The Curse of Education

by Harold Edward Gorst

Of course it is not argued that woman's mental training is, or has been, all that can be desired. It is, in her case, more the neglect to apply severe educational methods, than anything else, that has permitted the negative development of her thinking faculties; and this tends to demonstrate all the more conclusively that the real use of the brain is practically destroyed by conventional modes of instruction.

Women, left to their own devices for countless generations, have acquired a faculty that all the education systems in the world have failed to pound into the mind of man. It is their superiority in this respect that has given them far-reaching empire over the opposite sex. That this should be generally appreciated is of the utmost importance, because the modern metamorphosis of woman, if rightly understood, is the best conceivable object-lesson in the evils brought about by the educational methods of the present day. It is not that the academically-trained woman threatens to push man out of his place in the world, but that she is herself in danger of losing the very weapon that has given her so large a share of power and influence.

A great deal of nonsense has been talked and written about the spectacled Girton girl competing with men in knowledge, at the expense of forfeiting their admiration and thereby losing her vantage-ground. Spectacles do not enter into the matter at all. As has already been pointed out, physical attraction has nothing, or very little, to do with feminine wire-pulling.

Women derive their real powers from a gift of trained observation, and from the subtlety conferred upon them by the capacity to apply their intelligence to the numerous small matters which go to make up the sum of human life. Their minds will no longer develop these powers when they are systematically subjected to a process of education which has invariably failed to evoke them in the opposite sex. And with the loss of them, woman is bound also to lose the empire which she has hitherto exercised over masculine nature.

From this point of view alone, the education of women on the modern system is much to be deplored. There is no doubt that women in general have always exercised their predominant influence for the good of mankind. Striking exceptions might easily be adduced from history; but, on the whole, it must be acknowledged that woman has seldom abused her power. Therefore, anything that is calculated to undermine or destroy this favourable influence on human affairs cannot be regarded as otherwise than pernicious.

The more the idea spreads that girls must be given the same educational equipment as boys, the more rapid will be the degeneration of woman. It is a well-known fact in the medical profession that weakly boys are often unable to withstand the strain of school cramming; therefore girls, with their more delicate organization, will suffer proportionately in a greater degree. Physical training, of course, obviates a great deal of this evil. But the same thing is bound to happen in the case of girls as has already been experienced where boys are concerned; that is to say, the most promising intellects will be sacrificed, partly through the ambition of the school authorities, whose principal anxiety is to see their pupils distinguish themselves in examinations, and partly owing to the fact that exceptional ability so often implies a nervous temperament and delicate physique.

Women, it must be acknowledged, by no means use their faculties of thinking and observation to the best advantage. The conclusions at which they arrive are often far too definite, and have been formed in too great haste. So rapid is this operation of thought that it often becomes a mere intuition. Yet the remarkable accuracy of a woman's intuitions is evidence that there underlies them some intellectual process resting on a more solid basis than conjecture or guesswork.

It is the crude and untutored stage of development of the thinking faculty in woman that causes it to work intuitively, instead of by the slower and sounder processes of logic. To neglect a faculty is by no means synonymous with developing it. Hence woman's powers of thought and observation are embryonic rather than matured. The work they perform is not a tithe of what would be accomplished by them under the auspices of judicious encouragement and skilled training. The faculty has neither been destroyed by over-cramming nor fostered by enlightened treatment. It has simply been allowed to lie more or less dormant, according to the natural environment of the individual.

If man, with his superior brain capacity, were encouraged to cultivate the habits of observation at present restricted to woman, and to apply his intelligence to everything, instead of to a few selected objects, the ratio of the world's progress would be enormously increased. Who first started the notion that man is being manufactured into a superior article, and that woman cannot do better than submit herself with all haste to the same process, I do not know. At any rate, it is a disastrous doctrine, and the sooner the fallacy of it is perceived the more chance there will be of saving future generations of women from the blunder that is handicapping the masculine sex at the present moment.

It would be a grand thing if educationists could be persuaded to open their eyes to the fact that women, having been providentially saved from school instruction for past generations, have been enabled to preserve mental faculties that no amount of cramming and corporal punishment has ever succeeded in awakening in man. They would then cease from their ignorant attempt to deprive woman of her intellectual gift, and possibly even do something towards securing man a little mental room for the installation of his own thinking faculty.