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 brainwork 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 wires 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 schoolgirl 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.’”[[287]]
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 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,[[288]] 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, battledore and shuttlecock, gardening, walking, running, etc.
Take care that the school-rooms are well ventilated, that they are not overcrowded, 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 yourself, 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 forever from the school-room.
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,[[289]] 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.
344. 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.
If you want her to be straight, let her be made strong; and if she is to be strong, she must use plenty of exercise and exertion, such as drilling, dancing, skipping, archery, croquet, hand-swinging, horse exercise, swimming, bowls, etc. This is the plan to make her back straight and her muscles strong. Why should we bring up a girl differently from a boy? Muscular gymnastic exercises and health-giving exertion are unladylike, forsooth!
HOUSEHOLD WORK FOR GIRLS.
345. Do you recommend household work as a means of health for my daughter?