The Education of Girls
And speaking of training—an interesting thing in March Atlantic about The Education of the Girl has set me thinking. How am I going to bring up my daughter? The education of a boy is, compared to that, a simple matter. Too ridiculous, too, the answers to my query returned to me by different friends and relatives. “Make her a good girl,” says one. But surely “Be good, fair maid; let those who will be clever,” has been ridiculed to a timely demise. Another said: “I hope I shall be able to bring up my daughter so that when she is grown she can persuade some nice man to take care of her, as her mother did.” No mention is made, of course, of what happens if the plan miscarries. It sometimes does. And it is too funny when one realizes that several decades ago, when absolutely no question was raised as to woman’s sphere (home and the rearing of children), she received in college a severely classical or scientific training; and now, when it is by no means admitted without argument that home is her one vocation, noted educators are recommending that women’s colleges abolish Greek and Latin or treat them and science as purely secondary and take up domestic science, economics, nursing, etc., in their place. How can I tell beforehand which of the two my daughter is going to need? I think of myself, filled to the brim with Greek, Latin, French, and German, producing in my early married life a distinctly leathery and most unpleasant pie, or rushing to the doctor with my baby to have him treat a dreadful sore which turned out to be a mosquito bite, and my tearful struggles with the sewing machine on my first shirtwaist which I christened a “Dance on the Lawn,” for obvious reasons ... and I wonder. Never would I willingly give up my classics and the joy they gave me. But a soupçon of domesticity would surely have done me no harm. Miss Harkness, in this article, is inclined to think that it does us all harm. She says:
Would men ever get anywhere, do you think, if they fussed around with as many disconnected things as most women do? And the worst of our case is that we are rather inclined to point with pride to what is really one of the most vicious habits of our sex.
But in the meantime that daughter of mine! Suppose she prefers to run a house and be the mother of six children! Some women do, and are wonderfully fitted for it. Won’t she be happier if she knows beforehand how to do it most efficiently? I hope, of course, she will choose, besides, a career of her own; but if she doesn’t want to? And to give both does mean a scattering of potentialities! Which brings me back to the statement that the education of the modern girl is a complex—oh, but a very complex problem.
You remember Stevenson’s poem to his wife. I speak of it in this connection because it throws light on one facet of the feminist problem which perhaps is not sufficiently illuminated. He says:
Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew;
Steel-true and blade straight,
The great artificer made my mate.
“Steel-true” and “blade straight” are epithets more often applied to men; and indeed Mr. McClure, in speaking of Mrs. Stevenson in his memoirs, says: “She had many of the fine qualities that are usually attributed to men rather than women: a fair-mindedness, a large judgment, a robust, inconsequential philosophy of life.”
How then, if in seeking an ideal education for girls, we should dismiss, or at least diminish, the importance of a purely utilitarian aspect and look for something that will eventually ensure such qualities?
If, as the feminists urge, they are trying to raise men to a higher plane, why not apply a little of this passion for uplift to the education of women into nobler, higher attitudes? Steel-true, and blade straight! I like the sound of that.
This education of the girl is getting to be an obsession with me. Everything I read resolves itself into terms of girl-psychology. A ridiculous tale, not long ago, appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, called Letting George Do It. George, in charge of the kitchen for a few weeks or days, immediately revolutionized everything; shortened and lightened labor, invented all sorts of labor-saving devices, etc., etc. Immediately all men say, derisively: “Well, that’s exactly what a man would do. You boast that women are as good as men. Why haven’t they, years ago, done all these things for themselves?” It seemed unanswerable. I have heard housekeepers, bright women, too, speak with exasperation of the foolish story, while helplessly admitting its truth. But I really think I’ve stalked the beast to its lair. Granted it is true, but have men spent their lives for centuries in a narrow round of domestic drudgery? Women have, and with very little intellectual diversion, besides, their society limited to other domestic drudges, and to their own husbands, who don’t try to broaden them unless they are exceptional men. And if men had lived such lives would they have blithely introduced these reforms just because their masculinity makes them so superior to women that they would develop, even under adverse conditions? They wouldn’t stay drudges, they claim. Well, we won’t either, so George is not so smart as he thinks he is!