The report which was issued in 1867 summarised the impression formed by the Assistant Commissioners. ‘It cannot be denied that the picture brought before us of the state of middle-class female education is, on the whole, unfavourable. The general deficiency in girls’ education is stated with the utmost confidence, and with entire agreement, with whatever difference of words, by many witnesses of authority. Want of thoroughness and foundation; want of system; slovenliness and showy superficiality; inattention to rudiments; undue time given to accomplishments, and those not taught intelligently or in any scientific manner; want of organisation—these may sufficiently indicate the character of the complaints we have received in their most general aspect. It is needless to observe that the same complaints apply to a great extent to boys’ education. But, on the whole, the evidence is clear that, not as they might be but as they are, the girls’ schools are inferior in this view to the boys’ schools.’ Mr. Norris, one of the Assistant Commissioners, says: ‘We find, as a rule, a very small amount of professional skill, an inferior set of school-books, a vast deal of dry, uninteresting task-work, rules put into the memory with no explanation of their principles, no system of examination worthy of the name, a very false estimate of the relative value of the several kinds of acquirement, a reference to effect rather than to solid worth, a tendency to fill or adorn rather than strengthen the mind.’
There is unanimous testimony as to the undue amount of time given to accomplishments, music in particular. There are some elaborate calculations as to the total number of hours spent on acquiring a mechanical skill on the piano, though about a third of the pupils never make the slightest use of it after they have left school. The music played is bad; there is little training for the taste and none for the mind in this study to which girls devote almost as much time as their brothers do to classics. Next to music modern languages absorbed most of the time and energies of the pupils, and yet the Commissioners unanimously report with severity on the results attained. Very few girls could compose a French sentence correctly; slipshod grammar and bad pronunciation are noted, and set down to the habit of speaking French out of school hours, by which a sort of jargon was developed incomprehensible to an outsider, and not even up to the standard of Stratford-atte-Bowe. On the subject of Science Mr. Fitch wrote: ‘Few things are sadder than to see how the sublimest of all physical sciences is vulgarised in ladies’ schools. No subject, if properly taught, is better calculated to exalt the imagination and to kindle large thoughts in a pupils mind. Yet all the grandeur and vastness are eliminated from the study of Astronomy as commonly pursued; and the pupils whose attention has never been directed to any one of the great laws by which the universe is governed, think they are learning astronomy when they are twisting a globe round and round, and solving a few problems in latitude and longitude.’
Arithmetic comes in for the worst censure. It is spoken of as ‘the weak point in women teachers.’ ‘It would be an affectation of politeness,’ says Mr. Hammond, to say a word on behalf of the arithmetic taught by ladies. It is always meagre and almost always unintelligent.’ The school-books receive almost unqualified abuse, in particular Mangnall’s Questions and ‘all the noxious brood of catechisms.’ History and ‘miscellaneous subjects’ are too often taught from these, geography and grammar from wretched little text-books, all the sciences in the course of a few lectures. Now and then a word of praise is given to English literature and composition, e.g., ‘English literature occupies a more prominent position in the education of girls than of boys.... The object of the lessons is to exercise the memory and to cultivate the imagination of the scholars; their most beneficial result is observable in the style of composition acquired by girls at a comparatively early age. Whereas a boy of fifteen hardly ever succeeds in putting together half a dozen readable sentences, a girl of the same age often writes with much freedom and fluency.... A bundle of letters written by girls of seventeen or eighteen afforded me real pleasure; many of these were well conceived and well expressed, and they presented a variety of style and subject which proved that they were not manufactured to order or cast in any stereotyped mould.’[[12]]
One of the most serious defects is the lack of all physical training, while attempts are made to combine exercise and instruction, e.g. by repeating French verbs when out walking, thus achieving neither result satisfactorily.
Not only were the Commissioners of one mind in their strictures, but there is a striking unanimity about their recommendations. Mr. Giffard’s lucid summary may be taken as also representing the views of his colleagues: ‘If I were to sum up the impression I derived from my visits to girls’ schools, I should say, (1) that the mental training of the best girls’ schools is unmistakably inferior to that of the best boys’ schools; (2) that there is no natural inaptitude in girls to deal with any of the subjects which form the staple of a boy’s education; (3) that there is no disinclination on the part of the majority of teachers to assimilate the studies of girls to those of boys; (4) that the present inferiority of girls’ training is due to the despotism of fashion, or, in other words, the despotism of parents or guardians.’
There is a general consensus of opinion on the following points:—
1. Most girls’ schools are too small.
‘There is little life, no collective instruction, and nothing to call forth the best powers of either teacher or learner in a school where each class consists of two or three pupils only.’—(Mr. Fitch.)
2. They lack proper organisation.
‘There is a certain number of classes or of girls learning particular things, but there is neither any definite course of studies nor any grouping of classes, so as to play into one another.’—(Mr. Bryce.)