The Education of Catholic GirlsStuart, Janet Erskine
Religion
The Education of Catholic Girls
Stuart, Janet Erskine
Catholic Church -- Education; Women -- Education
The method of giving instruction in the different branches of
philosophy will depend so much on the preparation of the particular
pupils, and also on the cast of mind of the teachers, that it is
difficult to offer suggestions, except to point out this very fact
that each mind needs to be met just where it is--with its own mental
images, vocabulary, habit of thought and attention, all calling for
consideration and adaptation of the subject to their particular case.
It depends on the degree of preparation of the teachers to decide
whether the form of a lecture is safest, or whether they can risk
themselves in the arena of question and answer, the most useful in
itself but requiring a far more complete training in preparation. If
it can be obtained that the pupils state their own questions and
difficulties in writing, a great deal will have been gained, for a
good statement of a question is half-way to the right solution. If,
after hearing a lecture or oral lesson, they can answer in writing
Borne simple questions carefully stated, it will be a further advance.
It is something to grasp accurately the scope of a question. The
plague of girls' answers is usually irrelevancy from want of thought
as to the scope of questions or even from inattention to their
wording. If they can be patient in face of unanswered difficulties,
and wait for the solution to come later on in its natural course, then
at least one small fruit of their studies will have been brought to
maturity; and if at the end of their elementary course they are
convinced of their own ignorance, and want to know more, it may be
said that the course has not been unsuccessful.
It is not, however, complete unless they know something of the history
of philosophy, the great schools, and the names which have been held
in honour from the beginning down to our own days. They will realize
that it is good to have been born in their own time, and to learn such
lessons now that the revival of scholastic philosophy under Leo XIII
and the development of the neo-scholastic teaching have brought fresh
life into the philosophy of tradition, which although it appears to
put new wine into old bottles, seems able to preserve the wine and the
bottles together.
CHAPTER V.
THE REALITIES OF LIFE.
"He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed."
BROWNING, "Rabbi Ben Ezra."
"Eh, Dieu! nous marchons trop en enfants--cela me fache!"
ST. JANE FRANCES DE CHANTAL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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