The Curse of Education

by Harold Edward Gorst

Man's mental training, as has been fully pointed out, consists almost entirely in pouring facts into a vacuum created by the careful elimination of original thought. Until recently, women have not been subjected to this agreeable process. For a very long time they were not educated at all, and when governesses first came into fashion in better class families, the idea was rather to endow girls with a few graceful accomplishments than to cram them with dates and other kinds of mechanical knowledge.

This tradition is still kept up to a certain degree in the higher social circles; but there have also sprung up a large number of girls' colleges, in which all the bad points of masculine education are carefully copied. These colleges are frequented by girls of the upper and middle classes, chiefly the latter, and no doubt they are gradually working a revolution in feminine character. But heredity—especially when it is, within a generation or so, the heredity of long ages—is a very potent factor in the formation of both mind and body, and offers a steady resistance to innovation. The full effects, therefore, of this educational revolution in respect to womankind are not yet apparent.

The net result of this is that the majority of women are still addicted to thought. Facts have not yet entirely taken the place of ideas in their minds, except in extreme cases which may be called exceptional, although it must be confessed that they are becoming every day less rare. They think, no doubt, for the most part about the commonplace incidents of their daily life, and possibly they are given too much to morbid introspection. But anything that serves to make a human being exercise the function for which his brain was originally intended should be regarded with thankfulness. It is a thousand times better for the development of the mind to speculate about the motives of acquaintances, or to philosophize on the shortcomings of the maid-of-all-work, than to babble off the dates of the Sovereigns from William the Conqueror, or to construe Horace's Odes without taking in a syllable of their sense.

Women have thus formed a habit of reflection about trifles, which the more gifted amongst them extend to weightier topics. And it is in this way that they are able to gain an ascendancy over man that is the more potent because it is unobtrusive. The average woman sees things the subtleties of which escape man altogether, and she perceives them because her mind has been trained, by natural development, to observation.

The average man, on the other hand, is the most unobservant creature under the sun. He rarely understands even what is going on under his nose. It is all very well to say that his superior mind is wrapt up in percentages, or absorbed in grand schemes for the regeneration of mankind. The plain truth is that he does not possess the faculty of applying his intelligence to everything within his range of observation. Evolution intended him to possess it; but education systems, which harbour very little respect for the laws of Nature, have found ready means to curb the propensity or to destroy it altogether.

It is small matter for surprise, therefore, that woman should have succeeded in subjecting man to an empire as autocratic as it is, to all outward appearances, unsuspected. Some people maintain that this empire is gained solely by physical attraction; but this contention is disproved easily enough. All women do not possess the charm of beauty; yet there is scarcely a woman of any nationality, or belonging to any station in life, who does not exercise a more or less powerful influence over her menkind.

Husbands are guided by their wives, even in matters of business or affecting public interests, far more than they are generally ready to acknowledge. Staying at a seaside hotel some time ago, I made the acquaintance of a hard-headed Lancashire merchant who had amassed a comfortable independence. In an outburst of confidence he told me one day that he had never taken a single important step in the conduct of his business without consulting his wife, and he also acknowledged that he had never had to regret asking her advice.

The moral of this story is the more significant when it is recollected that in such a case the wife has not had the same opportunities as her husband of forming a correct judgment. The latter has the business details at his finger-ends; he is acquainted with the person or persons with whom the dealings are taking place; and he has his experience to fall back upon. But somehow or other the wife seems to grasp all the points, and to see more clearly into the motives of the person concerned. 'Why,' she will exclaim to her husband, 'can't you see that So-and-so is trying to bamboozle you?' And, the scales falling from the deluded husband's eyes, he suddenly makes the discovery that his wife thinks where his own powers of reflection are contented to remain dormant.

The fact is, that the habit of thinking cannot be acquired through exercise in mental gymnastics. Philosophers, mathematicians, and men of science are notoriously up in the clouds, and incapable often to a remarkable degree of managing the affairs of everyday life with common sense. Yet these are the individuals who have been subjected to the highest form of what is called mental training. If fact-cramming and mental gymnastics are the best developers of the human mind, these men ought to be perfect models of intelligence. But will any candid-minded person call it the highest form of intellectual development to have a clear conception of the precession of the equinoxes, or to manufacture metaphysical conundrums, whilst remaining utterly incapable of applying common sense to human affairs that demand at least an equal amount of attention?

It is clear that this type of mental training does not teach people to think at all, but has the contrary effect of restricting the intelligence to an altitude very far beyond the ordinary requirements of our social existence. Man may have a very broad horizon; but the broader it becomes, the further he seems to be transported from the capacity to exercise the normal functions of the brain. To designate this the proper development of the mind would be manifestly absurd; yet many people seem contented to regard it as such, and accept the anomaly without giving its obvious contradictoriness a second thought.