Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children

by Pye Henry Chavasse

It might be said, that I am travelling out of my province in making remarks on corporal chastisement in schools? But, with deference, I reply that I am strictly in the path of duty. My office is to inform you of everything that is detrimental to your children's health and happiness; and corporal punishment is assuredly most injurious both to their health and happiness. It is the bounden duty of every man, and especially of every medical man, to lift up his voice against the abominable, disgusting, and degrading system of flogging, and to warn parents of the danger and the mischief of sending boys to those schools where flogging is, except in rare and flagrant cases, permitted.

351. Have you any observations to make on the selection, of a female boarding-school?

Home education, where it be practicable, is far preferable to sending a girl to school; as at home, her health, her morals, and her household duties, can be attended to much more effectually than from home. Moreover, it is a serious injury to a girl, in more ways than one, to separate her from her own brothers: they very much lose their affection for each other, and mutual companionship (so delightful and beneficial between brothers and sisters) is severed.

If home education be not practicable, great care must be taken in making choice of a school. Boarding school education requires great reformation. Accomplishments, superficial acquirements, and brain-work, are the order of the day; health is very little studied. You ought, in the education of your daughters, to remember that they, in a few years, will be the wives and the mothers of England; and, if they have not health and strength, and a proper knowledge of household duties to sustain their characters, what useless, listless wives and mothers they will make!

Remember, then, the body, and not the mind, ought, in early life, to be principally cultivated and strengthened, and that the growing brain will not bear, with impunity, much book learning. The brain of a school-girl is frequently injured by getting up voluminous questions by rote, that are not of the slightest use or benefit to her, or to any one else. Instead of this ridiculous system, educate a girl to be useful and self-reliant. "From babyhood they are given to understand that helplessness is feminine and beautiful; helpfulness, except in certain received forms of manifestation, unwomanly and ugly. The boys may do a thousand things which are 'not proper for little girls.'"—A Woman's Thoughts about Women.

From her twelfth to her seventeenth year, is the most important epoch of a girl's existence, as regards her future health, and consequently, in a great measure, her future happiness; and one, in which, more than at any other period of her life, she requires a plentiful supply of fresh air, exercise, recreation, a variety of innocent amusements, and an abundance of good nourishment—more especially of fresh meat; if therefore you have determined on sending your girl to school, you must ascertain that the pupils have as much plain wholesome nourishing food as they can eat, [Footnote: If a girl have an abundance of good nourishment, the schoolmistress must, of coarse, be remunerated for the necessary and costly expense; and how can this be done on the paltry sum charged at cheap boarding schools? It is utterly impossible! And what are we to expect from poor and insufficient nourishment to a fast-growing girl, and at the time of life, remember, when she requires an extra quantity of good sustaining, supporting food? A poor girl, from such treatment, becomes either consumptive or broken down in constitution, and from which she never recovers, but drags on a miserable existence.] that the school be situated in a healthy spot, that it be well-drained, that there be a large play-ground attached to it, that the young people are allowed plenty of exercise in the open air—indeed, that at least one-third of the day is spent there in croquet, skipping, archery, battle-dore and shuttlecock, gardening, walking, running, &c.

Take care that the school-rooms are well-ventilated, that they are not over-crowded, and that the pupils are allowed chairs to sit upon, and not those abominations—forms and stools. If you wish to try the effect of them upon yourselves, sit for a couple of hours without stirring upon a form or upon a stool, and, take my word for it, you will insist that forms and stools be banished for ever from the schoolroom.

Assure yourself that the pupils are compelled to rise early in the morning, and that they retire early to rest; that each young lady has a separate bed [Footnote: A horse-hair mattress should always be preferred to a feather-bed. It is not only better for the health, but it improves the figure] and that many are not allowed to sleep in the same room, and that the apartments are large and well-ventilated. In fine, their health and their morals ought to be preferred far above all their accomplishments.

352. They use, in some schools, straight-backed chairs to make a girl sit upright, and to give strength to her back: do you approve of them?

Certainly not: the natural and the graceful curve of the back is not the curve of a straight-backed chair. Straight-backed chairs are instruments of torture, and are more likely to make a girl crooked than to make her straight. Sir Astley Cooper ridiculed straight-backed chairs, and well he might. It is always well for a mother to try, for some considerable time, such ridiculous inventions upon herself before she experiments upon her unfortunate daughter. The position is most unnatural. I do not approve of a girl lounging and lolling on a sofa; but, if she be tired and wants to rest herself, let her, like any other reasonable being, sit upon a comfortable ordinary chair.