Means and Ends of Education

by John Lancaster Spalding

If she gain a wider and more varied interest in life, she will become happier, more willing and more able to help the progress of the race. Like man, she exists for herself and God, and in her relations to others, her duties are not to the home alone, but to the whole social body, religious and civil. Whether man or woman, is a minor thing; to be wise and worthy and loving is all in all. Our deeper consciousness and practical recognition of the equality of the sexes is better evidence that we are becoming Christian and civilized than popular government and all our mechanical devices. We, however, still have prejudices as ridiculous and harmful as that which made it unbecoming in a woman to know anything or in a man of birth to engage in business. If we hold that every human being has the right to do whatever is fair or noble or useful, we must also hold that it is wrong to throw hindrance in the way of the complete education of any human being. We at last, however slowly, are approaching the standpoint of Christ, who, with his divine eye upon the sexless soul, overlooks distinctions of sex, and placing the good of life in knowing and loving, in being and doing, makes it the privilege and duty of all to help all to know and love, to become and do. Is it true? Is it right? These are the immortal questions, springing from what within us is most like God, and they who deal deceitfully with them have no claim upon attention. They are jugglers and liars.

What is developed is not really changed, but made more fully itself, and by giving to woman a truer education, the beauty and charm of her nature will be brought more effectively into play. None of us love "a woman impudent and mannish grown;" but knowledge and culture and strength of mind and heart and body have no tendency to produce such a caricature. Whether there is question of man or woman, the aim and end of education is to bring forth in the individual the divine image of humanity as it exists in the thought of God, as it is revealed in the life of Christ.

"Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she more of man:
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care;
More as the double-natured poet each."

The apothegm, man is born to do, woman to endure, no longer commends itself to our judgment. Both are born to do and to endure; and in educating girls, we now understand that it is our business to strengthen them and to stimulate them to self-activity. We strive to give them self-control, sanity, breadth of view, wide sympathies, and an abiding sense of justice. One might, indeed, be tempted to think it were well woman should retain a touch of folly, that she still may be able to believe the man she loves is half divine; but to think so one must be a man, with his genius for self-conceit. To train a girl chiefly with a view to success in society is to pervert, is to hinder from attaining to the power of free, rich, and varied life. It is to neglect education for accomplishments; it is to prefer form to substance, manner to conduct, graceful carriage and dress to thought and love. We degrade her when we consider her as little else than a candidate for matrimony. A man may remain single and become the noblest of his kind, and so may a woman. Marriage is first of all for the race; the individual may stand alone and grow to the full measure of human strength and worth. The popular contempt for single women who have reached a certain age, is but a survival of the contempt for all women which is found among savages and barbarians. In the education of woman, as of man, the end is increase of power,—of the might there is in intelligence and love, of the strength there is in gentleness and sweetness and light, of the vigor there is in health, in the rhythmic pulse and in deep breathing, of the sustaining joy there is in pure affection and in devotion to high purposes. Whether there is question of boys or of girls, the safe way is to strive to make them all it is possible for them to become, putting our trust for the rest in human nature and in God; for talent, like genius, is a divine gift, and to prevent its development is to sin against religion and humanity. For girls as for boys, the aim should be not knowledge, but power; not accomplishments, but faculty. Nine-tenths of what we learn in school is quickly forgotten, and is valueless unless it issue in increase of moral and intellectual strength. "In whatever direction I turn my thoughts," says Schleiermacher, "it seems to me that woman's nature is nobler and her life happier than man's; and if ever I play with an idle wish it is that I might be a woman." Hardly any man, I imagine, would rather be a woman, and many women doubtless would rather be men; and yet there is much in Schleiermacher's thought, if we believe, as the wise do believe, that love is the best, and that they who love most are the highest and, therefore, the happiest, since the noblest mind the best contentment has.

What fountains to the desert are,
What flowers to the fresh young spring,
What heaven's breast is to the star,
That woman's love to earth doth bring.

Whether mid deserts she is found,
Or girt about by happy home,
Where'er she treads is holy ground
Above which rises love's high dome.

Or be she mother called or wife,
Or sister or the soul's twin mate,
She still is each man's best of life,
His crown of joy, his high estate.

What is our Christian faith but the revelation of the supreme and infinite worth of love, as being of the essence of God himself? Is it not easy to believe that to a loving soul in an all-chaste body the unseen world may lie open to view? That Joan of Arc saw heavenly visions and heard whisperings from higher worlds, who can doubt that has considered how her most pure womanly soul redeemed a whole people, and, by them forsaken, from midst fierce flames took its flight to God?

Should women vote? The rule of the people is good only when it is the rule of the good and wise among the people, and of these, women, in great numbers, are part. The leadership of the best comes near to being the leadership of God. But the question of the suffrage for women is grave; it is one on which an enlightened mind will long hold judgment in suspense. Does not political life, as it exists in our democracy, tend to corrupt both voters and office-seekers? Is it not largely a life of cant, pretence, and hypocrisy, of venality, corruption, and selfishness, of lying, abuse, and vulgarity? Do not public men, like public women, sell themselves, though in a different way? Is the professional politician, the professional caucus-manipulator, the professional voter, the type of man we can admire or respect even? The objection so frequently raised, that political life would corrupt women, has, at least, the merit of a certain grim humorousness. Could it by any chance make them as bad as it makes men? To tell them they are the queens of the home, to whom the mingling with plebeians is degrading, is an insult to their intelligence. We have forsworn kings and queens, both in private and in public life, and at home women are, for the most part, drudges. What need is there of a hollow phrase when the appeal to truth is obvious?

"A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine."