The Education of American GirlsBrackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
General
The Education of American Girls
Brackett, Anna C. (Anna Callender)
Women -- Education -- United States
It is a great wrong to man to demand so little from him. All human
beings from childhood upwards are stimulated by the opinion entertained
of them, and the claims upon them for noble and high behavior. Whatever
your own experience, do not thrust the poison of doubt and unbelief in
goodness into a daughter's mind. Let her keep her faith and her romance,
and look for a hero to win her young heart. True, it is hard to see a
Thaddeus of Warsaw with a cigar in his mouth, or to imagine Hamlet with
a blue veil about his hat, but nevertheless the race of heroes is not
extinct, and the girl had better preserve her faith and her love till
the true knight appears, than accept the dreary belief that all men are
alike unworthy, and that she must not ask for a purity and truth which
exist only in the dreams of romance. Man's low idea of woman has reacted
upon him; her elevation will restore him to his true dignity, as equally
entitled to spiritual and moral elevation of soul and refinement of
manners with herself. It is as demoralizing to young women to hold men
in contempt, as it is for young men to have a low idea of women. "In
honor preferring one another" is the true condition of love, and no one
has truly loved who has not exalted the beloved far above one's self.
But, after all that I have said, perhaps at too great length, I come
back to my original thought of the grand art of education as of life. Do
not dwell upon petty details or exaggerate accidental peculiarities. Lay
your foundations broad and deep in the common ground of humanity. Base
your calculations on the sure ground of universal law. Then, gradually,
out of this common earth will grow up the special flower, true to its
own individual law, which is just as sacred and unalterable as the
general law. All the art of the gardener cannot transform the oak to a
willow, or produce the blue dahlia, though by its aid the sour crab has
become a mellow apple, and the astringent pear, the luscious Bartlett.
We need to study the great subject of education more, and to talk less
about the special peculiarities of woman's education, and we shall find
that the greater includes the less, and that the more thoroughly we
develop all the powers of mind, the more eminently will each woman be
fitted to perform her own peculiar work in life.
I did once see a man crippled of both legs, who claimed to be specially
able to manage a washing-machine because he stood lower than other men.
I honored his acceptance of his limitation, but still think the ordinary
complement of legs an advantage not to be despised.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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