The Education of American GirlsBrackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
General
The Education of American Girls
Brackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
Women -- Education -- United States
Man often means one thing while God means another. Luther meant to
reform the Roman Church--God meant to reform the world. Dr. Clarke
meant, as he tells us in his preface, to excite discussion, and
stimulate investigation, with regard to the relation of sex to
education; but he has excited a discussion, and stimulated an
investigation, that, unless Ephraim is wholly joined to his idols, will
not stop until a reform has been wrought in our whole social system. Not
only in our colleges and universities, but in our lower grades of
schools; and--as he has taught us that the head is not all, but the body
a good deal--in our food, in our times of downsitting and uprising, in
our hours of retiring, in the ventilation of our churches, public halls
and private homes. We are at last to understand, what it is so hard for
an American to understand, that to wait is sometimes as much a duty as
to work.
Dr. Clarke meant to prove, that co-education, in the popular
signification of that term, for physiological reasons, is an
impossibility. He succeeded, as he thinks, theoretically, but failed, as
he confesses, practically, for the want of sufficient data. What he
indirectly proved was of much more vital importance, because it affects
the whole nation; that, for physiological reasons, American women, and
consequently the American people, cannot live at this high-pressure
rate, which means death. The universal interest which his book has
awakened, the rapidly following reviews and criticisms, the numerous
essays which have since been published, on the same and kindred
subjects, show that thinking minds were already working their way to
definite conclusions and expression on this now most important of all
subjects--how to give back to the American woman the bloom and physical
strength, the elasticity and fresh old age which are hers by the right
of inheritance.
No one will deny Dr. Clarke's statement, that, with the best of
opportunities, she does not in these respects compare favorably with
her trans-Atlantic sisters. But we are not willing to admit that the
strength of the German _fraeulein_ and English damsel must be purchased
at so great a sacrifice as the giving up of all systematic study, and
consequently of all higher intellectual development.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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