The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35

by Various

First then, we find that the education which boys receive from teachers, is much more scientific and complete than that of the girls. The latter are sent to school but a few years, and those during the earlier period of their lives, before the development of the reasoning powers. What they learn at school, therefore, must be acquired by the exercise of memory alone, and not by the employment of the far higher powers of judgment, reason and reflection. These latter powers are not generally developed before the age of seventeen or eighteen, and in some cases still later. It is for this reason we so often find the mature man failing to fulfil the promise of his youth. In the early part of our lives we learn principally by memory, and the boy with the most ready memory therefore, is he who treasures up the knowledge generally acquired in youth with most facility. He, therefore, is apt to pass for the brightest genius. But it may happen that this bright youth may never develope to any extent the reasoning powers; and if so, he will rarely go much beyond the mere smartness and quickness of youth. Memory will ever be his principal and greatest faculty, and with it alone he can never travel out of the common routine of knowledge, or disenthral himself from the dominion of mere precedent and example. On the other hand, we frequently see the dull boy developing at the age of maturity a large share of the reasoning power, and infinitely surpassing, in stretch of mind and depth of research, the individual who far outstripped him in his boyhood. Every man can readily call to mind illustrations of the remarks here made. Newton never exhibited any very great range of faculty till he commenced the study of the mathematics; and Dean Swift, the great wit and philosopher, is said to have been rather a dull boy.

Now then, just at the period when the reasoning faculties are about developing themselves—when a new intellectual apparatus is just coming into play, by which we are capable of achieving at school, in one or two years, more than we have done by all our past labors—the girl is taken from her studies, enters into society, plunges into all the scenes of gaiety and fashion, and is frequently married before that age at which the boy is sent to college. It is impossible then, under the prevalence of such a system as this, to give an education at all scientific to the female. Her mind at school is not sufficiently developed to receive such an education. You frequently find our female teachers professing to teach the higher branches of science, such as chemistry, natural philosophy, moral and mental philosophy, and political economy. I do not pretend to call in question the capacity of such teachers, or their ability to teach what they profess to do; but I do assert that most of our young ladies are not competent at the time they are sent to school to acquire such knowledge. They skip, at so early a period of life, as lightly and fantastically over the buried treasures of science, as they would over the floor of the ball room. I have never known an individual, no matter how apparently bright his intellect—no matter how much Latin and Greek, and Grammar and English he had studied, who was capable, at the age of sixteen, of mastering the abstruse principles of the philosophy of the human mind. Such a science as this absolutely requires a development of the higher powers of the mind, before it can be studied with any degree of success; and that development very rarely takes place before the age of seventeen, no matter how stimulating may have been the previous education of the youth.

But again: not only is the female stopped in her studies at a time of life when she is becoming most capable of acquiring knowledge, but, even whilst at school, her studies are of a lighter character, contributing more to accomplishment and grace, but far less to intellectual vigor than those of the boy. Much of her time is consumed in music, painting, needle work, &c. while the boy is laboring over his Greek and Latin. I do not pretend to condemn this difference in education. It arises principally from the opposite position of the two sexes in society, as we shall soon see. But I would like to see a classical education become more fashionable among the ladies than it has heretofore been. I would not insist upon such studies at a later period of life, when the mind might be capable of mastering those of a higher and more useful order; but between the ages of ten and fifteen, there is nothing with which I am acquainted that can be so advantageously studied as the Latin and Greek. "The grammatical education," it has been justly observed by D. Stewart, "which boys receive while learning Latin, by teaching them experimentally the aid which the memory derives from general rules, prepares them for acquiring habits of generalization when they afterwards enter on their philosophical studies." I am happy to find the great authority of Mr. Stewart to be decidedly in favor of giving to females a classical education. In a foot note of Vol. III of Philosophy of the Human Mind, he says: "Latin, I observe with pleasure, is now beginning to enter more into the system of female education, and nothing could have so long delayed so obvious an improvement, but those exceptionable passages with which the Latin classics abound, and from which it is devoutly to be wished that the common school books were carefully purged, in editions fitted for the perusal of youth of both sexes."

Not only, however, are boys confined to studies which invigorate and discipline the mind more thoroughly than those of the girls, but they are much more stimulated and encouraged by parents, guardians, and friends, to persevere in the arduous, and at first excessively disagreeable career of study and literary labor. Whilst the father is perfectly contented with the most superficial knowledge—with the little music, and the few graces and accomplishments which his daughter acquires at a boarding school—he watches narrowly the progress of his son. He stimulates him by every means to assiduity and exertion. He impresses upon his mind the important truth, that his standing, his career in after life, his ultimate success, all may depend upon these his preparatory exertions. It is to be expected, under this unequal system of stimulation, that the efforts of the boys will generally be greater than those of the girls.

Those who have not reflected much upon this subject, can form no adequate conception of the vast influence exerted over the minds of students by that discipline which depends upon a well directed system of opinion and encouragement, entirely extraneous to the school or the academy. Those who have attempted to teach the children of savages in New Zealand and New Holland, in the isles of the Pacific, or on our own continent, have all borne witness to the truth of this remark. For example, a teacher in New Zealand tells us that the first day his scholars met they were exceedingly anxious to learn; it was a new thing: they, and their parents too, expected some sudden, mysterious kind of benefit which was to result from this system, requiring no great lapse of time, or exertion on the part of the children. In a day or two the confinement and tedium of school hours became intolerable; the children became lazy in spite of all the efforts of the teacher. Parents knew not the advantages of an education, and consequently did not enforce the regular attendance of the pupils, nor stimulate them to exertion; and for this reason the school soon became a total failure.

From all these causes combined, we are not to wonder that the education of a boy up to the age of seventeen or eighteen, is of a more invigorating character than that of the girl. At this age the girl is taken home to be turned out, as it is termed, and the boy is sent, when the parent's circumstances will admit it, to college. The college education, therefore, of the young men, may be considered as a clear superaddition to that which young ladies receive. It is the college education which is decidedly the most efficacious, when properly conducted, in nurturing and developing the higher powers of the mind. The lecturers in well endowed institutions, are generally men of superior attainments and intellectual powers. The division of mental labor, in consequence of the number of professors, renders each one more perfect in his department. The library and apparatus are great advantages not possessed at common schools. Well delivered lectures too, upon the text of some good author, though they may not impart a greater fund of positive information than might be acquired by reading, yet they deeply interest the attention, and stimulate the exertions of the student; they awaken a spirit of inquiry and research; they teach him to examine and sift all he peruses with a skeptical mind. They break the charm which is created by mere precedent and written authority, and furnish, if I may so express myself, the leading strings by which we are gently led forth to more hardy and manly explorations in the field of science and literature. All these are advantages exclusively enjoyed by our young men, and hence, so far as the school education of the sexes is concerned, there is no question that men have decidedly the advantage over women.

This then must certainly be looked upon as one of the most powerfully operating causes of the intellectual differences between the sexes. But it is only a proximate cause, and the question immediately presents itself, how has it happened that the young men have been so much more universally and deeply educated in all ages and countries?

And here we are led to a consideration of the effects of that more enlarged and general education which arises from physical and moral causes, independently of mere teachers. I have already explained the causes which assign to woman the domestic sphere, and all the occupations pertaining to it, and to man the out of door world with all the business, occupations, and cares pertaining to its management. These separate, distinct, and widely different spheres in which the two sexes move, as we have already observed, generate characters distinctly marked and widely different. And it is not to be wondered at that these characters, so totally different, belonging to persons moving in different spheres, should require different kinds and degrees of intellectual powers. Woman is domestic in her habits, she requires therefore a knowledge of all those minutiæ—all those details which can best befit her for her domestic occupations. She is more concerned with the individual than with the multitude. She feels more deeply interested in a mere family, than in a whole nation. Hence she studies individual character, individual disposition, and the motives by which individuals are governed, more than she does the general traits of the multitude, the distinctive character of nations, or the great and general principles by which they are governed. Woman is the delight and ornament of the social circle. She therefore aims to acquire that knowledge, and become possessed of those graces and accomplishments which may cause her to be admired by all while she is walking the golden round of her pleasures and duties; her object is rather to please and fascinate the imagination than to instruct the understanding. She is more humane, more tender, sympathetic, and moral than man, and, consequently, she is more interested in the study of the feelings and the passions than in that of the understanding and the intellectual powers. In general she is more eager for the perusal of all that addresses itself to the fancy and the feelings, such as novels, romances, and poems, than for the study of philosophy and science. In fine she is much more literary than scientific.

Abstraction and Generalization.

We can now easily account for that great difference which we observe in the intellectual powers of the sexes, dependent on habits of abstraction and generalization. Undoubtedly one of the greatest and most useful powers of the human mind, is that by which we are enabled to classify and generalize our ideas—that power which enables us, from the observance of multitudes of facts and details, to seize on those which possess a resemblance, to arrange them together under genera and species, and thus to arrive at general principles or facts applicable to thousands of cases which may occur in our passage through life. It is this power of abstraction and generalization which may be truly said to give to our reasoning faculties the wings of the eagle. We are enabled thereby to soar to a height, and command an extension of prospect which cannot be reached by those who do not cultivate this power. It is the great labor saving machinery in the economy of the human mind, and belongs in all its perfection only to a few gifted and educated minds, capable of rising to an altitude far, very far beyond the common intellectual level. According to the degree in which this noble faculty is possessed, the metaphysicians have made a division of the human race, very unequal as to numbers, into men of general principles or philosophers, and men of detail. The former possessing minds inured to habits of abstraction and generalization, the latter more conversant with mere individuals and individual character, with the details and minutiæ of common life, and therefore better suited to the ordinary routine of every day duties in the common transactions of the world. But if I may borrow the sentiment of Mr. Burke, when the path is broken up, the high waters out, and the file affords no precedent, then men who possess minds of comprehension and generalization, are required to lead the way through the chaos of difficulties and dangers which surround them.