The higher education of women

by Emily Davies

CHAPTER VI.
SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS.

If it be admitted that the law of human duty is the same for both sexes, and if the specific functions belonging to each demand substantially the same qualities for their performance, it appears to follow that the education required is likely to be, in its broader and more essential features, the same. What that education ought to be has lately been much discussed, but at present without much sign of approaching unanimity. That there should be great difference of opinion is natural, inasmuch as almost every one is inclined to recommend for universal adoption just what he happens to like best himself; while, on the other hand, a few people of a different turn of mind are disposed to undervalue what they possess themselves, and to give extra credit to subjects or methods, the insufficiency of which has not been brought home to them by personal experience. In the education of girls the selection of subjects seems to be directed by no principle whatever. Strong protests are raised against assimilating it to that of boys; but very little is said as to the particulars in which it ought to differ. The present distribution is, indeed, somewhat whimsical. Inasmuch as young men go into offices where they have to conduct foreign correspondence, and, as they travel about all over the world, they are taught the dead languages. As woman’s place is the domestic hearth, and as middle class women rarely see a foreigner, they are taught modern languages with a special view to facility in speaking. As men are supposed to work with their heads all day, and have nothing in the world to do when they are indisposed for reading but to smoke or to go to sleep, they are taught neither music nor drawing. As women have always the resource of needlework, they learn music and drawing besides. As women are not expected to take part in political affairs, they are taught history. As men do, boys learn mathematics instead. In physical science, astronomy and botany are considered the ladies’ department. Chemistry and mechanics being the branches most directly applicable to domestic uses, are reserved for boys.

These distinctions ought rather, however, to be spoken of as a thing of the past. The educators of boys and girls respectively are learning and borrowing from each other.[6] An approximation is already in progress, in which the encroachment, if it be an encroachment, is chiefly from the side of boys; for while Latin and mathematics are slowly making their way into girls’ schools, we find that in the University local examinations, music, drawing, and modern languages have from the beginning been recognised as desirable for boys. It is, like most other things, very much a question of degree. The system of mutual isolation has never been thoroughly carried out. Even those who hold most strongly that classics and mathematics are proper for boys, and modern languages and the fine arts for girls, leave as common ground the wide field of English literature, in itself almost an education. To a large extent men and women read the same books, magazines, and newspapers; and though in the highest class of literature, written by scholars for scholars, and, therefore, full of classical and scientific allusions, there is much that women only half understand, the deficiency under which they labour is shared by many male readers.

Probably, after all, it matters less what is nominally taught, than that, whatever it is, it should be taught in the best way. Any subject may be made flat and unprofitable if unintelligently taught; and, on the other hand, there is scarcely anything which may not be made an instrument of intellectual discipline, if wisely used. Then, again, all branches of knowledge are so closely connected and mutually dependent, that it is scarcely possible to learn anything which will not be found more or less useful hereafter in learning something else. Even the much despised and denounced ‘smattering of many things,’ has its merits in this way, as well as in giving a certain breadth of vision, by opening vistas into innumerable fields of knowledge, never to be explored by any single human being. The degree in which the study of certain subjects cultivates certain faculties is a matter on which we are far from agreeing. Nor is it decided—in fact we have scarcely begun to discuss—what faculties most need cultivation. In the middle classes the imagination seems to be the one in which the deficiency is most marked. Every now and then some one recommends mathematics for girls as a curb to the imagination. It might be as well first to ascertain whether the imaginations of commonplace girls want to be curbed; whether, on the contrary, they do not want rather to be awakened and set to work, with something to work upon. The business of the imagination is not merely to build castles in the air, though that is, no doubt, a useful and commendable exercise; it has other and most important duties to perform. For, manifestly, an unimaginative person is destitute of one of the main elements of sympathy. Probably, if the truth were known, it would be found that injustice and unkindness are comparatively seldom caused by harshness of disposition. They are the result of an incapacity for imagining ourselves to be somebody else. Any one who has tried it must be aware of the enormous difficulty of conceiving the state of mind of a pauper or a thief. The same difficulty is experienced in a degree by any one in easy circumstances in realising the condition and looking from the point of view of a very poor, or comparatively poor person. It is probably equally difficult to ordinary minds to imagine the condition of always having more money than you quite know what to do with. The absence of sympathy between youth and age is traceable to the same want. Old people have either forgotten their own youth, or they remember it too well, and fall into the not less fatal mistake of supposing that the new youth is like their own. Young people, on their part, are equally at a loss to understand what it is to be old. In all the relations of life, the want of imagination produces defective sympathy, and defective sympathy brings in its train all sorts of vague and intolerable evils. In every branch of study a vivid imagination is a most powerful agent, aiding the memory, and bringing clearly before the mind the materials on which a judgment has to be formed.

This, however, is not the place to discuss the comparative importance of the mental faculties. Without going into the details of what, or how to teach, it will be more to the purpose to inquire whether there are any general measures, the working of which is likely to be beneficial, let the subjects and the methods of instruction be what they may.

Among the most necessary, and the most easily and immediately applicable, is the extension to women of such examinations as demand a high standard of attainment. The test of a searching examination is indispensable as a guarantee for the qualifications of teachers; it is wanted as a stimulus by young women studying with no immediate object in view, and no incentive to exertion other than the high, but dim and distant, purpose of self-culture. This purpose, regarded in its bearing on the general welfare, is indeed honourable and animating, and every other must be subordinate to it. But we must not forget that we have to deal with human and very imperfect beings; and it is not difficult to believe that young women of only average energy and perseverance, while working in the main towards the higher end, may yet need an occasionally recurring stage within sight, as an allurement to draw them on, and to help them in their struggle with the temptations to indolence which lie thick about their path. The fact of having an examination to work for, would not only be a stimulus to themselves, it would also serve as a defence against idle companions, whose solicitations it is hard to refuse on the mere ground of an abstract love of learning.

The want of examinations for women is not a new discovery. So long ago as 1841, Dr Arnold wrote to Mr Justice Coleridge:—‘I feel quite as strongly as you do the extreme difficulty of giving to girls what really deserves the name of education intellectually. When —— was young, I used to teach her some Latin with her brothers, and that has been, I think, of real use to her, and she feels it now in reading and translating German, of which she does a great deal. But there is nothing for girls like the Degree examination, which concentrates one’s reading so beautifully, and makes one master a certain number of books perfectly. And unless we had a domestic examination for young ladies, to be passed before they come out, and another, like the great go, before they come of age, I do not see how the thing can ever be effected. Seriously, I do not see how we can supply sufficient encouragement for systematic and laborious reading, or how we can insure many things being retained at once fully in the mind, when we are wholly without the machinery which we have for our boys.’

In another letter, speaking of the need of continual questioning in the case of a boy, he says, ‘He wants this, and he wants it daily, not only to interest and excite him, but to dispel what is very apt to grow around a lonely reader not constantly questioned—a haze of indistinctness as to a consciousness of his own knowledge or ignorance; he takes a vague impression for a definite one, an imperfect notion for one that is full and complete, and in this way he is continually deceiving himself.’

This is an exact description of the state of the young female mind, even where there has been considerable cultivation. Women have ‘general ideas,’ which interest and occupy their minds, but produce little fruit, owing to their incompleteness and uncertainty. Of course, it would be absurd to recommend examinations as an infallible cure for this or any other mental defect. The familiar objections, that there are many things which no examination can test; that they sometimes encourage cram and check originality; and that, when abused, they foster ambition, and cause overexcitement and overwork—no doubt have some truth in them. But the question is whether, on the whole, examinations work for good or for evil; and the testimony of long experience seems to be strongly in their favour. To refuse to test knowledge, because you cannot by the same process judge of moral excellence, is about as wise as to say that a man ought not to eat, because, unless he also takes exercise, he will not be in good health. Cram is no doubt a very bad thing, but it is not a necessary antecedent of examinations; and, after all, there are alternatives worse than cramming. It may be better even to cram than to leave the mind quite empty; and though the word has become, by perpetual reiteration, closely associated with the idea of examinations, it is as well to remember that it is quite possible for knowledge to be equally undigested, whether it has been got up for an examination or not. As to fostering ambition, the question seems to be, whether it is possible, or even desirable, entirely to eradicate it, and whether to direct it towards a respectable object, the pursuit of which at least implies some good moral qualities, may not be useful as diverting it from that meanest of aims—the only one held up indiscriminately to women of every grade—that of shining in society. The danger of injury to health, through excitement and overwork, is within the control of parents and teachers. As regards girls, the experience of the Cambridge local examinations has proved beyond a doubt that, where ordinary common sense is practised, there is no risk whatever of this sort.