In inquiring, concerning the benefits of the plan proposed, I shall
proceed upon the supposition, that female seminaries will be patronized
throughout our country.
Nor is this altogether a visionary supposition. If one seminary should
be well organized, its advantages would be found so great, that others
would soon be instituted; and, that sufficient patronage can be found
to put one in operation, may be presumed from its reasonableness, and
from the public opinion, with regard to the present mode of female
education. It is from an intimate acquaintance, with those parts of
our country, whose education is said to flourish most, that the writer
has drawn her picture of the present state of female instruction;
and she knows, that she is not alone, in perceiving or deploring its
faults. Her sentiments are shared by many an enlightened parent of a
daughter, who has received a boarding school education. Counting on the
promise of her childhood, the father had anticipated her maturity, as
combining what is excellent in mind, with what is elegant in manners.
He spared no expense that education might realize to him, the image of
his imagination. His daughter returned from boarding school, improved
in fashionable airs, and expert in manufacturing fashionable toys; but,
in her conversation, he sought in vain, for that refined and fertile
mind, which he had fondly expected. Aware that his disappointment has
its source in a defective education, he looks with anxiety on his other
daughters, whose minds, like lovely buds, are beginning to open. Where
shall he find a genial soil, in which he may place them to expand?
Shall he provide them male instructors?--Then the graces of their
persons and manners, and whatever forms the distinguishing charm of the
feminine character, they cannot be expected to acquire.--Shall he give
them a private tutoress? She will have been educated at the boarding
school, and his daughters will have the faults of its instruction
second-handed. Such is now the dilemma of many parents; and it is one,
from which they cannot be extricated by their individual exertions. May
not then the only plan, which promises to relieve them, expect their
vigorous support.
Let us now proceed to inquire, what benefits would result from the
establishment of female seminaries.
They would constitute a grade of public education, superior to any yet
known in the history of our sex; and through them, the lower grades
of female instruction might be controlled. The influence of public
seminaries, over these, would operate in two ways; first, by requiring
certain qualifications for entrance; and secondly, by furnishing
instructresses, initiated in their modes of teaching, and imbued with
their maxims.
Female seminaries might be expected to have important and happy
effects, on common schools in general; and in the manner of operating
on these, would probably place the business of teaching children, in
hands now nearly useless to society; and take it from those, whose
services the state wants in many other ways.
That nature designed for our sex the care of children, she has made
manifest, by mental, as well as physical indications. She has given us,
in a greater degree than men, the gentle arts of insinuation, to soften
their minds, and fit them to receive impressions; a greater quickness
of invention to vary modes of teaching to different dispositions;
and more patience to make repeated efforts. There are many females
of ability, to whom the business of instructing children is highly
acceptable, and, who would devote all their faculties to their
occupation. They would have no higher pecuniary object to engage their
attention, and their reputation as instructors they would consider
as important; whereas, whenever able and enterprizing men, engage in
this business, they consider it, merely as a temporary employment,
to further some other object, to the attainment of which, their best
thoughts and calculations are all directed. If then women were properly
fitted by instruction, they would be likely to teach children better
than the other sex; they could afford to do it cheaper; and those
men who would otherwise be engaged in this employment, might be at
liberty to add to the wealth of the nation, by any of those thousand
occupations, from which women are necessarily debarred.
But the females, who taught children, would have been themselves
instructed either immediately or indirectly by the seminaries. Hence
through these, the government might exercise an intimate, and most
beneficial control over common schools. Any one, who has turned his
attention to this subject, must be aware, that there is great room for
improvement in these, both as to the modes of teaching, and the things
taught; and what method could be devised so likely to effect this
improvement, as to prepare by instruction, a class of individuals,
whose interest, leisure, and natural talents, would combine to make
them pursue it with ardour. Such a class of individuals would be raised
up, by female seminaries. And therefore they would be likely to have
highly important and happy effects on common schools.
It is believed, that such institutions, would tend to prolong, or
perpetuate our excellent government.
An opinion too generally prevails, that our present form of government,
though good, cannot be permanent. Other republics have failed, and
the historian and philosopher have told us, that nations are like
individuals; that, at their birth, they receive the seeds of their
decline and dissolution. Here deceived by a false analogy, we receive
an apt illustration of particular facts, for a general truth. The
existence of nations, cannot, in strictness, be compared with the
duration of animate life; for by the operation of physical causes,
this, after a certain length of time, must cease: but the existence of
nations, is prolonged by the succession of one generation to another,
and there is no physical cause, to prevent this succession’s going on,
in a peaceable manner, under a good government, till the end of time.
We must then look to other causes, than necessity, for the decline
and fall of former republics. If we could discover these causes, and
seasonably prevent their operation, then might our latest posterity
enjoy the same happy government, with which we are blessed; or if but
in part, then might the triumph of tyranny, be delayed, and a few more
generations be free.
Permit me then to ask the enlightened politician of my country, whether
amidst his researches for these causes, he cannot discover one, in the
neglect, which free governments, in common with others, have shown, to
whatever regarded the formation of the female character.
In those great republics, which have fallen of themselves, the loss
of republican manners and virtues, has been the invariable precursor,
of their loss of the republican form of government. But is it not in
the power of our sex, to give society its tone, both as to manners
and morals? And if such is the extent of female influence, is it
wonderful, that republics have failed, when they calmly suffered that
influence, to become enlisted in favour of luxuries and follies, wholly
incompatible with the existence of freedom?
It may be said, that the depravation of morals and manners, can be
traced to the introduction of wealth, as its cause. But wealth will be
introduced; even the iron laws of Lycurgus could not prevent it. Let us
then inquire, if means may not be devised, to prevent its bringing with
it the destruction of public virtue. May not these means be found in
education?--in implanting, in early youth, habits, that may counteract
the temptations, to which, through the influence of wealth, mature age
will be exposed? and in giving strength and expansion to the mind, that
it may comprehend, and prize those principles, which teach the rigid
performance of duty? Education, it may be said, has been tried as a
preservative of national purity. But was it applied to every exposed
part of the body politic? For if any part has been left within the
pestilential atmosphere of wealth, without this preservative, then
that part becoming corrupted, would communicate the contagion to the
whole; and if so, then has the experiment, whether education may not
preserve public virtue, never yet been fairly tried. Such a part has
been left in all former experiments. Females have been exposed to
the contagion of wealth without the preservative of a good education;
and they constitute that part of the body politic, least endowed by
nature to resist, most to communicate it. Nay, not merely have they
been left without the defence of a good education, but their corruption
has been accelerated by a bad one. The character of women of rank and
wealth has been, and in the old governments of Europe now is, all that
this statement would lead us to expect. Not content with doing nothing
to promote their country’s welfare, like pampered children, they
revel in its prosperity, and scatter it to the winds, with a wanton
profusion: and still worse,--they empoison its source, by diffusing a
contempt for useful labour. To court pleasure their business,--within
her temple, in defiance of the laws of God and man, they have erected
the idol fashion; and upon her altar, they sacrifice, with shameless
rites, whatever is sacred to virtue or religion. Not the strongest
ties of nature,--not even maternal love can restrain them! Like the
worshipper of Moloch, the mother while yet yearning over the new born
babe, tears it from the bosom, which God has swelled with nutrition
for its support, and casts it remorseless from her, the victim of her
unhallowed devotion!
But while, with an anguished heart, I thus depict the crimes of my sex,
let not the other stand by and smile. Reason declares, that you are
guiltier than we. You are our natural guardians,--our brothers,--our
fathers, and our rulers. You know that our ductile minds, readily
take the impressions of education. Why then have you neglected our
education? Why have you looked with lethargic indifference, on
circumstances ruinous to the formation of our characters, which you
might have controlled?
But it may be said, the observations here made, cannot be applied to
any class of females in our country. True, they cannot yet; and if they
could, it would be useless to make them; for when the females of any
country have become thus debased, then, is that country so corrupted,
that nothing, but the awful judgments of heaven, can arrest its career
of vice. But it cannot be denied, that our manners are verging towards
those described; and the change, though gradual, has not been slow:
already do our daughters listen with surprise, when we tell them of the
republican simplicity of our mothers. But our manners are not as yet so
altered, but that, throughout our country, they are still marked with
republican virtues.
The inquiry, to which these remarks have conducted us is this--What
is offered by the plan of female education, here proposed, which may
teach, or preserve, among females of wealthy families, that purity of
manners, which is allowed, to be so essential to national prosperity,
and so necessary, to the existence of a republican government.
1. Females, by having their understandings cultivated, their reasoning
powers developed and strengthened, may be expected to act more from the
dictates of reason, and less from those of fashion and caprice.
2. With minds thus strengthened they would be taught systems of
morality, enforced by the sanctions of religion; and they might be
expected to acquire juster and more enlarged views of their duty, and
stronger and higher motives to its performance.
3. This plan of education, offers all that can be done to preserve
female youth from a contempt of useful labour. The pupils would become
accustomed to it, in conjunction with the high objects of literature,
and the elegant pursuits of the fine arts; and it is to be hoped that
both from habit and association, they might in future life, regard it
as respectable.
To this it may be added, that if housewifery could be raised to a
regular art, and taught upon philosophical principles, it would become
a higher and more interesting occupation; and ladies of fortune, like
wealthy agriculturalists, might find, that to regulate their business,
was an agreeable employment.
4. The pupils might be expected to acquire a taste for moral and
intellectual pleasures, which would buoy them above a passion for show
and parade, and which would make them seek to gratify the natural love
of superiority, by endeavouring to excel others in intrinsic merit,
rather than in the extrinsic frivolities of dress, furniture, and
equipage.
5. By being enlightened in moral philosophy, and in that, which teaches
the operations of the mind, females would be enabled to perceive the
nature and extent, of that influence, which they possess over their
children, and the obligation, which this lays them under, to watch
the formation of their characters with unceasing vigilance, to become
their instructors, to devise plans for their improvement, to weed out
the vices from their minds, and to implant and foster the virtues. And
surely, there is that in the maternal bosom, which, when its pleadings
shall be aided by education, will overcome the seductions of wealth and
fashion, and will lead the mother, to seek her happiness in communing
with her children, and promoting their welfare, rather than in a
heartless intercourse, with the votaries of pleasure: especially, when
with an expanded mind, she extends her views to futurity, and sees her
care to her offspring rewarded by peace of conscience, the blessings of
her family, the prosperity of her country, and finally with everlasting
happiness to herself and them.
Thus, laudable objects and employments, would be furnished for the
great body of females, who are not kept by poverty from excesses. But
among these, as among the other sex, will be found master spirits, who
must have pre-eminence, at whatever price they acquire it. Domestic
life cannot hold these, because they prefer to be infamous, rather
than obscure. To leave such, without any virtuous road to eminence, is
unsafe to community; for not unfrequently, are the secret springs of
revolution, set in motion by their intrigues. Such aspiring minds, we
will regulate, by education, we will remove obstructions to the course
of literature, which has heretofore been their only honorable way to
distinction; and we offer them a new object, worthy of their ambition;
to govern, and improve the seminaries for their sex.
In calling on my patriotic countrymen, to effect so noble an object,
the consideration of national glory, should not be overlooked. Ages
have rolled away;--barbarians have trodden the weaker sex beneath their
feet;--tyrants have robbed us of the present light of heaven, and fain
would take its future. Nations, calling themselves polite, have made
us the fancied idols of a ridiculous worship, and we have repaid them
with ruin for their folly. But where is that wise and heroic country,
which has considered, that our rights are sacred, though we cannot
defend them? that tho’ a weaker, we are an essential part of the body
politic, whose corruption or improvement must affect the whole? and
which, having thus considered, has sought to give us by education,
that rank in the scale of being, to which our importance entitles us?
History shows not that country. It shows many, whose legislatures
have sought to improve their various vegetable productions, and their
breeds of useful brutes; but none, whose public councils have made
it an object of their deliberations, to improve the character of
their women. Yet though history lifts not her finger to such an one,
anticipation does. She points to a nation, which, having thrown off
the shackles of authority and precedent, shrinks not from schemes of
improvement, because other nations have never attempted them; but
which, in its pride of independence, would rather lead than follow, in
the march of human improvement: a nation, wise and magnanimous to plan,
enterprising to undertake, and rich in resources to execute. Does not
every American exult that this country is his own? And who knows how
great and good a race of men, may yet arise from the forming hand of
mothers, enlightened by the bounty of that beloved country,--to defend
her liberties,--to plan her future improvement,--and to raise her to
unparalleled glory?