The Education of American Girls

by Anna C. Brackett

There are many sickly girls to be found in our schools, but they are often sickly when they come to us; often, too, under the seeming garb of health, the seeds of disease are already germinating, and it is time, not study, which brings them to the surface.

When mothers are able to send us strong, healthy girls, with simple habits and unperverted tastes, we will return to them and the world strong, healthy women, fitted, physically and mentally, for woman's work.

It is continuous education, not co-education, which Dr. Clarke really condemns; but every teacher knows that continuity of effort is essential to sound mental development, and that this off-and-on method, which he seems to recommend, would destroy all order in the school, and make all work in the class-room impossible. If, then, his theory—that for physiological reasons girls cannot endure continuous study—is the true theory, not only our colleges and universities ought to remain closed against women, but all our schools for girls over fourteen years of age ought to be closed also, and the pupils sent home, to receive such instruction as they can from private teachers, at such times as their bodies can afford to lend time to their heads.

We say ought, and we mean what we say; for we are not “so professionally committed to a dangerous experiment” as to insist upon it, if once convinced that it is dangerous; neither are we “urgent reformers, who care less for human suffering and human life, than for the trial of a theory.” Dr. Clarke believes, “if the causes which have brought about the present ill-health of American women continue for the next half century, and increase in the same ratio as they have for the last fifty years, that we shall cease to be an American people.” We believe it, too; but we do not believe, as he does, that the chief causes of this ill-health are to be laid at the doors of our seminaries and colleges. We believe that more girls are benefited than are injured by the regimen of a well-regulated school, and our belief is founded upon years of observation. The number is not small, of girls, who have come to us pale, nervous and laboring under many of the ills of which Dr. Clarke speaks, to whom the regularity which must be observed in a large school, but, most of all, the stimulus of systematic brain-work upon the body, has proved most sanitary.

The mother of one young lady placed her under our care a year and a half ago, saying, as she did so: “My daughter has always been frail. I greatly fear she will not be able to endure regular school work. Send her home at any time, if convinced that her health suffers from school discipline.” While her health has been steadily improving, she has been able to gain an enviable position in her class. One of her professors said that he had never heard more finished recitations than hers. This is only one instance, where we might give many, of the quickening influence of brain-work upon the body, and we have often heard the same testimony given by other teachers.

Of course, we do not claim that sick girls ought to study, any more than sick boys, or that there are, at the present time, as many girls who can endure hard study, either spasmodic or continuous, as boys. We accept the fact, that American women are sickly women; we only protest against the false theory that makes our higher schools responsible for the fact.

In Dr. Clarke's chapter upon co-education, we read that “this experiment”—meaning co-education—“has been tried in some of our western Colleges, but has not been tried long enough to show much more than its first-fruits, viz., its results while the students are in college; and of these, the only obvious ones are increased emulation, and intellectual development and attainments.”

Wondering how long it must be tried before it ceases to be an experiment, we read on a few pages, when we are told that “two or three generations, at least, of the female college graduates of this sort of co-education, must come and go before any sufficient idea can be formed of the harvest it will yield.” Is it not rather dangerous to wait two or three generations for the result of an experiment, when it affects so important a question as our national life? But what if the experiment has been already tried? What if we can show by actual figures that, in addition to the increased intellectual development and attainments, time has proved that there has also been physical strength “to stand the wear and tear of woman's work in life?” If we can have intellectual development and physical activity combined, is it not a thing to be devoutly wished? If there is any other conclusion to be truthfully reached, than the one which obliges a woman to feel that, for the good of the race, she must content her longings after knowledge with only a few crumbs from the rich banquet which is spread temptingly before her, why put her faith in the justice of God to such a test?

It is this conclusion, and conclusions like this, spoken in the tone of authority, which have sometimes made weak women “speak of their physical organization with half-smothered anathemas,” and led them “to be ashamed of the temple” which an all-loving, and, let us also add, an all-wise Father, has built for them.

If, in the place of this conclusion, against which all a woman's instincts rebel, we may truthfully teach her that there is no antagonism between her body and her brain, and that, for the good of the race, she ought systematically to develop both, we remove all stumbling blocks from her way, we lighten her burdens, we make her brave to endure, because our teachings correspond with all her preconceived ideas of justice and benevolence.