The Education of American GirlsBrackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
General
The Education of American Girls
Brackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
Women -- Education -- United States
Dr. Clarke's _Sex in Education_ puts this point well, and perhaps the
little book may be forgiven its coarseness and bad logic, if it succeeds
in awakening the consciences of parents and teachers with regard to this
phase of the school question, a phase which bears with equal pertinency
upon a fair chance for boys and for girls.
When women begin at eighteen or twenty the earnest business of a
collegiate course, for which they have slowly and thoroughly prepared
while their physical organization was maturing in happy freedom, and
when they give to this higher intellectual labor the strength and
enthusiasm that are at that age of all the life preeminent and most
perfectly balanced, then we shall know what educated woman is, and learn
her possible capacities in all that makes for the noblest humanity.
I do not undervalue what Oberlin, Antioch, Mt. Holyoke, and other
schools have accomplished for woman's higher education. I would not
willingly be ranked second to any in according to them the esteem and
honor which their work richly merits; and among Vassar's own Alumnae are
already many who give gracious promise of what may be hoped for, nay,
fulfilled, when the good seed now sowing all over this broad land shall
come to glad fruition.
Meanwhile, Vassar is doing what she can to promote the health and
usefulness of American women, by giving to her students the wholesome
stimulus of regular, organized activity, which has for its definite aim
their preparation for the serious duties of life--duties which trained
faculties carry with steady poise, growing strong under the burden, but
which press with sad and crushing weight upon unaccustomed powers.
ALIDA C. AVERY.
Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
ANTIOCH COLLEGE.
Of the men graduates of Antioch, 13-1/2 per cent have died; of the women
graduates, 9-3/4 per cent. This of course does not include the war
mortality or accidental deaths.
Three of the men are confirmed invalids. No woman graduate is such.
Of the woman graduates, three-fourths are married, and four-fifths of
those were, two years ago, mothers, the families varying from one to six
children. Only one-half of the remaining fourth are graduates of longer
standing than 1871.
It is proposed to make out statistics which shall show the comparative
health of those women and men who have been here two years and upward,
as it has been suggested that possibly only the stronger could bear the
strain of the whole college course, and that the weaker ones dropped out
by the way. It is perfectly safe now to assert that this is not the
case.
Yellow Springs, Ohio.
LETTER FROM A GERMAN WOMAN.
FEBRUARY 6, 1874.
DEAR MISS BRACKETT:
I gladly comply with your request to give you such information as I
possess concerning the education of young girls in Germany. What I have
to say is, however, more particularly applicable to the southern
portions of that country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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