The Education of American GirlsBrackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
General
The Education of American Girls
Brackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
Women -- Education -- United States
But there are here other considerations of immense importance which must
not be overlooked, and it is to these that any rational treatment of the
subject must turn its main attention. Besides laying the foundation of
trouble at this time, in a neglect of proper physical education for
thirteen years back, we have also taken pains to lay it in too great an
attention to mental education for exactly the same number of years. It
must not be forgotten that the little girl, as she looks out for the
first time through her intelligence-lighted eyes, by taking notice of
anything, while she lies in her mother's arms, looks out upon a vast and
complicated world of civilization, of which she is entirely ignorant,
and that, from the very fact that she is "the heir of all the ages," she
has to make acquaintance with her inheritance. To the baby, the light,
all sounds, its cradle, the room, its own moving fingers, its mother's
face, are vast regions of unexplored knowledge. There is absolutely
nothing, however small, which is common or customary, and, as she grows
older, to the three year old child even, a walk down one of our avenues,
or the examination of a bureau drawer, is as exciting as a journey in a
fairy palace. In fact, the whole world around her is merely one vast
fairy palace, in which miracles are continually occurring, quite as
astonishing and exciting as the appearance of the Genies at the rubbing
of the wonderful lamp. And her world grows every day fuller and wider
and more enchanting, just as the hazy cloud of the milky way unfolds and
reveals itself to us under more and more powerful telescopes into
star-dust, into myriads of distinct shining points, into stars and suns;
and, under the telescopes of reasoning science, into worlds separated by
distances so great, that "the imagination sinks exhausted," and very
properly. Now, if any one will recall the sensation with which she first
looked through a powerful telescope at this sight, she will then
understand the state in which the brain of the little girl lives, as a
continual atmosphere, and she will have no need to ask herself whether
it is needful or allowable to add much cause for activity to that brain,
for, at least, the first seven years of its life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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