mental development of sisters having only a common school education
with that of college-trained brothers, and this at all periods and in
every direction. And it is in view of such multiplied illustrations
that I understand how it is that women, with much fewer advantages of
classic and mathematical training than college graduates enjoy, prove
better educators than men for children and for the more mature of their
own sex.
Here I wish it to be understood, that my aim in remarks on colleges is
not to present their advantages or deficiencies, except so far as they
are influencing female institutions to the same courses of study and
organization. I am not qualified to advise as to institutions for men;
but the profession and pursuits of women as a sex are to be so widely
diverse from those of men that they should secure as diverse methods of
training.
I regard the effort to introduce women into colleges for young men as
very undesirable, and for many reasons. That the two sexes should be
united, both as teachers and pupils, in the same institution seems very
desirable, but rarely in early life by a method that removes them from
parental watch and care, and the protecting influences of a home.
There will always be exceptional cases when children have no suitable
parents or guardians; while at a maturer period, after the principles
and habits are largely solidified, there are advantages in sending a
child from home. The true method, at the immature periods of life, is
the union of the home and the school in protecting from dangers and in
forming good habits and principles.
I have repeatedly resided in the immediate vicinity of boarding-schools
for boys, embracing the children of my relatives or intimate friends,
and never without wonder and distress at the risks to some and the
ruin to others constantly going on. Such institutions always have had
inmates shrewd and often malignant, while the rash curiosity of youth
is ready to meet any danger.
Withdrawn from parents and sisters, and all home influences, the young
boy is lodged, often in isolated dormitories or in negligent private
families, with class-mates of all kinds of habits. And so tobacco,
creating an unnatural thirst for other exciting stimulants, is secretly
introduced; then alcoholic drinks; then the most gross and licentious
literature; and all so secretly that teachers can not meet the evil. I
have known these results repeatedly in schools under the most careful,
pious, and celebrated teachers.
Thus, at the age most susceptible and most dangerous, the young boy is
taken from mother and sisters and the safe guardianship of a home, and
amid such perils committed to strangers who, with multitudinous pupils
and cares, can give no special care to any one child.
Another general principle attained by my experience is, that both
quickness of perception and retention of memory depend very greatly on
the _degree of interest_ excited. It is not the most learned teacher
that always has most success in imparting permanent knowledge. As an
illustration, when I commenced teaching Latin, it was under the care of
a very accurate and faithful brother, who stood first in scholarship in
Yale as valedictorian. I was then only a few pages ahead of my scholars
in the _Liber Primus_, and yet, when they had finished most of Virgil
and selections from Cicero, this brother and several other examiners
said that they had never seen any classes of boys superior to my class
in accurate and complete scholarship.
Even in the pronunciation of the French, I have found that it was not
the best educated teacher, speaking with the purest Parisian accent,
who was most successful, but rather a lady whose enthusiasm and
perseverance and carefulness would not allow a single syllable to be
mispronounced by her pupils. This explains how it is that women with
less education so often prove more successful than men in managing
female institutions.
By this same general principle of quickening intellect by exciting
interest, I learned the importance of educating every young girl with
some practical aim, by which, in case of poverty, she might support
herself; and also, of selecting for this end some pursuit suited to her
natural tastes and character. To study what is liked and with the hope
of thus securing some agreeable and substantial advantage in future
life more than doubles the interest, and thus quickens and exalts the
intellectual powers.
In this view of the case, it became an important inquiry as to which of
the employments and studies of our higher female seminaries could be
made available in securing a remunerative profession to a woman, and
one that would be suitable for her sex. Here, again, I may be allowed
to introduce some of my own experience as guiding to a conclusion, at
least in one particular.
All through my childhood, my father daily read the Bible, in course, at
family prayers, and when his inquisitive children asked questions as
to matters of delicacy, they were told that the Bible was given by God
to instruct men in all their duties, and that some things were not for
children to know till they were men and women; that this inquiry was
about things they could not understand, and that it was wrong to try to
do so.
After such wise training, my first experience as a teacher of Latin was
to a class of young girls as ignorant as myself of all the wickedness
of the world; and then I was plied with questions I could not answer
except by aid of a brother; when to my dismay and disgust I found the
worst vices of heathenism, and those most likely to tempt young boys,
made respectable and attractive by the charms of classic poetry, and
forming a part of a boy's training for college.
And here I would ask why it has come to pass that the Bible, in its
original Greek, is turned out of the college course of most of our
leading colleges, (for it formerly was required,) while the vulgarity
and vice of heathenism are preserved and made attractive in fitting
boys for college? Is it not time for woman to have a more decided
ministry in training young boys for their college life? Should not
women be trained in Latin and Greek, so that mothers and sisters thus
taught could fit young boys for college, instead of sending them at
the most perilous age away from the watch and care of a home and all
female influence, to boys' boarding-schools, to mix with all sorts, and
there be taught all manner of evil? Teachers trained in these languages
could go into families to aid a mother in these duties, and would be
liberally compensated. This, then, is a profession for which a woman
can be trained even in our common schools as well as in female colleges.
Another very interesting fact revealed by personal experience is,
that there is no knowledge so thorough and permanent as that gained
in teaching others. Repeatedly, in my own case, and still oftener in
the case of my teachers, has it been observed that a lesson or problem
supposed to be comprehended, was imperfect, and corrected only in
attempts to aid others in understanding it. In no other profession is
the sacred promise, "Give and it shall be given unto you," so fully
realized as in that of a teacher.
This view of the case has led me to devise methods by which every
pupil, in school-days, shall have an opportunity to attempt to teach,
and be taught how to do it in the best manner; and that, too, in every
stage of advancement from lowest to highest. There are methods which
secure this advantage with great economy of time and labor which can
not be detailed here.
Another very important principle in acquiring knowledge is the
taking of a few branches at one time, and especially in having
these associated in their character, so that each is an assistance
in understanding and remembering the other. For illustration, let
geography, history, polite literature, and composition, for a certain
period, be the leading studies of a class which has completed a short
course in these studies in the preparatory school. Then let history
be studied by successive periods, marked by some great events or by
some distinguished characters; and as each country is introduced, let
its civil, political, and physical geography be fully studied; its
animals and productions be illustrated by drawings and by selection
from travels read to the class; this might be done either in connection
with the history or as a separate class in geography, conducted in
connection with the class of history and reciting at a different hour.
At the same time, the teacher of the class in literature and
_belles-lettres_ could be presenting at another hour the state of
science, literature, and the fine arts, with illustrative drawings,
and also an account of the prominent learned men and authors of that
period, with some account of their most celebrated works, reading
some selections. For example, suppose, the period that of Alexander
the Great, by this method, one teacher would introduce most of the
geography of countries of the ancient world, while the literature
and the fine arts of Greece in its palmy days would, under another
teacher, be connected with the study of its history. At the same time
the exercises in a daily class in composition might have topics and
exercises to correspond.
So in the period of the crusades; in one class, the history would be
studied; in another, the civil, political, and physical geography of
the countries introduced; in another, the history of literature, the
fine arts, and the distinguished authors, with some account of their
works. This period might be still more vividly presented in standard
works of fiction, such as Scott's _Talisman_ and _Ivanhoe_, to be read
in hours of social gathering or at home.
To make room for such a method, much of the minute and uninteresting
details now so excessive in our geographies and histories, which are
forgotten as soon as learned, would be omitted for these more valuable
and more interesting exercises. On such a plan, the pupil would have
three or four recitations on diverse topics, and yet so connected that
each would illustrate and vivify the other, while the interest thus
excited would make permanent in the memory all these details.
There is great loss of time and labor in the common method of pursuing
four, five, or six disconnected branches of study. The mind is
distracted by the variety, and feels a feeble and divided interest
in all. In many cases, this method of _cramming_ the mind with
uninteresting and disconnected details serves to debilitate rather than
to promote mental power. The memory is the faculty chiefly cultivated,
and this at the expense of the others. This method has been greatly
increased since the honors of graduating have become so popular in
female colleges and high-schools.
The excess of uninteresting details is a serious objection to many
text-books of history and geography. It is very much to be regretted
that the plan introduced in Woodbridge and Willard's Geography, by
which details are systematized under general heads, is so widely
neglected.
No experience has been more valuable to me than that relating to
physical training. Few are aware how much can be done in schools to
promote development, health, and the proper and graceful use of the
body and limbs. My residence in such a large number and variety
of health establishments, in studying the causes and cure of the
prevailing debility and diseases of American women, has led to the
conviction that there are very few diseases or deformities which a
teacher properly trained may not remedy by natural methods, and those
which may be made a part of school training.
Here I would invite the special attention of mothers and teachers to
a work on the Diseases of Women, by Dr. George H. Taylor, published
by G. Maclean, 85 Nassau St., N. Y., in which such natural methods
are presented, many of which can be employed in the family and school
without the attendance of a physician.
In the early part of my school experience, a European lady artist of
fine personal appearance offered to teach in my school a system of
exercises by which she herself, once a humpback cripple, was restored
to a perfect and graceful figure. These were disconnected exercises,
one portion of which I introduced into my work on physiology and
calisthenics as what could be easily used in all schools without
demanding a separate room and dress for the purpose.
Other portions I combined into a system of calisthenic exercises
_set to music_, and demanding a separate room, and this method was
extensively introduced into schools until Dr. Dio Lewis prepared his
system, now extensively used.
The difficulties of Dr. Lewis's method are, that it demands a separate
dress and room for the purpose, which multitudes of schools will not
adopt, and also is so violent as to endanger the health of delicate
young girls, while it has but little tendency to promote ease and
gracefulness of person and movements. For these reasons it is
constantly passing out of use after a short trial.
In place of this, I have originated another method by which personal
defects and deformities are remedied, and gracefulness in the movement
of head, body, and limbs promoted. It includes exercises which _gently_
train all the muscles, which are varied and entertaining, and which
are performed to music, the pupils singing songs prepared for each
exercise.
The results in curing defects and promoting health, ease, and
gracefulness of movement and manner have been so remarkable as to
excite some wonder that, even in dancing-schools, so little has been
attempted in these particulars, when so much might be so easily
effected. The proper and graceful mode of walking, sitting, and
using the hands and arms is rarely taught in any schools. So, also,
the training of the voice to agreeable tones and enunciation in
conversation is almost never attempted, and yet few things have a more
constant influence in giving pleasure.
The regulation and use of amusements as a part of education is, as
yet, scarcely recognized as a school duty. There is nothing that gains
more personal regard and influence with pupils than joining in their
amusements, while opportunities are thus given to promote both health
and literary improvement. And teachers need this kind of exercise and
relaxation as much or more than their scholars.
One very valuable method is combining the reading of interesting works
of fiction with the period of history pursued in school hours, and also
with ornamental needle-work pursued while listening to reading. In long
winter evenings, an hour for study, an hour for active amusements, and
an hour for this kind of reading and needle-work would unite health,
pleasure, and literary improvement in an unusual degree.
In resuming the religious training of an institution embracing pupils
whose parents hold views differing essentially from mine, it becomes
my duty to state the method I shall pursue. I propose to avoid all
conflict with opinions taught to my pupils by their parents and
clergymen. I shall simply take the teachings of Christ as my only
guide, and present, as he did, "Our Father in heaven" as a kind and
sympathizing parent, who loves and cares for _all_ the children he
has created more tenderly than any earthly parent can do; who ever is
seeking their best good; who is pleased when they strive to do right,
and grieved when they do wrong.
If any come to me for help in regard to theological doctrines, I shall
teach them the simple laws of interpretation used in common life, and
how to employ them in studying for themselves the teachings of the
Bible. I shall assume the foundation principle of the teachings of
Jesus Christ as the basis of religious training. I mean _the dangers of
the future world_. For it was the prime object of his advent to teach
us these dangers, and the way of escape.
Here I shall avoid all theories and all speculations, and confine
myself strictly to _the facts_ taught by Jesus Christ. I shall assume
as true _the fact_ revealed by the only person who has died and
returned to this life to tell us what awaits us in that dark and silent
land toward which we all are hastening; the solemn and dreadful _fact_
that there are such awful dangers in the world to come that the chief
end and aim of this life should be to save ourselves and all we can
influence, and, if need be, at the sacrifice of every earthly plan and
enjoyment.
Still more solemn to each individual mind is _the fact_ taught by our
Lord, that the number of those who escape an awful doom in the future
life depends on the character and efforts of the followers of Christ.
I shall assume as true the _fact_ revealed by Jesus Christ that
the _only_ way of salvation is by _faith_ in our Creator; not a
mere intellectual belief in his existence and laws, but a faith
including this belief and also practical obedience to his laws; by
_repentance_, not a mere emotion of sorrow, but including the ceasing
of disobedience; by _love_, not chiefly emotional, but rather that
which is thus defined by inspiration, "This is the love of God, that ye
keep his commandments."
_Obedience to the laws of our Creator_, physical, social, and moral,
being the chief element of the _faith_, _repentance_, and _love_ by
which alone we escape the dangers of the future world, the question
will be urged as to _the degree_ of obedience which will secure safety.
Here we find in Christ's teachings that _perfect_ obedience is not
indispensable to salvation. The demand is that "the heart" (that is,
the chief aim and interest) be devoted to such obedience. We are to
"seek _first_" the kingdom of God and _his righteousness_. And all
who do this, in both the Old Testament and the New, are recognized as
the righteous, as the children of God, and as heirs to the eternal
blessedness of his kingdom.
It is the revelation of the dangers of the life to come which decides
the character of the worldly educator in contrast to that of the
Christian. The one has for the leading interest and aim to secure the
enjoyments of this life; the other has as the chief interest and aim to
follow Christ in self-denying labors to save as many as possible from
the dangers of the life to come. The one lives as if there were little
or no danger in the future world. The other toils, as if in the perils
of a shipwreck, to save as many as possible and at whatever personal
sacrifice of ease or worldly enjoyment. The one finds little occasion
for self-sacrificing labors; the other is constantly aiming to save
others from sin and its ruin by daily self-denying efforts.
It was "for the joy that was set before him" that "the Shepherd and
Bishop of souls" "endured the cross, despising the shame." And when he
invites his followers to take and bear the same cross, he encourages
with the assurance that this yoke is easy and this burden light, and
that it brings "rest to the soul."
And here, for the encouragement of my pupils and friends, I feel bound
to give my testimony to the verity of these promises.
It is now more than forty years that my chief interest and aim has been
to labor to save my fellow-men to the full extent of my power. To this
end I have sacrificed all my time, all my income, my health, and every
plan of worldly ease and pleasure. With sympathies that would naturally
seek the ordinary lot of woman as the ideal of earthly happiness,
with no natural taste for notoriety or public action, with tastes for
art, and imaginative and quiet literary pursuits, I have, for all
that period, been doing what, as to personal taste, I least wished to
do, and leaving undone what I should most like to do. I have been for
many years a wanderer without a home, in delicate health, and often
baffled in favorite plans of usefulness. And yet my life has been a
very happy one, with more enjoyments and fewer trials than most of my
friends experience who are surrounded by the largest share of earthly
gratifications. And since health is restored, except as I sympathize
in the sorrows of others, I am habitually as happy as I wish to be in
this world. And this is not, as some may say, the result of a happy
temperament; for in early life, at its most favored period, I was happy
chiefly by anticipations that were not realized, and never with that
satisfying, peaceful enjoyment of the present, which is now secured,
and is never to end.
* * * * *
The preceding views lead to inquiries of great practical importance,
such as these:
Is it consistent with Christian principles to take children from the
care of parents at the most critical period of life, and congregate
them in large boarding-schools and colleges, where temptations multiply
and individual love and care are diminished?
Is it practicable, in public and private schools, to institute
methods by which each pupil shall be trained according to peculiar
wants, so that deficient faculties shall be developed, and unfortunate
intellectual, physical, and moral traits or habits be rectified?
Can such schools institute methods by which every pupil shall, at
least, _commence_ a training for some business in future life, to which
natural abilities and tastes incline, and in which success would be
most probable?
Can woman's distinctive profession be made a large portion of her
school education?
To aid in deciding these questions, the following is given as the
_ideal_ at which I have been aiming in efforts to establish a _Woman's
University_; by which I mean, not a large boarding-establishment of
pupils removed from parental care, but an institution embracing the
whole course of a woman's training from infancy to a self-supporting
profession, in which both parents and teachers have a united influence
and agency.
According to this ideal, such an institution would be divided into
distinct schools; all under the same board of supervision, and all
carrying out a connected and appropriate portion of the same plan.
These are:
1. The _Kindergarten_, for the youngest children, who are not to use
books;
2. The _Primary School_, for children just commencing the use of books;
3. The _Preparatory School_, introductory to the higher;
4. The _Collegiate School_, embracing a course of four years;
5. The _Professional School_, to prepare a woman for all domestic
duties and for a self-supporting profession.
For the control of all these there would be such a _division of
responsibilities_ as follows:
1. The first would be the _department of intellectual training_;
committed to a woman of high culture in every branch taught in the
collegiate school; possessing quick discernment, intellectual and
moral force, and great interest in her special department. To her
would be committed the superintendence of all the schools, except the
professional, and it would be her duty to secure _perfect lessons_ from
every pupil by the following method.
She would first gain from the teachers such an arrangement of lessons
for every child as is fitted to its ability, and, if need be, have
classes so divided that those of nearly equal ability shall be in one
class, that the brighter or more advanced might not be retarded. Then,
at the close of the daily school, it would be the duty of every teacher
to send every pupil who has not a _perfect_ lesson, whatever might be
the cause, to the charge of this lady superintendent, who would keep
them with her until each had studied and recited the imperfect lesson
in the most satisfactory manner. By this method perfect lessons will be
secured every day from every pupil.
It would also be her duty to carry out a method, which will not here be
detailed, by which, after due training, every pupil shall occasionally
act as teacher under her supervision. By this and another method,
not here indicated, great economy of time will be secured to pupils
who ordinarily are obliged to spend much time in recitation-rooms in
hearing others recite, without any special benefit to themselves,
and involving great trial of their patience, and also temptation to
irregularities. Likewise it would be the duty of this teacher to
ascertain intellectual defects, and adapt measures for the remedy;
also to ascertain, by aid of both parents and teachers, natural tastes
and aptitudes, with reference to special school-training in branches
preparatory to a self-supporting profession.