BOOK VII

Education

EDUCATION

Soul Murder in the Schools

By Ellen Key

(From “The Century of the Child.”[14])

(See page 143)

Any one who would attempt the task of felling a virgin forest with a penknife would probably feel the same paralysis of despair that the reformer feels when confronted with existing school systems. The latter finds an impassable thicket of folly, prejudice, and mistakes, where each point is open to attack, but where each attack fails because of the inadequate means at the reformer’s command.

[14] J. G. Stokes Co., Pub.

The Old and New Schools

By Florence Elberta Barns

(From “Social Aspects of Industrial Education” in “Education”—a monthly school magazine.)

The master of the old school looked askance at the master of the new school, and the following conversation is recorded:

“Young man, in my day, in your day, in the present day, and in the future day, the three R’s were, are, and will be, the necessary and most efficient training for our school children. Can you deny the evidence of generations trained in this way?”

“Nay, my master, I do not dispute that the three R’s are a necessity to the mental development of the race, but my contention is that besides this literary culture, and theoretical knowledge, a training for the hands, and practical ability should be fostered, and included within the curriculum of our schools. Can you deny the evidence of the present day, testifying to the need of efficient training in all branches of industry and business, as well as in the professions and arts? How, dear sir, are we to meet this pressing need, and prepare our people for a life of useful labor, if we do not begin to train them from the primary class?”

“And so, sir, you would join the ranks of those who are commercializing all the fine arts, who are forgetting all else but money in capital letters?”

“You do not understand, my master. Under the great economic pressure of the times, waste-labor must be avoided, and training is the only means of avoidance. Think of the mass of immigrants that flock to our cities, to be amalgamated with our race. It is a laboring class, and self-preservation demands that we provide suitable living and working centers for it and its posterity. And our own people demand the same consideration in view of the fact that the great majority, poor, middle-class, and rich, are employed in some art, industrial or fine. All fine arts, they, if we provide efficient training for skill and fine workmanship.”

“I am grieved that one of my former pupils should so forget the ideals of education. If you must, build schools for those who wish industrial training, but keep our cultural schools undisturbed.”

“Ah, that would not be democratic, my master, and neither would it be effective. Our idea is to develop both the brain and the hand—in this way opening the door to the life work which appeals most to each individual.”

And the master of the old school answered, “Well.”

In the above we find the prevailing controversy between the old and the new, a controversy which must cease with the progression of thought, and understanding of the times.

Essentials in Education

By Mary Snow

(Supervisor, Household Arts and Science, Board of Education, Chicago. From “The Child in the City.”)

Certainly some essential is missing. Children are not dull about significant truths. They wish to know how to read and to write and to manipulate number processes. They have wholesome and often keen interest in the movements and experiences of people and the great figures in history; they work hard and cheerfully to know somewhat of the countries of the earth. Musical expression satisfies and delights them. Art entices them up to the point where they find that it misses practical application, and then interest dies and with it expression. Then they begin to reach after further reality with passionate earnestness. They long to express themselves in tangible ways. They have a right consciously to experience the sensations of knowing that they know and knowing that they can do. If opportunity for “doing” has been opened to them, they will have gained in strength of character through their authoritative wills commanding their powers, and the purposive and co-ordinate work of the motor phases of education will have furnished a kind of test of progress, a mental verification of accomplishment that can never come through any academic work. They have many measuring rods in the evaluation of the finished task—the eye, the muscular tension, judgment, comparison, trial. There is necessary integrity since no amount of vanity will make the tangible result reveal anything but truth. William James, with ever brilliant insight, said that manual training did more for the moral strength of youth than any other subject in the curriculum.

The Greatness of Froebel

By Marion Gertrude Haines

(In “Home Government.”)

No one before him so ably demonstrated the civic and spiritual wisdom of Christ’s teachings as did Froebel, in discovering—not devising—the ways and means of developing man into a self-governed being, obeying the inner voice of conscience in the face of every temptation to which flesh is heir, and becoming a voluntary, law-abiding citizen of both the individual and the national home.

Mothers’ Library

By Elizabeth Cherrill Birney

(First chairman of literature in the National Congress of Mothers. From “Parents and their Problems.”)

It seems a rather hard condition that though the years when a mother feels most deeply her need for more knowledge of children she should usually have least time for reading and study. This would not be so disastrous if school and college curricula were not framed to embrace even the slightest preparation for home life. That profession which demands a knowledge of sanitation, dietetics, and chemistry of cooking, careful and economic purchasing, artistic and hygienic furnishing, to say nothing of the care of children, is surely of sufficient dignity to deserve some preparation.... We can learn no science or art entirely from books, but when good trails have been blazed by those who have gone before us, it is foolish to attempt our own untried paths. Every mother can hang a little book-shelf in her busiest corner, and put on it from time to time a few books, which will be to her what his Blackstone is to a lawyer, his Baedeker to a traveler.

The Aim and End of Education

By Lola Ridge

(Former organiser of the Modern School in New York. In “Everyman.”)

What do we imagine to be the end and aim of education? Most people will say, the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge of what? Of oneself, of humanity, of life? If this was the ideal, as conceived by the builders of the present system, it has not been attained; or perhaps the system, like a Frankenstein creation, has grown beyond all intent of its sponsors, exhibiting a diabolic and independent will....

Let us examine the effect of public school education upon the psychology of the child; then we shall see if we are “wasting our energies.”

In the first place, no gardener would think of giving each plant the same amount of air and sun, and the same quality of soil. Yet this is exactly what you are doing to your children, and there are as many different kinds of children as there are different kinds of flowers. Why pay more attention to the cultivation of a vegetable than to the development of a human being? Each child requires individual attention, individual understanding, and individual mental food.

Standards Raised by Women Teachers

By Anne Bigoney Stewart

(In “The Educational Review.”)

It is due to the perseverance of the women in their poorly paid duty that teaching is gradually emerging into a regular profession with a proper stipend and respectable standing, and now when such is the result, we have men crowding back into the profession grumblingly, complaining of the poor pay, and throwing up their hands in “holy horror” at the “woman peril.”

And after all, of what does “the woman peril” consist? That boys are being feminized; that is, that boys are being trained to decenter standards of living? That they do not so much drink, or smoke, or, we hope, “sow wild oats,” that they do not so much regard these acts as manly, or a necessary part of their upbringing? That war is not a regular occupation; that peace is desirable and to be sought after?

“That abnormal families in which the mother’s influence is too long continued and not sufficiently counteracted by masculine control are notoriously productive of decadence and degeneracy.”

That is certainly a grave charge! “A mother’s influence”! that which has been the theme of poets, artists, scholars, essayists, the clergy, for centuries, “productive of decadence and degeneracy.”

It would appear that logically as the masculine mind may think, its logic is not unassailable.

Educating Children

By Maria Montessori

(From speech delivered in California.)

What shall we say, then, when the question before us is that of educating children?

We know only too well the sorry spectacle of the teacher, who, in the ordinary school room, must pour certain cut and dried facts into the heads of the scholars. In order to succeed in this barren path she finds it necessary to discipline her pupils into immobility and to force their attention. Prizes and punishments are ever ready and efficient aids to the master who must force into a given attitude of mind and body those who are condemned to be his listeners.

The Mother’s Task

By Ida Tarbell

(See page 266)

(From “The Business of Being a Woman.”)

A woman never lived who did all she might have done to open the mind of her child for its great adventure. It is an exhaustless task. The woman who sees it knows she has need of all the education the college can give, all the experience and culture she can gather. She knows that the fuller her individual life, the broader her interests, the better for the child. She should be a person in their eyes. The real service of the “higher education,” the freedom to take part in whatever interests or stimulates her—lies in the fact that it fits her intellectually to be a companion worthy of a child.

A Plan for Improving Female Education

By Mrs. Emma Willard

(From a paper read by Mrs. Willard before the members of the New York Legislature, in behalf of a girl’s seminary, in 1819. Reproduced in “Woman and the Higher Education,” Distaff Series.)

The object of this address is to convince the public that a reform with respect to female education is necessary; that it cannot be effected by individual exertion, but that it requires the aid of the Legislature; and, further, by showing the justice, the policy and the magnanimity of such an undertaking, to persuade that body to endow a seminary for females as the commencement of such reformation.

The idea of a college for males will naturally be associated with that of a seminary, instituted and endowed by the public; and the absurdity of sending ladies to college may, at first thought, strike every one to whom this subject shall be proposed. I therefore hasten to observe that the seminary here recommended will be as different from those appropriated to the other sex as the female character and duties are from the male. The business of the husbandman is not to waste his endeavors in seeking to make his orchard attain the strength and majesty of his forest, but to rear each to the perfection of its nature....

1. Females, by having their understandings cultivated, their reasoning powers developed and strengthened, may be expected to act more from the dictates of reason, and less from those of fashion and caprice.

2. With minds thus strengthened, they would be taught systems of morality enforced by the sanctions of religion; and they might be expected to acquire juster and more enlightened views of their duty, and stronger and higher motives in its performance.

3. This plan of education offers all that can be done to preserve female youth from a contempt of useful labor. The pupils would become accustomed to it, in conjunction with the high objects of literature and the elegant pursuits of the fine arts; and it is to be hoped that both from habit and association they might in future life regard it as respectable.

To this it may be added that if housekeeping could be raised to a regular art, and taught from philosophical principles, it would become a higher and more interesting occupation; and ladies of fortune, like wealthy agriculturists, might find that to regulate their business was an agreeable employment.

4. The pupils might be expected to acquire a taste for moral and intellectual pleasures which would buoy them above a passion for show and parade, and which would make them seek to gratify the natural love of superiority by endeavoring to excel others in intrinsic merit rather than in the extrinsic frivolities of dress, furniture, and equipage.

By being enlightened in moral philosophy, and in that which teaches the operation of the mind, females would be enabled to perceive the nature and extent of that influence which they possess over their children, and the obligation which this lays them under to watch the formation of their characters with unceasing vigilance, to become their instructors, to devise plans for their improvement, to weed out the vices of their minds, and to implant and foster the virtues. And surely there is that in the maternal bosom which, when its pleadings shall be aided by education, will overcome the seductions of wealth and fashion, and will lead the mother to seek her happiness in communing with her children, and promoting their welfare, rather than in a heartless intercourse with the votaries of fashion, especially when with an expanded mind she extends her views to futurity, and sees her care to her offspring rewarded by peace of conscience, the blessing of her family, the prosperity of her country, and, finally, with everlasting pleasure to herself and them....

In calling on my patriotic countrymen to effect so noble an object, the consideration of national glory should not be overlooked. Ages have rolled away; barbarians have trodden the weaker sex beneath their feet; tyrants have robbed us of the present light of heaven, and fain would take its future. Nations calling themselves polite have made us the fancied idols of a ridiculous worship, and we have repaid them with ruin for their folly. But where is that wise and heroic country which has considered that our rights are sacred, though we cannot defend them? that, though a weaker, we are an essential part of the body politic, whose corruption or improvement must affect the whole? and which, having thus considered, has sought to give us by education that rank in the scale of being to which our importance entitles us? History shows not that country. It shows many whose legislatures have sought to improve their various vegetable productions and their breeds of useful brutes, but none whose public councils have made it an object of their deliberations to improve the character of their women.

A Moral Crusade

By Elizabeth Blackwell

(One of the brilliant Blackwell family, to which progress in our country owes so much. Henry Blackwell married Lucy Stone, and with her became a pioneer advocate of woman suffrage. Elizabeth took up the study of medicine, forcing the medical colleges to open their doors to women. From her letters.)

In the summer of 1847, with my carefully hoarded earnings, I resolved to seek an entrance into a medical school. Philadelphia was then considered the chief seat of medical learning in America, so to Philadelphia I went; taking passage in a sailing vessel from Charleston for the sake of economy....

Applications were cautiously but persistently made to the four medical colleges of Philadelphia for admission as a regular student. The interviews with their various professors were by turns hopeful and disappointing....

The fear of successful rivalry which at that time often existed in the medical mind was expressed by the dean of one of the smaller schools, who frankly replied to the application, “You cannot expect us to furnish you with a stick to break our heads with;” so revolutionary seemed the attempt of a woman to leave a subordinate position and seek to obtain a complete medical education. A similarly mistaken notion of the rapid practical success which would attend a lady doctor was shown later by one of the professors of my medical college, who was desirous of entering into partnership with me on condition of sharing profits over $5,000 on my first year’s practice.

During those fruitless efforts my kindly Quaker adviser, whose private lectures I attended, said to me: “Elizabeth, it is no use trying. Thee cannot gain admission to these schools. Thee must go to Paris and don masculine attire to gain the necessary knowledge.” Curiously enough, this suggestion of disguise made by good Dr. Warrington was also given me by Dr. Pankhurst, the Professor of Surgery, in the largest college in Philadelphia. He thoroughly approved of a woman’s gaining complete medical knowledge; told me that although my public entrance into the classes was out of question, yet if I would assume masculine attire and enter the college he could entirely rely on two or three of his students to whom he should communicate my disguise, who would watch the class and give me timely notice to withdraw should my disguise be suspected.

But neither the advice to go to Paris nor the suggestion of disguise tempted me for the moment. It was to my mind a moral crusade on which I had entered, a course of justice and common sense, and it might be pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to accomplish its end.

Intellectual Women of Rome

By Lady Morgan

(See page 17)

Female amanuenses, or secretaries, or “writers out of books,” were by no means unusual in Rome. Vespasian had a female amanuesis, Antonio, whom he greatly esteemed and confided in. Even the Christian fathers adopted this fashion; and Eusebius asserts that Origen had not only young men, but young women to transcribe his books, which “they did with peculiar neatness.” Among the accusations brought against the Roman women of his own time by Juvenal, is that of their learning; he bitterly attacks their presumption in studying Greek, their interlarding even their most familiar conversations with its elegant idioms and phrases; and, among their other crimes of acquirement, he further accuses them of encroaching on the exclusive male prerogative of mind, by discussing philosophical subjects, quoting favorite authors and scholiasts, their _purism_ in affected exactness of grammar, and by their antiquarian researches in language. On the word antiquarian, an ancient commentator observes:—“Antiquaria, one that does refine or preserve ancient books from corruption, one studious of the old poets and historians, one that studies ancient coins, statues, and inscribed stones: lastly, such as use obsolete and antiquated words. All which, though they might be counted an overplus and curiosity in a woman, yet only the last is absolutely a fault.”

The Power of Education

By “Ouida”

(See page 113)

That women should, however tardily, awaken to a desire for greater intellectual light is of the utmost promise. Education cannot confer genius, but it can do an infinite work in the refinement, the strengthening, and the enlightening of the mind; in the banishment of prejudice, and in the correction of illogical judgment. In view of the manifold superstitions, intolerances and ignorances that prevail in the feminine intelligence, and of the fearful influence which these in turn bring to bear upon the children committed in such numbers to their charge, no crusade that can find favor with them, towards a New Jerusalem of Culture, can be too early encouraged.

The Vision Realized

By Bertha June Richardson, A. B.

(Holder of the Mary Lowell Stone Fellowship 1903. From “The Woman Who Spends.”)

When the sweet faced New England woman, living her quiet life in the old town of Halfield, stretched out her strong, helpful hands to all the generations of girls to come, by making a woman’s college a possibility, she was called a dreamer, a visionary woman, who had better be looked after by some strong-minded man who could put her money to some practical use. That vision realized has given to hundreds of women ideals and standards which have made life full and rich.

Vocational Training for Girls

By Alice Henry

(Of Australian birth. For a number of years editor of “Life and Labor,” the official organ of the “Woman’s Trade Union League.” Well-known speaker on suffrage and labor problems. Author of “The Trade Union Woman,”[15] from which the following is taken.)

Harvard was opened in 1636. Two hundred years elapsed before there was any institution offering corresponding advantages to girls....

If these women have always lagged in the rear as increasing educational advantages of a literary or professional character have been provided or procured for boys, it is not strange, when, in reading over the records of work on the few lines of industrial, educational trade training and apprenticeship we detect the same influences at work, sigh before the same difficulties, and recognize the old, weary, threadbare arguments too, which one would surely think had been sufficiently disproved before to be at least in this connection....

In such an age of transition as ours, any plan of vocational training intended to include girls must be a compromise with warring facts, and will therefore have to face objections from both sides, from those forward looking ones who feel that the domestic side of woman’s activities is over emphasized, and from those who still look back, who will fain refuse to believe that the majority of women have to be wage-earners for at least a part of their lives. These latter argue that by affording to girls all the advantages of industrial training, granted, or which may be granted to boys, we are “taking them out of the home.” As if they were not out of the home already!

[15] Copyright by Henry Holt Publishing Co.

Traditions Upset

By Emily J. Hutchins

(American contemporary. Instructor in Economics, Barnard College, New York. From “The Annals of the American Academy.”)

The reaction that women show today to their educational freedom upsets a lot of the notions we have inherited about the atmosphere of seclusion in which womanly natures have been supposed to thrive.... Whatever fault may be found with our educational system, it has at least provided a belated opportunity for women to share in the social stimulus that men have found and prized in academic institutions.

The History of Women’s Education

By Mary Ritter Beard

(Quoted from “Woman’s Work in Municipalities.”)

The history of the education of women from the early days, when to educate “shes” was viewed with horror as an immoral proposition, to the present time when more “shes” graduate from the high schools than “hes”, is an interesting record in itself. Even more significant, however, is the fact that both “hes” and “shes” are educated largely by women in the secondary schools which are the schools of “the people.”

The Professions Educational

By The Hon. Mrs. Arthur Lyttleton

(From “Women and Their Work.”)

(See page 51)

The habits of application, of concentration and of regularity which professional training requires will never be out of place in any kind of life, and women will be the more capable of doing, not only their own particular kind of work, but all work, better for the experience they have passed through. It is simply a continuation of their education, which now very unreasonably ends at eighteen.

Woman’s Struggle for Educational Rights

By Mrs. H. M. Swanwick

(English contemporary. Author of “The Future of the Woman’s Movement,” from which the following is taken.)

All the world knows of the foundation of the great modern career of sick-nursing; of the more bitter and prolonged struggle of women to study medicine and surgery and qualify as practitioners therein.... All these changes had, to a greater or less degree, to be fought for by those who desired them.... People resisted them with more or less tenacity, and used against the reformers the sort of arguments they are still using against further emancipation.... There are, of course, some Orientalists, even in England, who think in their hearts that it was a great mistake to teach women to read. But most people now accept the principle that women should have the best education available, and only differ as to what that education should be.

Equal Advantages of Education

By Elizabeth Cady Stanton

(Famous leader, with Susan B. Anthony, of the early woman suffrage movement. From a letter quoted in “Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony.”)

Should not all women, living in states where they have the right to hold property, refuse to pay taxes so long as they are unrepresented in the governments?...

Man has pre-empted the most profitable branches of industry, and we demand a place at his side; to this end we need the same advantages of education, and we therefore claim that the best colleges of the country be opened to us.... In her present ignorance, woman’s religion, instead of making her noble and free, by the wrong application of great principles of right and justice, has made her bondage but more certain and lasting; her degradation more helpless and complete.

Intellect Wins

By Mrs. Alec Tweedie

(See page 126)

A pretty woman has the first innings, but an intelligent woman gets the most runs. A clever woman catches out her opponents.

Education and Votes for Women

By Elizabeth Cooper

(Author of “My Lady of the Chinese Court Yard,” “Women of Egypt,” “Market for Souls,” “The Harem and the Purdah,” “Living Up to Billy,” etc. From “Woman and Education” in “Educational Foundations.”)

That this enlargement of the educational horizon of women in Britain means necessarily “Votes for Women” may or may not be inferred. Certain it is that the advancing social and economic arrangements of modern society will add continually to the allotment to women of tasks and responsibilities unknown to them in the past. Women will accept such responsibilities in accordance with their ability and training in competition with men, and their trained intelligence will become year by year a more widely recognized fact in the minds of University authorities and in the adjustment and enlargement of curriculum and University life.

Democratization of Learning

By Charlotte J. Cipriani

(American contemporary. Teacher, writer on educational problems. From “Elimination of Waste in Elementary Education,” in “Education”—a monthly magazine.)

Two processes of “democratization” are conceivable in the educational system of a nation; one consists in lowering educational standards and aims to the level that makes them readily acceptable and accessible to the masses; the other consists in gradually raising the intellectual level of the masses to the level of high and efficient educational standards. The admission of too early specialized “vocational training” in a public school system has a dangerous leaning towards the first process of democratization, which is apt ultimately to defeat its own end. That the second is of necessity a far lower and more laborious one, does not invalidate its superiority.

Educating the Daughter

By Josephine Pitcairn Knowles

(From “The Upholstered Cage.”)

The day has now arrived when nature and fairness are proclaiming that the same expenditure of time and money must be bestowed on the girl as on the boy, and she should be regarded as an investment in the same way as the boy now is. It has always been realized that unless he is given a good education and then started properly in life, that is, given a “shove off,” as it were, he won’t do much, and so all efforts in a family of small means are concentrated toward helping launch the boy in life. The idea, of course, being that he must support himself, and very likely keep a wife and children, therefore it is more important for him to get on well than for the girl, who has her parents to keep her until she marries. There would be nothing against this theory if it were sound; but where the theory breaks down is that girls and women now _do_ have to earn their own living, and this necessity is on the increase, and the point is that the women have often to do it on inadequate material; the girl earns _her_ living _without_ the previous training, _without_ the school or college training, _without_ any capital having been spent on her as a premium, _without_ all the advantages the boy started with.

The World of Scholarship a Man’s World

By M. Carey Thomas

(See page 10)

Fifty years ago the world of scholarship was a man’s world in which women had no share. Now although only one woman in one thousand goes to college, even in the United States, where there are more college women than in any other country, the position of every individual woman in every part of the civilized world has been changed because this one-tenth of one percent. has proved beyond possibility of question that in intellect there is no sex. Unwillingly at first but inevitably and irresistably men have admitted women into intellectual comradeship. The opinions of educated women can no longer be ignored by educated men.

Social Education Important

By Helen Keller

(Helen Keller, having been born blind, deaf and dumb, is not only remarkable in that she has mastered many things, including articulate speech, but also that out of her reading and observations of life, she is able to construct a philosophy obviously superior to that of the average human being with normal faculties. The following is from “The Modern Woman” in “The Metropolitan Magazine,” October, 1912.)

Social ignorance is at the bottom of our miseries, and if the function of education is to correct ignorance, social education is at this hour the most important kind of education.

The educated woman, then, is she who knows the social basis of her life, and of the lives of those whom she would help, her children, her employers, her employees, the beggar at her door, and her congressman at Washington....

It is for the American woman to know why millions are shut out from the full benefits of such education, art, and science as the race has thus far achieved. We women have to face questions that men alone have evidently not been able to solve....

We must educate ourselves and that without delay. We cannot wait longer for political economists to solve such vital problems as clean streets, decent houses, warm clothes, wholesome food, living wages, safeguarded mines and factories, honest public schools. These are our questions. Already women are speaking and speaking nobly, and men are speaking with us. To be sure, some men and some women are speaking against us; but their contest is with the spirit of life. Lot’s wife turned back; but she is an exception. It is proverbial that women get what they are bent on getting, and circumstances are driving them toward education.

To Reach the Divine

By Emma Marwedel

Froebel learned to recognize in each child a new educational problem, to be solved according to its nature.... He therefore demands a methodical unification in education, in order to reach the divine through a unification of action.

By Mrs. Macy

(The teacher of Helen Keller.)

There is no education except self-education, no government but self-government.

By C. Gasquoine Hartley

(Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan)

(From “The Truth About Women.”)

To assume, as Schopenhauer and so many others have done ... that woman, on account of her womanhood is incapable of intellectual and social development, paying her sole debt of Nature in bearing and caring for children, is really to state a belief in decay for mankind.