying, without regard to the physical
training or no training that the schools afford. The cerebral
processes by which the acquisition of knowledge is made are the same
for each sex; but the mode of life which gives the finest nurture to
the brain, and so enables those processes to yield their best result,
is not the same for each sex. The best educational training for a boy
is not the best for a girl, nor that for a girl best for a boy.
The delicate bloom, early but rapidly fading beauty, and singular
pallor of American girls and women have almost passed into a proverb.
The first observation of a European that lands upon our shores is,
that our women are a feeble race; and, if he is a physiological
observer, he is sure to add, They will give birth to a feeble race,
not of women only, but of men as well. "I never saw before so many
pretty girls together," said Lady Amberley to the writer, after a
visit to the public schools of Boston; and then added, "They all
looked sick." Circumstances have repeatedly carried me to Europe,
where I am always surprised by the red blood that fills and colors
the faces of ladies and peasant girls, reminding one of the canvas of
Rubens and Murillo; and am always equally surprised on my return, by
crowds of pale, bloodless female faces, that suggest consumption,
scrofula, anemia, and neuralgia. To a large extent, our present system
of educating girls is the cause of this palor and weakness. How our
schools, through their methods of education, contribute to this
unfortunate result, and how our colleges that have undertaken to
educate girls like boys, that is, in the same way, have succeeded in
intensifying the evils of the schools, will be pointed out in another
place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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