The Education of American Girls

by Anna C. Brackett

The university promises to provide good instruction, to test the thoroughness of the work of all who desire the test, and to award certificates of success to all who come up to its standards; and these certificates will doubtless eventually be able to sum up into degrees, or else degrees will lose their especial value, and be abandoned. Limiting the ages of the candidates for the several examinations, though seemingly a little arbitrary, aims to avoid encouraging too precocious advancement, while there is a willingness to make exceptions in favor of pupils who are shown to be exceptionably able.

I do not find, in the English schools, and certainly there is not in the universities, a rigid practice of giving daily marks for the work. The teachers lecture, and the pupils take notes.

In the schools these notes are carefully examined, and the pupils who give evidence of deficient knowledge of the subject, are sent to a leisure governess, for especial instruction. At the universities, the only tests are the examinations, and at the schools, the examinations are chiefly relied upon for promotions. This plan allows pupils of irregular power, and varying health, to admit these same irregularities into their work, without great prejudice to the total credit of their results. With these two systems of allowing choice in the number and kind of subjects pursued, and of testing the work by examinations, rather than daily records, provision is made for the differences of power and aptitude between different students, and for the occasional variations in physical vigor, which are likely to occur with any except those who possess the strongest constitutions—and this, with the athletic habits and general care for health that pervades English life, is likely to prove a pretty good safeguard against excessive mental work for both men and women; though, of course, individual cases occur where, driven by ambition or necessity, one incautiously puts more strain upon his powers than they can bear.

The English sentiment in regard to the advisability of encouraging young women to pursue precisely the same course of study as young men, would be expressed in this way: “It is rarely advisable for any two young men to pursue an identical course of study. The chief aim of education is to develop the mental faculties, to enable us to observe accurately, and judge correctly; the practices that secure these results are various; one set of practices may be better adapted for the training of one mind, and another set better adapted for training another mind, and no one set will fail to give good results, if pursued with energy. In the choice, we are, as a rule, safest to follow the individual inclination. As yet, women have been so limited in opportunities, that they have had little chance to discover their mental inclinations, either as a class, or as individuals.”

The statement would, I think, go no farther. The question of co-education has as yet scarcely come into the popular mind. Small experiments, prompted usually by convenience, have been made, so far as I have heard, with uniform success, and the practice is making its way into the higher education of the country. Women are already admitted to the Political Economy class, and one or two other classes in University College, London; as I have said, the lectures and classes organized under the recent plan of Cambridge University, for carrying university education into the towns, are open to men and women in common; and the various governing bodies are now discussing the question of admitting women to degrees in London University, to both classes and degrees in Queen's College, Belfast, and to classes in Owen's College, Manchester, and a bill is likely to be introduced into the next session of Parliament, to empower all the universities to extend their privileges to women, if they desire to do it.

The time-honored precedents are at present against the plan, but the practice of these highest authorities will soon turn opinion in its favor. The lack of funds to educate women, the rapidly growing feeling that men and women are at present too much separated by social customs and differences in tastes, and the belief that it would promote a higher moral tone among men, are uniting to produce a strong current of interest and feeling in favor of the system. Young men at the English universities rarely overwork. Popular feeling, fashion, respectable sentiment—call it as one will—is all against considering health secondary to anything. A few evenings ago I chanced to be talking with a university young man, who was at home for the holidays. I asked, “About how many hours do your good students work?” The reply was, “Rarely more than seven. A few of the hardest reading men—those aiming at fellowships—who do not take more than two hours for exercise, work a little longer; and they work longer just before the examinations.” When I smiled at the evident contempt thrown upon the “two hours for exercise,” he said, “You do not think two hours enough for exercise, do you?” In all the best English schools, either for boys or girls, the plan is to work with vigor, and play with vigor. There are hours enough for sleep to secure good rest; then work is arranged to give variety, and confined within moderate limits of time, so that if a pupil does extra work, he does it by extra intensity.

After leaving school, English girls in the upper and middle classes give more time to society than American girls do; that is, society is the regular evening occupation, and in the day-time there is little to do but to recover from the previous evening.

But society is relieved of a large part of the excitability that attends it with us. The wealth and social position of the family and the ingenious tact of mammas, as a rule, win the husbands, and the daughter needs only to be in sight. It is not at all rare to go to an evening party and know no one but the host and hostess, and as introductions are rarely given, one has only to look about and go home when she is tired. At a dinner-party she is told the name of the one who leads her to the table, but she is always at liberty to talk as little as she likes, and she offends the social taste if she talk very much. English mothers of this class have very little to do except to give birth to their children, and go through the established routine of dinners and calls. If there is any complaint respecting the work they have to do, it is of the deficit, and the inferior health of the women between their school-days and their wifehood is to be accounted for by the want of occupation and independence. They have no more to do, and no more chance to exercise their wills, than during the first six years of their lives.

After the early years of marriage the health almost uniformly improves, and by the time they are forty or forty-five, they have usually attained a ripe perfection of health, which gives them a physical superiority over the men for the remaining twenty-five or thirty-five years of their lives, and also over the women who have remained unmarried.

The sentiments that pervade, and the circumstances that control our life, and the habits they engender, are very different. It is not possible for us to have habits whose regularity shall so nearly convert them into instincts as is the case with the English. We have to make our lives out of the conditions about us, and these conditions change year by year. The opportunities for acquiring wealth and social distinction are so great that they stimulate us to great exertion.