The Education of American GirlsBrackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
General
The Education of American Girls
Brackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
Women -- Education -- United States
same manner, to make manifest, even to the girls themselves, the want of
proper dignity displayed. Men, in their intercourse with the world,
learn sooner than women, by the rough teaching of experience, the
necessity of fending in their inner selves from the outer world. But
both boys and girls might be saved much time and pain, if parents and
guardians recognized more clearly that this was a part of education.
But in all the training of the will on this social side, we must never
forget, and here lies the greatest problem for the educator, that
individuality is not to be sacrificed, that it must be most jealously
preserved. We have only to remember what has been so often said before,
that education consists, not in destroying, but in training. The will is
only to be directed, never to be broken, or even weakened, and she who
endeavors to do this is working in the interest of evil and not of good,
while she who should, if it were possible, succeed in it, would have, as
the result of her efforts, only a total ruin instead of a fair and
stately edifice. It may often, indeed, become her duty to strengthen it,
for without a strong will, the moral nature will fall a prey to the
forces of evil as surely and quickly as the body, deprived of the life
principle, rushes to corruption and disintegration.
* * * * *
_Moral Culture._--In the previous division, the will has been supposed
to be guided by the educator, but now another guide is to be followed,
for it becomes the work of the educator to teach that "nothing in the
world has any absolute value except Will guided by the Right." We must
presuppose before we can produce any great effect in this direction a
considerable education of the intellect, in order that the child may
have some intelligent idea of the Right, otherwise we shall be leaving
her to the saddest mistakes. The African chief, who, being convinced
that it was right for him, before baptism, to dispense with one of his
two wives, for both of whom he had a sincere affection, performed, so
far as he knew, a highly virtuous action in eating one of them, and no
girl whose intellect has not been well trained can safely be delivered
over to the direction of her own conscience. The Spanish and the French
mothers tacitly recognize the truth of this proposition, by the
constant surveillance which they exercise over their daughters. It is
contrary to the whole spirit of our American life to be so watchful. By
so much the more, then, ought we to see to it, that the conscience, to
whose custody American mothers hand over their daughters' actions, be an
enlightened one. No merely prescriptive external rules, borrowed from
society when the mothers were girls, can fully answer the purpose. These
may do for communities that are comparatively stationary, but in our
rapidly moving American life, our girls must have a more stable guide.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account