The Education of Catholic GirlsStuart, Janet Erskine
Religion
The Education of Catholic Girls
Stuart, Janet Erskine
Catholic Church -- Education; Women -- Education
Civilized selfishness leads to a worse kind of barbarism than that of
rude and primitive states of society, because it has more resources at
its command, as cruelty with refinement has more resources for
inflicting pain than cruelty which can only strike hard. Civilized
selfishness is worse also in that it has let go of better things; it is
not in progress towards a higher plane of life, but has turned its back
upon ideals and is slipping on the down-grade without a check. We can
see the complete expression of life without conventions in the
unrestraint of "hooliganism" with us, and its equivalents in other
countries. In this we observe the characteristic product of bringing up
without either religion, or conventions, or teaching in good manners
which are inseparable from religion. We see the demoralization of the
very forces which make both the strength and the weakness of youth and a
great part of its charm, the impetuosity, the fearlessness of
consequence, the lightheartedness, the exuberance which would have been
so strong for good if rightly turned, become through want of this right
impetus and control not strong but violent, uncontrollable and reckless
to a degree which terrifies the very authorities who are responsible for
them, in that system which is bringing up children with nothing to hold
by, and nothing to which they can appeal. Girls are inclined to go even
further than boys in this unrestraint through their greater excitability
and recklessness, and their having less instinct of self-preservation.
It is a problem for the local authorities. Their lavish expenditure upon
sanitation, adornment, and--to use the favourite word--"equipment" of
their schools does not seem to touch it; in fact it cannot reach the
real difficulty, for it makes appeal to the senses and neglects the
soul, and the souls of children are hungry for faith and love and
something higher to look for, beyond the well-being of to-day in the
schools, and the struggle for life, in the streets, to-morrow.
It is not only in the elementary schools that such types of formidable
selfishness are produced. In any class of life, in school or home,
wherever a child is growing up without control and "handling," without
the discipline of religion and manners, without the yoke of obligations
enforcing respect and consideration for others, there a rough is being
brought up, not so loud-voiced or so uncouth as the street-rough, but as
much out of tune with goodness and honour, with as little to hold by and
appeal to, as troublesome and dangerous either at home or in society, as
uncertain and unreliable in a party or a ministry, and in any
association that makes demand upon self-control in the name of duty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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