The Education of Catholic Girls

by Janet Erskine Stuart

The necessity for organization and foresight in detail among large numbers is also unfavourable to individual development. For children to find everything prepared for them, to feel no friction in the working of the machinery, so that all happens as it ought to, without effort and personal trouble on their part, to be told what to do, and only have to follow the bells for the ordering of their time—all this tends to diminish their resourcefulness and their patience with the unforeseen checks and cross-purposes and mistakes that they will have to put up with on leaving school. As a matter of fact the more perfect the school machinery, the smoother its working, the less does it prepare for the rutty road afterwards, and in this there is some consolation when school machinery jars from time to time in the working; if it teaches patience it is not altogether regrettable, and the little trouble which may arise in the material order is perhaps more educating than the regularity which has been disturbed.

We are beginning to believe what has never ceased to be said, that lessons in lesson-books are not the whole of education. The whole system of teaching in the elementary schools has been thrown off its balance by too many lesson-books, but it is righting itself again, and some of the memoranda on teaching, issued by the Board of Education within the last few years, are quite admirable in their practical suggestions for promoting a more efficient preparation for life. The Board now insists on the teaching of handicrafts, training of the senses in observation, development of knowledge, taste, and skill in various departments which are useful for life, and for girls especially on things which make the home. The same thing is wanted in middle-class education, though parents of the middle-class still look a little askance at household employments for their daughters. But children of the wealthier and upper classes take to them as a birthright, with the cordial assent of their parents and the applause of the doctors. It is for these children, so well-disposed for a practical education, and able to carry its influence so far, that we may consider what can be done in school life.

We ourselves who have to do with children must first appreciate the realities of life before we can communicate this understanding to others or give the right spirit to those we teach. And "the realities of life" may stand as a name for all those things which have to be learned in order to live, and which lesson-books do not teach. The realities of life are not material things, but they are very deeply wrought in with material things. There are things to be done, and things to be made, and things to be ordered and controlled, belonging to the primitive wants of human life, and to all those fundamental cares which have to support it. They are best learned in the actual doing from those who know how to do them; for although manuals and treatises exist for every possible department of skill and activity, yet the human voice and hand go much further in making knowledge acceptable than the textbook with diagrams. The dignity of manual labour comes home from seeing it well done, it is shown to be worth doing and deserving of honour.

Something which cannot be shown to children, but it will come to them later on as an inheritance, is the effect of manual work upon their whole being. Manual work gives balance and harmony in the development of the growing creature. A child does not attain its full power unless every faculty is exercised in turn, and to think that hard mental work alternated with hard physical exercise will give it full and wholesome development is to ignore whole provinces of its possessions. Generally speaking, children have to take the value of their mental work on the faith of our word. They must go through a great deal in mastering the rudiments of, say, Latin grammar (for the honey is not yet spread so thickly over this as it is now over the elements of modern languages). They must wonder why "grown-ups" have such an infatuation for things that seem out of place and inappropriate in life as they consider it worth living. Probably it is on this account that so many artificial rewards and inducements have had to be brought in to sustain their efforts. Physical exercise is a joy to healthy children, but it leaves nothing behind as a result. Children are proud of what they have done and made themselves. They lean upon the concrete, and to see as the result of their efforts something which lasts, especially something useful, as a witness to their power and skill, this is a reward in itself and needs no artificial stimulus, though to measure their own work in comparative excellence with that of others adds an element that quickens the desire to do well. Children will go quietly back again and again to look, without saying anything, at something they have made with their own hands, their eyes telling all that it means to them, beyond what they can express.

With its power of ministering to harmonious development of the faculties manual work has a direct influence on fitness for home and social life. It greatly develops good sense and aptitude for dealing with ordinary difficulties as they arise. In common emergencies it is the "handy" member of the household whose judgment and help are called upon, not the brilliant person or one who has specialized in any branch, but the one who can do common things and can invent resources when experience fails. When the specialist is at fault and the artist waits for inspiration, the handy person conies in and saves the situation, unprofessionally, like the bone-setter, without much credit, but to the great comfort of every one concerned.

Manual work likewise saves from eccentricity or helps to correct it. Eccentricity may appear harmless and even interesting, but in practice it is found to be a drawback, enfeebling some sides of a character, throwing the judgment at least on some points out of focus. In children it ought to be recognized as a defect to be counteracted. When people have an overmastering genius which of itself marks out for them a special way of excellence, some degree of eccentricity is easily pardoned, and almost allowable. But eccentricity unaccompanied by genius is mere uncorrected selfishness, or want of mental balance. It is selfishness if it could be corrected and is not, because it makes exactions from others without return. It will not adapt itself to them but insists on being taken as it is, whether acceptable or not. At best, eccentricity is a morbid tendency liable to run into extremes when its habits are undisturbed. An excuse sometimes made for eccentricity is that it is a security against any further mental aberration, perhaps on the same principle that inoculation producing a mild form of diseases is sometimes a safeguard against their attacks. But if the mind and habits of life can be brought under control, so as to take part in ordinary affairs without attracting attention or having exemptions and allowance made for them, a result of a far higher order will have been attained. To recognize eccentricity as selfishness is a first step to its cure, and to make oneself serviceable to others is the simplest corrective. Whatever else they may be, "eccentrics" are not generally serviceable.

Children of vivid imagination, nervously excitable and fragile in constitution, rather easily fall into little eccentric ways which grow very rapidly and are hard to overcome. One of the commonest of these is talking to themselves. Sitting still, making efforts to apply their minds to lessons for more than a short time, accentuates the tendency by nerve fatigue. In reaction against fatigue the mind falls into a vacant state and that is the best condition for the growth of eccentricities and other mental troubles. If their attention is diverted from themselves, and yet fixed with the less exhausting concentration which belongs to manual work, this diversion into another channel, with its accompany bodily movement, will restore the normal balance, and the little eccentric pose will be forgotten; this is better than being noticed and laughed at and formally corrected.

Manual employments, especially if varied, and household occupations afford a great variety, give to children a sense of power in knowing what to do in a number of circumstances; they take pleasure in this, for it is a thing which they admire in others. Domestic occupations also form in them a habit of decision, from the necessity of getting through things which will not wait. For domestic duties do not allow of waiting for a moment of inspiration or delaying until a mood of depression or indifference has passed. They have a quiet, imperious way of commanding, and an automatic system of punishing when they are neglected, which are more convincing that exhortations. Perhaps in this particular point lies their saving influence against nerves and moodiness and the demoralization of "giving way." Those who have no obligations, whose work will wait for their convenience, and who can if they please let everything go for a time, are more easily broken down by trouble than those whose household duties still have to be done, in the midst of sorrow and trial. There is something in homely material duties which heals and calms the mind and gives it power to come back to itself. And in sudden calamities those who know how to make use of their hands do not helplessly wring them, or make trouble worse by clinging to others for support.

Again, circumstances sometimes arise in school life which make light household duties an untold boon for particular children. Accidental causes, troubles of eyesight, or too rapid growth, etc., may make regular study for a time impossible to them. These children become exempt persons, and even if they are able to take some part in the class work the time of preparation is heavy on their hands. Exempt persons easily develop undesirable qualities, and their apparent privileges are liable to unsettle others. As a matter of fact those who are able to keep the common life have the best of it, but they are apt to look upon the exemption of others as enviable, as they long for gipsy life when a caravan passes by. With the resource of household employment to give occupation it becomes apparent that exemption does not mean holiday, but the substitution of one duty or lesson for another, and this is a principle which holds good in after life—that except in case of real illness no one is justified in having nothing to do.

Lastly, the work of the body is good for the soul, it drives out silliness as effectually as the rod, since that which was of old considered as the instrument for exterminating the "folly bound up in the heart of a child," has been laid aside in the education of girls. It is a great weapon against the seven devils of whom one is Sloth and another Pride, and it prepares a sane mind in a sound body for the discipline of after life.