258. The Education of Girls.—The same reasons explain the shortcomings of Rollin’s views on the education of women, and the relative mediocrity of his ideas on the education of children. Living in solitude and in the celibate state, he had no personal information on these subjects, and so he goes back to Fénelon for his ideas on the education of women, and to Quintilian in the case of children.
Is the study of Latin fit for girls? Such is the first question which he raises; but he has the wisdom to answer it in the negative, save for “nuns, and also for Christian virgins and widows.” “There is no difference in minds,” Rollin emphatically says, “that is due to sex.” But he does not extend the consequences of this excellent principle very far. He is content to require of women the four rules of arithmetic; orthography, in which he is not over exacting, for “their ignorance of orthography should not be imputed to them as a crime, since it is almost universal in their sex;” ancient history and the history of France, “which it is disgraceful to every good Frenchman not to know.”[155] As to reading, Rollin is quite as severe as Madame de Maintenon: “The reading of comedies and tragedies may be very dangerous for young ladies.” He sanctions only Esther and Athalie. Music and dancing are allowed, but without enthusiasm and with endless precautions:—
“An almost universal experience shows that the study of music is an extraordinary dissipation.”
“I do not know how the custom of having girls learn to sing and play on instruments at such great expense has become so common.... I hear it said that as soon as they enter on life’s duties, they make no farther use of it.”
259. The Study of French.—Rollin is chiefly preoccupied with the study of the ancient languages; but he has the merit, notwithstanding his predilection for exercises in Latin, of having followed the example of the Jansenists so far as the importance accorded to the French language is concerned.
“It is a disgrace,” he says, “that we are ignorant of our own language; and if we are willing to confess the truth, we will almost all acknowledge that we have never studied it.”
Rollin admitted that he was “much more proficient in the study of Latin than in that of French.” In the opening of his Treatise, which he wrote in French only that he might place himself within the reach of his young readers and their parents, he excuses himself for making a trial in a kind of writing which is almost new to him. And in congratulating him on his work, d’Aguesseau wrote, “You speak French as if it were your native tongue.” Such was the Rector of the University in France at the commencement of the eighteenth century.
Let us think well of him, therefore, for having so overcome his own habits of mind as to recommend the study of French. He would have it learned, not only through use, but also “through principles,” and would have “the genius of the language understood, and all its beauties studied.”
Rollin has a high opinion of grammar, but would not encourage a misuse of it:—
“Long-continued lessons on such dry matter might become very tedious to pupils. Short questions, regularly proposed each day after the manner of an ordinary conversation, in which they themselves would be consulted, and in which the teacher would employ the art of having them tell what he wished to make them learn, would teach them in the way of amusement, and, by an insensible progress, continued for several years, they would acquire a profound knowledge of the language.”