All should have Elementary Education.
The rare excellences in some women cannot be taken as a precedent for all to follow, as they only show us the special success that a few parents have attained in their daughters’ upbringing. These shining examples, however, though they cannot be used to form general precepts, are at least proofs that women can learn if they will, and may learn what they please, if they lend their minds to it. To learn to read is very common where it is convenient, and writing is not refused, where opportunity serves. Reading, even if it were of no other use, is very needful for religion, to enable them to know what they ought to perform, if they have none whom they can listen to, or if their memories are not steadfast, to refresh them. Here I may not omit many great pleasures which those women that have time and skill to read, without hindering their housewifery, do continually receive by reading comforting and wise discourses, penned either in the form of history or directions to live by. As for writing, though it may be abused, it is often very convenient, especially in matters of business.
Music is very desirable for maidens where it is to be had, though chiefly for the satisfaction of the parents when the daughters are young, as is generally shown when the young wenches become young wives, and in learning to be mothers, lightly forget their music, thus proving that they studied it more to please their parents than themselves. But if having been once learned, it can be kept up, as is quite possible with proper management, it is a pity to let it go, as it was acquired only with great pains and at considerable cost. Learning to sing and play from the notes is easy enough, if it be attended to from the first, and this can be kept up too, though it suffers from discontinuance. Seeing it is but little that girls can learn, the time being so short, because they are always in haste to get husbands, it is expedient that what they do should be done perfectly, so that with the loss of their penny they do not lose their pennyworth also.
As for skill in needlework and housewifery, it is a great recommendation in a woman to be able to govern and direct her household, to look to her home and family, to provide and take care of necessaries, although the good-man pay, to know the resources of her kitchen in regard to all over whom she has charge, in sickness and in health. But I meddle not with this as I am only dealing with things that are incident to learning. I have now spoken of all the subjects that should universally be taught to girls.