These words were pioneers of the Commissioners’ reports, in which they find a literal echo. The reports, with her own evidence and that of other ladies interested in education, were by Miss Beale preserved for posterity. She perceived instinctively that if they were not brought into general circulation all would soon be forgotten, much never known at all. With that stern sense of economy which caused her never to waste an opportunity or a scrap of material, she took the task upon herself. She obtained permission to republish the matter relating to girls’ schools in a single volume, for which she wrote a preface. In this she dealt with the evidence of the Commissioners, discussing at some length the questions of examinations and overwork. But she sought chiefly, as she had already done a few years before in an article in Fraser’s Magazine,[41] to show the need of real study for women, the advantage to be gained for character and mind from such subjects as history and literature.
The general report of the Commissioners on Girls’ Education forms the first chapter of Miss Beale’s blue-book. It opened with a quotation to the effect that an educated mother is of even more importance than an educated father. Miss Beale may have thought this an exaggerated statement; but she must have welcomed and republished it with some satisfaction. She was for ever having it dinned into her ears, by those who opposed all serious study for their daughters, that girls should be educated to be wives and mothers. Mrs. Grey showed the real fallacy of the statement, in a paper which was the direct result of the republished reports, when she pointed out that girls were not being educated to be wives, but to get husbands. A happy marriage Mrs. Grey held to be ‘the summum bonum of a woman’s life ... not an object to be striven for, but to be received as the supreme grace of fate when the right time and the right person come.’[42] With Miss Beale and Miss Emily Davies she deprecated the education which is designed from the first to fit and prepare for a special position in life. She would have women and men alike, working men, tradesmen, men of fortune educated as human beings, not technically instructed for some special walk in life. In eloquent words she pictured the ideal for which she and others like-minded were striving, and were seeking to attain by the practical method of enlightening public opinion, founding schools, asking for public examinations. She wrote:—
‘The true meaning of the word education is not instruction.... It is intellectual, moral, and physical development, the development of a sound mind in a sound body, the training of reason to form just judgments, the disciplining of the will and affections to obey the supreme law of duty, the kindling and strengthening of the love of knowledge, of beauty, of goodness, till they become governing motives of action.’
Mrs. Grey’s conclusions were the same as those of the Commissioners, who complained that there was no demand for the education of girls, the cause of the indifference being that low idea which regards only the money value of education, and estimates it solely as a means of getting on. Girls were taught with a view to increasing their attractiveness before marriage, rather than with that of increasing their happiness and usefulness after. This was the general cause of dissatisfaction, but there were many details.
One and all complained that, with the exception of quite a few schools, the education of girls in the middle classes was much worse than that existing in the elementary schools of the day. This was of course specially the case in subjects like arithmetic, and arose greatly from the mistaken notion that they were of no use to girls. The Commissioners were unanimous in condemning the prevailing method of instruction by means of such books as Mangnall’s Questions and the like, termed by Mr. Bryce ‘the noxious brood of catechisms.’ Of this, be it said, Miss Mangnall’s famous work, which bears witness to its author’s well-stored mind, and which reached nearly a hundred editions, was the best. The ‘Questions’ demanded indeed the knowledge of such useless facts as the number of houses burned in the Great Fire of London; but there were in use, in the numerous small private schools of the period, cheaper and more stupid books, in which the information was not merely useless, but even defied common sense. A small catechism on ‘Science,’ entitled ‘Why and Because,’ concluded a long list of inept questions with: ‘Why do pensioners and aged cottagers put their teapots on the hob to draw?’ In some books, facts of varying nature—of history, geography, grammar, etc.—were all jumbled together. It is not surprising that girls instructed by the parrot-like, inconsequent methods of such lesson-books, passed from school with no love of reading.
The Commissioners complained further, that though French and music were held to be the most important subjects to which a girl should devote herself, they were nearly always very badly taught. They spoke of time wasted at the piano; they calculated the thousands of hours given to music which was not worth hearing at the last. They gave instances of ludicrous mistakes in French, which no effort of visiting masters could improve into anything like a real knowledge of the language, because rudimentary grammar had never been mastered. They spoke of drawing taught with an equal disregard of thoroughness, and with still more disastrous result. ‘The common practice of masters touching up their pupils’ performances for exhibition at home fosters a habit of dishonesty, and that too prevalent tendency running through the whole of female education, the tendency to care more for appearance than reality, to seem rather than to be.’[43]
Some spoke of the absence of healthy interests, of the need for games, a need which appealed but little to Miss Beale, in whose own youth play was marked by its absence only. Many urged the necessity for founding in every town public schools similar to boys’ grammar schools, where girls could obtain a sound education, without accomplishments, at a low cost.
These reports embody a number of facts concerning a state of things now happily passed away. Hundreds of small private schools might have read their doom in them, for the establishment of many public schools, endowed and otherwise, soon followed the inquiry. We see the poor sham education, with its wrong notions of the beautiful and the best, vanish without a regret. Yet, since all human effort has its worth and place, is it possible and fair to say one word above its grave? Was there no genuine wish to give pleasure pleading in the miserable pieces of the boarding-school young lady, and even in the painful drawings which the master’s touch failed to make tolerable? They testify at least to something out of the work-a-day sphere, to the desire for the ‘something afar,’ often the first step to a truer vision. Precious years of girlhood spent on the vain effort to attain accomplishments speak of some dim perception of the refinement and uplifting which men look for in women. Ill-devised, badly attempted, poorly carried out, the thought of giving delight was not only mercenary in aim; behind it was some consciousness of a real human need. The educators of women to-day should know better than to despise its pleading, however imperfectly expressed. ‘May I not have one ornamental one?’ said a brother when a third sister was about to devote herself to obtaining certificates for mathematics.
Nine ladies, including Miss Emily Davies, Miss Buss, and Miss Beale, were asked to give evidence before the Commission. Miss Beale’s, which was taken in 1865, is of double interest, at once touching the state of girls’ education in general, and the advance being made in the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. She took with her a hundred entrance examination papers arranged in order for inspection. Actuated perhaps by the marvellous carefulness which lost nothing, and seeing a use even in what would often be considered waste papers, as well as by the definite aim of preserving a record of progress, she had kept all the answers written by her pupils to entrance examination questions. With the College papers, she showed also some written by children in one of the national schools at Cheltenham, in order that the Commissioners might make a comparison for themselves.