CHAPTER XXI.
Woman's Higher Education.
T has been seen that in the rearing and training of her children, woman has a great work to perform; that in this work she exerts an incalculable influence upon untold numbers, and that she molds the minds and characters of her sons and daughters. How important, then, that she should cultivate her mental faculties to the highest extent, if for no other reason than to fit herself the better for the performance of this great duty of educating her children. How important it is, also, that she should look to the higher education of her daughters, who, in turn, will become mothers of future generations, or may, perhaps, by some vicissitude of fortune, become dependent upon their own resources for support. With the highest culture of the mental faculties, woman will be best enabled to faithfully perform whatever she may undertake.
TRAIN YOUNG WOMEN TO SOME OCCUPATION.
Owing to the changes in social and industrial life which have crowded many women from their homes into business and public life, women must train for their branch of labor as men train for their work, if they wish to attain any degree of success. Even where women have independent fortunes, their lives will be all the happier if they have been trained to some occupation, that, in case of reverses, may be made a self-sustaining one. A young woman who is able to support herself, increases her chances for a happy marriage, for, not being obliged to rely upon a husband for support or for a home, she is able to judge calmly of an offer when it comes, and is free to accept or decline, because of her independence. Women are capable of and adapted to a large number of employments, which have hitherto been kept from them, and some of these they are slowly wrenching from the hands of the sterner sex. In order that women may enter the ranks of labor which she is forcing open to herself, she needs a special education and training to fit her for such employment.
EDUCATION OF GIRLS TOO SUPERFICIAL.
The school instruction of our girls is too superficial. There is a smattering of too many branches, where two or three systematically studied and thoroughly mastered, would accomplish much more for them in the way of a sound mental training, which is the real object of education. The present method of educating young girls is to give them from five to ten studies, in which they prepare lessons, and this, too, at an age when their physical development suffers and is checked by excess of mental labor. Such a course of instruction, bestowing only a smattering of many branches, wastes the powers of the mind, and deters, rather than aids, self-improvement. It is only a concentration of the mind upon the thorough acquisition of all it undertakes that strengthens the reflective, and forms the reasoning, faculties, and thus helps to lay a solid foundation for future usefulness. The word education means to educe, to draw out the powers of the mind; not the cramming into it of facts, dates and whole pages to be repeated verbatim.