The Education of American GirlsBrackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
General
The Education of American Girls
Brackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
Women -- Education -- United States
This is not true of any of us, young or old. We must learn many things
before we can understand one; and nothing is so unsuited to young
brains, as prolonged efforts to understand. Intellectual processes
differ after we become old enough to understand; not only in the two
sexes, but in every two individuals. Of this fact we must take heed, or
all comfort will be destroyed and much unnecessary work done.
How then are we to lay the foundations of a sincere education? We must
begin with the religious, the moral, and the emotional nature. We must
sustain the relations God imposes on parent and child.
We must bring the child face to face with the fact that this is a "hard"
world. By that I mean, a world in which difficulties are to be fairly
met--not shirked, set aside, or "got round."
To help her to endure this hardness to the end, she must be taught a
simple trust in God, and an obedient but by no means slavish deference
towards parents, teachers, and elders.
Without this trust and this obedience, every child leads an unhappy and
unnatural life; and their existence may be made sure without one word of
dogmatic teaching. Having given to the well-poised mind these inward
helps, which all true growth requires, we must secure simple food, easy
dress, regular meals, and the proper quantity of sleep.
The child is then prepared for the steady work of mind and body which
will develop both.
While we do everything to make knowledge attractive and to stimulate
thought when the time for thought arrives, we must be careful never to
yield to the superficial demands of our people. The Kindergarten, which
is refreshment and help to the plodding German child, may become a snare
to the light-minded American.
When the period of development arrives, study should be carefully
watched to make sure there is no overwork; the character of the reading
and the lessons should be guided, so that neither may tend to excite a
precocious development of the passions or the senses.
Anatomy may be profitably studied at this period; but just as the
specialist turned his patient away from his loaded shelves, lest her own
maladies should be increased by a morbid study of their source, I would
keep developing girls and boys from a careful study of their own
functions.
If they are trained to quiet obedience, they will grow up in health
precisely in proportion to the skill with which their thoughts are
diverted from themselves to subjects of wider interest and more
entertaining suggestion.
In conclusion I must say, that education is to be adapted neither to
boys nor to girls, but to individuals.
The mother, or the teacher, has learned little who attempts to train any
two children alike, whether as regards the books they are to study, the
time it is to take, the attitudes they are to assume, or the amusements
they are to be allowed.
CAROLINE H. DALL.
141 Warren Avenue, Boston.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] Pupils usually enter at or after the age of eighteen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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