The Education of Catholic Girls

by Janet Erskine Stuart

Conversation, as conversation, is hard to teach, we can only lead the way and lay down a few principles which keep it in the right path. These commonplaces of warning, as old as civilization itself, belong to manners and to fundamental unselfishness, but obvious as they are they have to be said and to be repeated and enforced until they become matters of course. Not to seem bored, not to interrupt, not to contradict, not to make personal remarks, not to talk of oneself (some one was naive enough to say "then what is there to talk of"), not to get heated and not to look cold, not to do all the talking and not to be silent, not to advance if the ground seems uncertain, and to be sensitively attentive to what jars—all these and other things are troublesome to obtain, but exceedingly necessary. And even observing them all we may be just as far from conversation as before; how often among English people, through shyness or otherwise, it simply faints from inanition. We can at least teach that a first essential is to have something to say, and that the best preparation of mind is thought and reading and observation, to be interested in many things, and to give enough personal application to a few things as to have something worth saying about them.

By testing in writing every step of an educational course a great deal of command over all acquired materials may be secured. As our girls grow older, essay-writing becomes the most powerful means for fashioning their minds and bringing out their individual characteristics.

It is customary now to begin with oral composition,—quite rightly, for one difficulty at a time is enough. But when children have to write for themselves the most natural beginning is by letters. A great difference in thought and power is observable in their first attempts, but in the main the structure of their letters is similar, like the houses and the moonfaced persons which they draw in the same symbolic way. Perhaps both are accepted conventions to which they conform—handed down through generations of the nursery tradition—though students of children are inclined to believe that these symbolical drawings represent their real mind in the representation of material things. Their communications move in little bounds, a succession of happy thoughts, the kind of things which birds in conversation might impart to one another, turning their heads quickly from side to side and catching sight of many things unrelated amongst themselves. It is a pity that this manner is often allowed to last too long, for in these stages of mental training it is better to be on the stretch to reach the full stature of one's age rather than to linger behind it, and early promise in composition means a great deal.

To write of the things which belong to one's age in a manner that is fully up to their worth or even a little beyond it, is better than to strain after something to say in a subject that is beyond the mental grasp. The first thing to learn is how to write pleasantly about the most simple and ordinary things. But a common fault in children's writing is to wait for an event, "something to write about," and to dispose of it in three or four sentences like telegrams.

The influences which determine these early steps are, first, the natural habit of mind, for thoughtful children see most interesting and strange things in their surroundings; secondly, the tone of their ordinary conversation, but especially a disposition that is unselfish and affectionate. Warm-hearted children who are gifted with sympathy have an intuition of what will give pleasure, and that is one of the great secrets of letter-writing. But the letters they write will always depend in a great measure on the letters they receive, and a family gift for letter-writing is generally the outcome of a happy home-life in which all the members are of interest to each other and their doings of importance.

What sympathy gives to letter-writing, imagination gives to the first essays of children in longer compositions. Imagination puts them in sympathy with all the world, with things as well as persons, as affection keeps them in touch with every detail of the home world. But its work is not so simple. Home affection is true and is a law to itself; if it is present it holds all the little child's world in a right proportion, because all heavenly affection is bound up with it. But the awakening and the rapid development of imagination as girls grow up needs a great deal of guidance and training. Fancy may overgrow itself, and take an undue predominance, so that life is tuned to the pitch of imagination and not imagination to the pitch of life. It is hardly possible and hardly to be desired that it should never overflow the limits of perfect moderation; if it is to be controlled, there must be something to control, in pruning there must be some strong shoots to cut back, and in toning down there must be some over-gaudy colours to subdue. It is better that there should be too much life than too little, and better that criticism should find something vigorous enough to lay hold of, rather than something which cannot be felt at all. This is the time to teach children to begin their essays without preamble, by something that they really want to say, and to finish them leaving something still unsaid that they would like to have expressed, so as not to pour out to the last drop their mind or their fancy on any subject. This discipline of promptitude in beginning and restraint at the end will tell for good upon the quality of their writing.

But the work of the imagination may also betray something unreal and morbid—this is a more serious fault and means trouble coming. It generally points to a want of focus in the mind; because self predominates in the affections feeling and interest are self-centred. Then the whole development of mind comes to a disappointing check—the mental power remains on the level of unstable sixteen years old, and the selfish side develops either emotionally or frivolously—according to taste, faster than it can be controlled.

There are cross-roads at about sixteen in a girl's life. After two or three troublesome years she is going to make her choice, not always consciously and deliberately, but those who are alive to what is going on may expect to hear about this time her speech from the throne, announcing what the direction of her life is going to be. It is not necessarily the choice of a vocation in life, that belongs to an order of things that has neither day nor hour determined for it, but it is when the mental outlook takes a direction of its own, literary, or artistic, or philosophical, or worldly, or turning towards home; it may sometimes be the moment of decisive vocation to leave all things for God, or, as has so often happened in the lives of the Saints, the time when a child's first desire, forgotten for a while, asserts itself again. In any case it is generally a period of new awakenings, and if things are as they ought to be, generally a time of deep happiness—the ideal hour in the day of our early youth. All this is faithfully rendered in the essays of that time; we unsuspectingly give ourselves away.

After this, for those who are going to write at all, comes the "viewy" stage, and this is full of interest. We are so dogmatic, so defiant, so secure in our persuasions. It is impossible to believe that they will ever alter. Yet who has lived through this phase of abounding activity and has not found that, at first with the shock of disappointment, and afterwards without regret, a memorial cross had to be set by our wayside, here and there, marking the place of rest for our most enthusiastic convictions. In the end one comes to be glad of it, for if it means anything it means a growth in the truth.

The criticism of essays is one of the choice opportunities which education offers, for then the contact of mind with mind is so close that truth can be told under form of criticism, which as exhortation would have been less easily accepted. It is evident that increasing freedom must be allowed as the years go on, and that girls have a right to their own taste and manner—and within the limits of their knowledge to form their own opinions; but it is in this period of their development that they are most sensitive to the mental influence of those who are training them, and their quick responsiveness to the best is a constant stimulus to go on for their sakes, discovering and tasting and training one's discernment in what is most excellent.