The Education of American GirlsBrackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
General
The Education of American Girls
Brackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
Women -- Education -- United States
The invalids on a long list of old associates which Dr. Clarke's book
has led me to call to mind and look up, are, I have been surprised to
find, among those who did "run well for a time," but they have turned
back and ceased mental labor. Some have fallen into worldliness and a
fashionable life, and are broken down under it. Others, restricted to
some narrow creed of thought, have not dared to open their eyes to the
light of any new day that is dawning on the world, until, ceasing to
grow, they have, according to a law of nature, fallen into decay,
invalidism, and "nervous prostration." Bringing this subject before
several experienced persons, teachers, and one a physician, in the light
in which I have aimed to bring it before my readers, I have asked, "And
were these cases of invalidism (cases of which we have been speaking)
from your best scholars? Were they, in short, persons still continuing
to grow?" Stopping a moment to think, they have, in two instances at
least, given precisely the same answer: "I never thought of that before,
but they were not."
There are some other things that characterized methods, of study in
those academies of forty or fifty years ago, that may instruct us. While
the girls studied harder, had more recitations, extending through more
hours in a day than are required in any of our High schools, they seldom
studied in school, but at their homes or at their boarding places. This
gave them freedom of position, liberty to sit or stand or walk, when
they were at work on a difficult problem, or engaged in close
thinking--an advantage which any one who has been a close student in
later life, must appreciate--an advantage which I have recently heard
young ladies in our university say, they could hardly conceive of before
they went to the university from the high school where they fitted. This
also led them almost every hour into the open air, and to take a little
exercise, as the girls in our university and in some of our colleges
are forced to do, effecting a visible and marked improvement in the
standard of health among the girls in the university above that of the
girls in the High schools.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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