THE EDUCATION OF A YOUNG GIRL
IS IT a good thing to send a young girl away to school, and, if so,
shall one send her to boarding-school or college? are the questions
that agitate many a household where the daughter or daughters are
old enough to make these questions pertinent. Over-conscientious and
fearful mothers sometimes decide that the risk is too great in sending
girls away from home. They fear, with the loosening of home ties, a
lessening of a sense of responsibility, while at the same time they
doubt a girl’s power to get on without maternal supervision. The
judgment and experience of the world is against this point of view.
“Homekeeping youths have ever homekeeping wits,” is no more true of
boys than of girls. Going away to school should be one of the richly
vitalizing influences of life. To a certain extent a girl is thrown
on her own resources when away as she would not be at home, yet the
conditions in any school worthy of the name are such that she is
guarded and protected. At home, her friendships and acquaintances
have been made largely through the connection of her family with the
community in which she lives. Away, she must make her own friends. At
home, it is probable that mother, older sister or a kindly aunt have
done her darning and other mending. Away, she must do these things for
herself or they remain undone. In many ways the opportunity is given
her by a year or two away at school to prove herself, yet to do so
without danger, as the amateur swordsman fences with a button on his
foil. Outside of these considerations one of the most important is the
development that comes through delight in change. Novel conditions
have charm for all ages, and in youth, much more than in age, they
are a spur to endeavor. Happiness of a healthful kind stimulates the
mind, and it is commonly true that the years spent away at school are
pleasant ones.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: WHAT SCHOOL TO CHOOSE]
The advocates of the different sorts of training represented by
boarding-school and college life are often hostile to each other.
There is much to be said in favor of both educational methods, and the
decision concerning which shall be adopted for a young girl should
depend largely upon her own temperament, tastes and inclinations.
The advocates of college life are too apt to assume that the texture
of boarding-school learning is flimsy, which it sometimes is. The
friends of boarding-school life assume that a college training means an
absence of regard for the feminine graces; and it is true that some of
its representatives are not social successes. But such comment goes a
short way in helping one to a decision as to whether boarding-school or
college shall be the destination of one’s daughter.
[Sidenote: THE BOARDING-SCHOOL]
The character of the girls’ colleges in our country is much more
generally known than that of boarding-schools. The colleges are few in
number, and to their proceedings is given a degree of publicity not
accorded the proceedings of smaller educational enterprises. There are
boarding-schools and boarding-schools. Investigation can not be too
careful before placing a girl in one of them. The best offer advantages
of an admirable kind. The courses of study, while not so diverse as
those of college, are particularly adapted to feminine tastes, while
the accomplishments which tend to make social life more interesting and
agreeable are given a large share of attention. History, literature,
the modern languages, music and drawing have perhaps the foremost
places in the curriculum. Many of these schools are in cities where
opportunities are given, under proper chaperonage, for girls to see the
best theatrical performances and to hear concerts of value. In these
schools girls come into more intimate relations with their teachers
than is possible in a college, and they are also much more strictly
chaperoned. Matters of form and deportment, details of manner, so far
as they can be taught, are given thought and attention often with happy
results. One may say that a girl should learn these things at home,
but sometimes her surroundings there are not favorable and again she
needs the impetus of just such criticism as she receives at a good
boarding-school to make her aware of the value of form. The aim of
a good boarding-school is to make of a girl an attractive member of
society as well as to make her mentally appreciative. The stamp of
certain admirable boarding-schools upon the manners of the women who
have attended them is unmistakable. I once heard a man say that he
could always “spot” a pupil of Miss Porter’s famous Farmington School
within half an hour after introduction, by certain delicate formalities
in her manner.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE WOMAN’S COLLEGE]
A woman’s college offers a much wider sphere for a girl’s energies
and abilities than does boarding-school. If she loves study, is fond
of athletics and is interested widely in human nature, college is the
place for her. Here she has a chance for the development of her best
mental powers. Deportment is not one of the unwritten branches of
the curriculum as it is in the girls’ boarding-school. Nevertheless
it is taught by the social preeminence of those who bring the best
breeding with them. Though the surveillance is not what it is in
boarding-schools, it is not so necessary, because the girls are
somewhat older than those in boarding-schools and because the sentiment
of the students generally is for law and order.
[Sidenote: WELL-KNOWN COLLEGES]
The best-known girls’ colleges in the United States are situated in the
country, and the opportunity thus given for sport and for a healthy
appreciation of nature is an invaluable asset for those institutions.
At no time in life is the love of beauty at once so delicate and so
keen as in those years when one is eligible to college life. To foster
this perhaps latent appreciation by a direct contact with the beauties
of nature is one of the opportunities offered by Bryn Mawr, Vassar,
Wellesley, Smith and other well-known women’s colleges.
The three or four years in college among a hundred or more other
girls often form one of the happiest and most fruitful periods of a
girl’s life. She makes interesting and valuable friendships. Often her
knowledge of the world is broadened by visits paid to her schoolmates
in vacation time. The advantages she derives from properly directed
study are great; the advantages in other directions are possibly even
greater. A women’s college is a little world in which every variety
of femininity may be observed. The life there gives opportunity for
the development of the most diverse talents. Any sort of capability
eventually finds scope for action in college life. The serious side and
the recreative side of life find expression there. A girl who lends
herself freely to the opportunities of a college should quit its doors
prepared for social and domestic life and able also to take care of
herself financially if exigencies require.
* * * * *
The comparative cost of college and boarding-school is often an
important point in the matter of deciding a girl’s educational
destination. The best boarding-schools are more expensive than the
colleges as far as formal expenditure is concerned. A girl’s personal
expenses, though they are regulated in some boarding-schools, are in
college and at most boarding-schools what she and the family council
choose to make them.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: TRAVEL AS EDUCATION]
If college and boarding-school exercise a beneficial influence upon
the development of a girl’s mind and manners, travel is a happy third
in the list. Unfortunately travel is an expensive luxury. If, however,
the financial circumstances of a girl’s parents are such that she may
travel for six months or a year after her schooling is over, this puts
the finishing touch upon her educational opportunities. Travel is
the easiest, the quickest and the most delightful manner of gaining
knowledge in the world, while, at the same time, it is what study is
not always, an encouragement to social facility.
The young girl must be educated at home as well as away from home. The
foundation for such accomplishments as she has a preference for must
be laid there and she must prepare there, in however slight a way, for
the responsibilities that may rest upon her shoulders when she has a
house of her own. For her own training, as well as the relief of her
mother, every girl should assume some household duty or duties. But
these, unless necessity commands, should not be severe, and occasional
laxity in performance should not be dealt with harshly. Young girlhood
is a growing time and a dreaming time; and a too stern insistence upon
household duties sometimes blights important capabilities of mind and
body.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ACQUIRING ACCOMPLISHMENTS]
It was an old-fashioned idea that every girl should be equipped with
an accomplishment, should cultivate some definite ability to please.
The idea was much abused, and resulted in the torture of many innocent
persons who were compelled to look at crude sketches, to admire
grotesque embroideries and to listen to mediocre performances on the
piano. But there was at the bottom of the idea something sound and
wholesome. It is vitally important that women should please, should
help to make the wheels of life go easily. That was not an ignoble
epitaph discovered on an old tombstone in an English churchyard,
“She was so pleasant.” Perhaps in the matter of education we are
now swinging too far away from the old-fashioned ideal and are too
much inclined to regard as trifling a young girl’s special efforts
to please. Do we not somewhat puritanically regard the studies one
does not like as necessarily more efficacious than those pursued
with joy? Drawing, music, the modern languages, the art of reciting
or conversation—we speak of these usually not only as secondary in
importance to the study of Greek, Latin and mathematics, but as
involving little in the way of labor, while the truth is that the
pursuit of these subjects not only involves endless labor but a labor
that in the end unveils personality and individuality, and makes for
original interpretation of life to a degree far exceeding results from
the so-called severer branches.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE DILETTANTE]
The theory is generally disseminated that those studies which give most
pleasure to one’s self and to others when actually transformed into
accomplishments are easy of attainment and demand only the careless and
dilettante touch. The elders as well as the youth are much impregnated
with this idea. Let a girl understand when she begins to study drawing,
the violin, the pianoforte or the art of singing that no success is
possible without hard work, that the privilege of lessons will be
withdrawn if she does not put effort and determination into her work,
and results of a correspondingly good character may be forthcoming.
[Sidenote: THOROUGHNESS NECESSARY]
For the happiness of themselves and their friends, it is well that
young girls should pursue any accomplishment toward which they may have
a leaning. Certainly such a pursuit, if entered into with delicacy and
vivacity, must increase the sweetness of life by adding to one’s sense
of beauty; and it is never trite to say that a thing of beauty is a joy
forever.
Pursuit of an accomplishment does not always mean possession, but where
it does, even measurably, it means also the power of imparting pleasure
to one’s friends, and pleasure that is touched upon and mingled with
one’s own individuality. In a day when wealth counts for so much in
relation to the bestowal of pleasure, one can scarcely overestimate for
those who do not have wealth the value of the personal touch in the
entertainment of one’s friends.