The preceding views lead to inquiries of great practical importance, such as these:
Is it consistent with Christian principles to take children from the care of parents at the most critical period of life, and congregate them in large boarding-schools and colleges, where temptations multiply and individual love and care are diminished?
Is it practicable, in public and private schools,
to institute methods by which each pupil shall be trained according to peculiar wants, so that deficient faculties shall be developed, and unfortunate intellectual, physical, and moral traits or habits be rectified?
Can such schools institute methods by which every pupil shall, at least, commence a training for some business in future life, to which natural abilities and tastes incline, and in which success would be most probable?
Can woman's distinctive profession be made a large portion of her school education?
To aid in deciding these questions, the following is given as the ideal at which I have been aiming in efforts to establish a Woman's University; by which I mean, not a large boarding-establishment of pupils removed from parental care, but an institution embracing the whole course of a woman's training from infancy to a self-supporting profession, in which both parents and teachers have a united influence and agency.
According to this ideal, such an institution would be divided into distinct schools; all
under the same board of supervision, and all carrying out a connected and appropriate portion of the same plan. These are:
1. The Kindergarten, for the youngest children, who are not to use books;