Education
EDUCATION
Soul Murder in the Schools
By Ellen Key
(From “The Century of the Child.”[14])
(See page 143)
Any one who would attempt the task of felling a virgin forest with a
penknife would probably feel the same paralysis of despair that the
reformer feels when confronted with existing school systems. The latter
finds an impassable thicket of folly, prejudice, and mistakes, where
each point is open to attack, but where each attack fails because of the
inadequate means at the reformer’s command.
[14] J. G. Stokes Co., Pub.
The Old and New Schools
By Florence Elberta Barns
(From “Social Aspects of Industrial Education” in “Education”—a monthly
school magazine.)
The master of the old school looked askance at the master of the new
school, and the following conversation is recorded:
“Young man, in my day, in your day, in the present day, and in the
future day, the three R’s were, are, and will be, the necessary and most
efficient training for our school children. Can you deny the evidence of
generations trained in this way?”
“Nay, my master, I do not dispute that the three R’s are a necessity to
the mental development of the race, but my contention is that besides
this literary culture, and theoretical knowledge, a training for the
hands, and practical ability should be fostered, and included within the
curriculum of our schools. Can you deny the evidence of the present day,
testifying to the need of efficient training in all branches of industry
and business, as well as in the professions and arts? How, dear sir,
are we to meet this pressing need, and prepare our people for a life of
useful labor, if we do not begin to train them from the primary class?”
“And so, sir, you would join the ranks of those who are commercializing
all the fine arts, who are forgetting all else but money in capital
letters?”
“You do not understand, my master. Under the great economic pressure
of the times, waste-labor must be avoided, and training is the only
means of avoidance. Think of the mass of immigrants that flock to our
cities, to be amalgamated with our race. It is a laboring class, and
self-preservation demands that we provide suitable living and working
centers for it and its posterity. And our own people demand the same
consideration in view of the fact that the great majority, poor,
middle-class, and rich, are employed in some art, industrial or fine.
All fine arts, they, if we provide efficient training for skill and fine
workmanship.”
“I am grieved that one of my former pupils should so forget the ideals
of education. If you must, build schools for those who wish industrial
training, but keep our cultural schools undisturbed.”
“Ah, that would not be democratic, my master, and neither would it
be effective. Our idea is to develop both the brain and the hand—in
this way opening the door to the life work which appeals most to each
individual.”
And the master of the old school answered, “Well.”
In the above we find the prevailing controversy between the old and the
new, a controversy which must cease with the progression of thought, and
understanding of the times.
Essentials in Education
By Mary Snow
(Supervisor, Household Arts and Science, Board of Education, Chicago.
From “The Child in the City.”)
Certainly some essential is missing. Children are not dull about
significant truths. They wish to know how to read and to write and to
manipulate number processes. They have wholesome and often keen interest
in the movements and experiences of people and the great figures in
history; they work hard and cheerfully to know somewhat of the countries
of the earth. Musical expression satisfies and delights them. Art
entices them up to the point where they find that it misses practical
application, and then interest dies and with it expression. Then they
begin to reach after further reality with passionate earnestness.
They long to express themselves in tangible ways. They have a right
consciously to experience the sensations of knowing that they know and
knowing that they can do. If opportunity for “doing” has been opened
to them, they will have gained in strength of character through their
authoritative wills commanding their powers, and the purposive and
co-ordinate work of the motor phases of education will have furnished a
kind of test of progress, a mental verification of accomplishment that
can never come through any academic work. They have many measuring rods
in the evaluation of the finished task—the eye, the muscular tension,
judgment, comparison, trial. There is necessary integrity since no amount
of vanity will make the tangible result reveal anything but truth.
William James, with ever brilliant insight, said that manual training
did more for the moral strength of youth than any other subject in the
curriculum.
The Greatness of Froebel
By Marion Gertrude Haines
(In “Home Government.”)
No one before him so ably demonstrated the civic and spiritual wisdom
of Christ’s teachings as did Froebel, in discovering—not devising—the
ways and means of developing man into a self-governed being, obeying
the inner voice of conscience in the face of every temptation to which
flesh is heir, and becoming a voluntary, law-abiding citizen of both the
individual and the national home.
Mothers’ Library
By Elizabeth Cherrill Birney
(First chairman of literature in the National Congress of Mothers. From
“Parents and their Problems.”)
It seems a rather hard condition that though the years when a mother
feels most deeply her need for more knowledge of children she should
usually have least time for reading and study. This would not be so
disastrous if school and college curricula were not framed to embrace
even the slightest preparation for home life. That profession which
demands a knowledge of sanitation, dietetics, and chemistry of cooking,
careful and economic purchasing, artistic and hygienic furnishing, to
say nothing of the care of children, is surely of sufficient dignity to
deserve some preparation.... We can learn no science or art entirely
from books, but when good trails have been blazed by those who have gone
before us, it is foolish to attempt our own untried paths. Every mother
can hang a little book-shelf in her busiest corner, and put on it from
time to time a few books, which will be to her what his Blackstone is to
a lawyer, his Baedeker to a traveler.
The Aim and End of Education
By Lola Ridge
(Former organiser of the Modern School in New York. In “Everyman.”)
What do we imagine to be the end and aim of education? Most people will
say, the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge of what? Of oneself, of
humanity, of life? If this was the ideal, as conceived by the builders of
the present system, it has not been attained; or perhaps the system, like
a Frankenstein creation, has grown beyond all intent of its sponsors,
exhibiting a diabolic and independent will....
Let us examine the effect of public school education upon the psychology
of the child; then we shall see if we are “wasting our energies.”
In the first place, no gardener would think of giving each plant the
same amount of air and sun, and the same quality of soil. Yet this is
exactly what you are doing to your children, and there are as many
different kinds of children as there are different kinds of flowers.
Why pay more attention to the cultivation of a vegetable than to the
development of a human being? Each child requires individual attention,
individual understanding, and individual mental food.
Standards Raised by Women Teachers
By Anne Bigoney Stewart
(In “The Educational Review.”)
It is due to the perseverance of the women in their poorly paid duty that
teaching is gradually emerging into a regular profession with a proper
stipend and respectable standing, and now when such is the result, we
have men crowding back into the profession grumblingly, complaining of
the poor pay, and throwing up their hands in “holy horror” at the “woman
peril.”
And after all, of what does “the woman peril” consist? That boys are
being feminized; that is, that boys are being trained to decenter
standards of living? That they do not so much drink, or smoke, or, we
hope, “sow wild oats,” that they do not so much regard these acts as
manly, or a necessary part of their upbringing? That war is not a regular
occupation; that peace is desirable and to be sought after?
“That abnormal families in which the mother’s influence is too long
continued and not sufficiently counteracted by masculine control are
notoriously productive of decadence and degeneracy.”
That is certainly a grave charge! “A mother’s influence”! that which has
been the theme of poets, artists, scholars, essayists, the clergy, for
centuries, “productive of decadence and degeneracy.”
It would appear that logically as the masculine mind may think, its logic
is not unassailable.
Educating Children
By Maria Montessori
(From speech delivered in California.)
What shall we say, then, when the question before us is that of educating
children?
We know only too well the sorry spectacle of the teacher, who, in the
ordinary school room, must pour certain cut and dried facts into the
heads of the scholars. In order to succeed in this barren path she finds
it necessary to discipline her pupils into immobility and to force their
attention. Prizes and punishments are ever ready and efficient aids to
the master who must force into a given attitude of mind and body those
who are condemned to be his listeners.
The Mother’s Task
By Ida Tarbell
(See page 266)
(From “The Business of Being a Woman.”)
A woman never lived who did all she might have done to open the mind of
her child for its great adventure. It is an exhaustless task. The woman
who sees it knows she has need of all the education the college can
give, all the experience and culture she can gather. She knows that the
fuller her individual life, the broader her interests, the better for
the child. She should be a person in their eyes. The real service of the
“higher education,” the freedom to take part in whatever interests or
stimulates her—lies in the fact that it fits her intellectually to be a
companion worthy of a child.
A Plan for Improving Female Education
By Mrs. Emma Willard
(From a paper read by Mrs. Willard before the members of the New York
Legislature, in behalf of a girl’s seminary, in 1819. Reproduced in
“Woman and the Higher Education,” Distaff Series.)
The object of this address is to convince the public that a reform with
respect to female education is necessary; that it cannot be effected by
individual exertion, but that it requires the aid of the Legislature;
and, further, by showing the justice, the policy and the magnanimity
of such an undertaking, to persuade that body to endow a seminary for
females as the commencement of such reformation.
The idea of a college for males will naturally be associated with that of
a seminary, instituted and endowed by the public; and the absurdity of
sending ladies to college may, at first thought, strike every one to whom
this subject shall be proposed. I therefore hasten to observe that the
seminary here recommended will be as different from those appropriated to
the other sex as the female character and duties are from the male. The
business of the husbandman is not to waste his endeavors in seeking to
make his orchard attain the strength and majesty of his forest, but to
rear each to the perfection of its nature....
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 enlightened views of their duty, and stronger and
higher motives in its performance.
3. This plan of education offers all that can be done to preserve female
youth from a contempt of useful labor. 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 housekeeping could be raised to a
regular art, and taught from philosophical principles, it would become
a higher and more interesting occupation; and ladies of fortune, like
wealthy agriculturists, 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 endeavoring to excel others in intrinsic merit rather than
in the extrinsic frivolities of dress, furniture, and equipage.
By being enlightened in moral philosophy, and in that which teaches the
operation 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 of 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 fashion, 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 blessing of her family, the prosperity of her
country, and, finally, with everlasting pleasure to herself and them....
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, though 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.
A Moral Crusade
By Elizabeth Blackwell
(One of the brilliant Blackwell family, to which progress in our country
owes so much. Henry Blackwell married Lucy Stone, and with her became
a pioneer advocate of woman suffrage. Elizabeth took up the study of
medicine, forcing the medical colleges to open their doors to women. From
her letters.)
In the summer of 1847, with my carefully hoarded earnings, I resolved to
seek an entrance into a medical school. Philadelphia was then considered
the chief seat of medical learning in America, so to Philadelphia I
went; taking passage in a sailing vessel from Charleston for the sake of
economy....
Applications were cautiously but persistently made to the four medical
colleges of Philadelphia for admission as a regular student. The
interviews with their various professors were by turns hopeful and
disappointing....
The fear of successful rivalry which at that time often existed in the
medical mind was expressed by the dean of one of the smaller schools, who
frankly replied to the application, “You cannot expect us to furnish
you with a stick to break our heads with;” so revolutionary seemed the
attempt of a woman to leave a subordinate position and seek to obtain
a complete medical education. A similarly mistaken notion of the rapid
practical success which would attend a lady doctor was shown later by one
of the professors of my medical college, who was desirous of entering
into partnership with me on condition of sharing profits over $5,000 on
my first year’s practice.
During those fruitless efforts my kindly Quaker adviser, whose private
lectures I attended, said to me: “Elizabeth, it is no use trying. Thee
cannot gain admission to these schools. Thee must go to Paris and don
masculine attire to gain the necessary knowledge.” Curiously enough,
this suggestion of disguise made by good Dr. Warrington was also given
me by Dr. Pankhurst, the Professor of Surgery, in the largest college
in Philadelphia. He thoroughly approved of a woman’s gaining complete
medical knowledge; told me that although my public entrance into the
classes was out of question, yet if I would assume masculine attire and
enter the college he could entirely rely on two or three of his students
to whom he should communicate my disguise, who would watch the class and
give me timely notice to withdraw should my disguise be suspected.
But neither the advice to go to Paris nor the suggestion of disguise
tempted me for the moment. It was to my mind a moral crusade on which
I had entered, a course of justice and common sense, and it might be
pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to
accomplish its end.
Intellectual Women of Rome
By Lady Morgan
(See page 17)
Female amanuenses, or secretaries, or “writers out of books,” were by
no means unusual in Rome. Vespasian had a female amanuesis, Antonio,
whom he greatly esteemed and confided in. Even the Christian fathers
adopted this fashion; and Eusebius asserts that Origen had not only
young men, but young women to transcribe his books, which “they did with
peculiar neatness.” Among the accusations brought against the Roman
women of his own time by Juvenal, is that of their learning; he bitterly
attacks their presumption in studying Greek, their interlarding even
their most familiar conversations with its elegant idioms and phrases;
and, among their other crimes of acquirement, he further accuses them
of encroaching on the exclusive male prerogative of mind, by discussing
philosophical subjects, quoting favorite authors and scholiasts, their
_purism_ in affected exactness of grammar, and by their antiquarian
researches in language. On the word antiquarian, an ancient commentator
observes:—“Antiquaria, one that does refine or preserve ancient books
from corruption, one studious of the old poets and historians, one that
studies ancient coins, statues, and inscribed stones: lastly, such as use
obsolete and antiquated words. All which, though they might be counted
an overplus and curiosity in a woman, yet only the last is absolutely a
fault.”
The Power of Education
By “Ouida”
(See page 113)
That women should, however tardily, awaken to a desire for greater
intellectual light is of the utmost promise. Education cannot confer
genius, but it can do an infinite work in the refinement, the
strengthening, and the enlightening of the mind; in the banishment of
prejudice, and in the correction of illogical judgment. In view of the
manifold superstitions, intolerances and ignorances that prevail in
the feminine intelligence, and of the fearful influence which these in
turn bring to bear upon the children committed in such numbers to their
charge, no crusade that can find favor with them, towards a New Jerusalem
of Culture, can be too early encouraged.
The Vision Realized
By Bertha June Richardson, A. B.
(Holder of the Mary Lowell Stone Fellowship 1903. From “The Woman Who
Spends.”)
When the sweet faced New England woman, living her quiet life in the old
town of Halfield, stretched out her strong, helpful hands to all the
generations of girls to come, by making a woman’s college a possibility,
she was called a dreamer, a visionary woman, who had better be looked
after by some strong-minded man who could put her money to some practical
use. That vision realized has given to hundreds of women ideals and
standards which have made life full and rich.
Vocational Training for Girls
By Alice Henry
(Of Australian birth. For a number of years editor of “Life and Labor,”
the official organ of the “Woman’s Trade Union League.” Well-known
speaker on suffrage and labor problems. Author of “The Trade Union
Woman,”[15] from which the following is taken.)
Harvard was opened in 1636. Two hundred years elapsed before there was
any institution offering corresponding advantages to girls....
If these women have always lagged in the rear as increasing educational
advantages of a literary or professional character have been provided or
procured for boys, it is not strange, when, in reading over the records
of work on the few lines of industrial, educational trade training and
apprenticeship we detect the same influences at work, sigh before the
same difficulties, and recognize the old, weary, threadbare arguments
too, which one would surely think had been sufficiently disproved before
to be at least in this connection....
In such an age of transition as ours, any plan of vocational training
intended to include girls must be a compromise with warring facts,
and will therefore have to face objections from both sides, from
those forward looking ones who feel that the domestic side of woman’s
activities is over emphasized, and from those who still look back,
who will fain refuse to believe that the majority of women have to be
wage-earners for at least a part of their lives. These latter argue that
by affording to girls all the advantages of industrial training, granted,
or which may be granted to boys, we are “taking them out of the home.”
As if they were not out of the home already!
[15] Copyright by Henry Holt Publishing Co.
Traditions Upset
By Emily J. Hutchins
(American contemporary. Instructor in Economics, Barnard College, New
York. From “The Annals of the American Academy.”)
The reaction that women show today to their educational freedom upsets a
lot of the notions we have inherited about the atmosphere of seclusion in
which womanly natures have been supposed to thrive.... Whatever fault may
be found with our educational system, it has at least provided a belated
opportunity for women to share in the social stimulus that men have found
and prized in academic institutions.
The History of Women’s Education
By Mary Ritter Beard
(Quoted from “Woman’s Work in Municipalities.”)
The history of the education of women from the early days, when to
educate “shes” was viewed with horror as an immoral proposition, to the
present time when more “shes” graduate from the high schools than “hes”,
is an interesting record in itself. Even more significant, however, is
the fact that both “hes” and “shes” are educated largely by women in the
secondary schools which are the schools of “the people.”
The Professions Educational
By The Hon. Mrs. Arthur Lyttleton
(From “Women and Their Work.”)
(See page 51)
The habits of application, of concentration and of regularity which
professional training requires will never be out of place in any kind of
life, and women will be the more capable of doing, not only their own
particular kind of work, but all work, better for the experience they
have passed through. It is simply a continuation of their education,
which now very unreasonably ends at eighteen.
Woman’s Struggle for Educational Rights
By Mrs. H. M. Swanwick
(English contemporary. Author of “The Future of the Woman’s Movement,”
from which the following is taken.)
All the world knows of the foundation of the great modern career of
sick-nursing; of the more bitter and prolonged struggle of women to study
medicine and surgery and qualify as practitioners therein.... All these
changes had, to a greater or less degree, to be fought for by those who
desired them.... People resisted them with more or less tenacity, and
used against the reformers the sort of arguments they are still using
against further emancipation.... There are, of course, some Orientalists,
even in England, who think in their hearts that it was a great mistake to
teach women to read. But most people now accept the principle that women
should have the best education available, and only differ as to what that
education should be.
Equal Advantages of Education
By Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(Famous leader, with Susan B. Anthony, of the early woman suffrage
movement. From a letter quoted in “Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony.”)
Should not all women, living in states where they have the right to hold
property, refuse to pay taxes so long as they are unrepresented in the
governments?...
Man has pre-empted the most profitable branches of industry, and we
demand a place at his side; to this end we need the same advantages
of education, and we therefore claim that the best colleges of the
country be opened to us.... In her present ignorance, woman’s religion,
instead of making her noble and free, by the wrong application of great
principles of right and justice, has made her bondage but more certain
and lasting; her degradation more helpless and complete.
Intellect Wins
By Mrs. Alec Tweedie
(See page 126)
A pretty woman has the first innings, but an intelligent woman gets the
most runs. A clever woman catches out her opponents.
Education and Votes for Women
By Elizabeth Cooper
(Author of “My Lady of the Chinese Court Yard,” “Women of Egypt,” “Market
for Souls,” “The Harem and the Purdah,” “Living Up to Billy,” etc. From
“Woman and Education” in “Educational Foundations.”)
That this enlargement of the educational horizon of women in Britain
means necessarily “Votes for Women” may or may not be inferred.
Certain it is that the advancing social and economic arrangements of
modern society will add continually to the allotment to women of tasks
and responsibilities unknown to them in the past. Women will accept
such responsibilities in accordance with their ability and training in
competition with men, and their trained intelligence will become year by
year a more widely recognized fact in the minds of University authorities
and in the adjustment and enlargement of curriculum and University life.
Democratization of Learning
By Charlotte J. Cipriani
(American contemporary. Teacher, writer on educational problems. From
“Elimination of Waste in Elementary Education,” in “Education”—a monthly
magazine.)
Two processes of “democratization” are conceivable in the educational
system of a nation; one consists in lowering educational standards and
aims to the level that makes them readily acceptable and accessible to
the masses; the other consists in gradually raising the intellectual
level of the masses to the level of high and efficient educational
standards. The admission of too early specialized “vocational training”
in a public school system has a dangerous leaning towards the first
process of democratization, which is apt ultimately to defeat its own
end. That the second is of necessity a far lower and more laborious one,
does not invalidate its superiority.
Educating the Daughter
By Josephine Pitcairn Knowles
(From “The Upholstered Cage.”)
The day has now arrived when nature and fairness are proclaiming that
the same expenditure of time and money must be bestowed on the girl as
on the boy, and she should be regarded as an investment in the same way
as the boy now is. It has always been realized that unless he is given
a good education and then started properly in life, that is, given a
“shove off,” as it were, he won’t do much, and so all efforts in a family
of small means are concentrated toward helping launch the boy in life.
The idea, of course, being that he must support himself, and very likely
keep a wife and children, therefore it is more important for him to get
on well than for the girl, who has her parents to keep her until she
marries. There would be nothing against this theory if it were sound;
but where the theory breaks down is that girls and women now _do_ have
to earn their own living, and this necessity is on the increase, and the
point is that the women have often to do it on inadequate material; the
girl earns _her_ living _without_ the previous training, _without_ the
school or college training, _without_ any capital having been spent on
her as a premium, _without_ all the advantages the boy started with.
The World of Scholarship a Man’s World
By M. Carey Thomas
(See page 10)
Fifty years ago the world of scholarship was a man’s world in which
women had no share. Now although only one woman in one thousand goes
to college, even in the United States, where there are more college
women than in any other country, the position of every individual woman
in every part of the civilized world has been changed because this
one-tenth of one percent. has proved beyond possibility of question that
in intellect there is no sex. Unwillingly at first but inevitably and
irresistably men have admitted women into intellectual comradeship. The
opinions of educated women can no longer be ignored by educated men.
Social Education Important
By Helen Keller
(Helen Keller, having been born blind, deaf and dumb, is not only
remarkable in that she has mastered many things, including articulate
speech, but also that out of her reading and observations of life, she is
able to construct a philosophy obviously superior to that of the average
human being with normal faculties. The following is from “The Modern
Woman” in “The Metropolitan Magazine,” October, 1912.)
Social ignorance is at the bottom of our miseries, and if the function of
education is to correct ignorance, social education is at this hour the
most important kind of education.
The educated woman, then, is she who knows the social basis of her
life, and of the lives of those whom she would help, her children, her
employers, her employees, the beggar at her door, and her congressman at
Washington....
It is for the American woman to know why millions are shut out from
the full benefits of such education, art, and science as the race has
thus far achieved. We women have to face questions that men alone have
evidently not been able to solve....
We must educate ourselves and that without delay. We cannot wait longer
for political economists to solve such vital problems as clean streets,
decent houses, warm clothes, wholesome food, living wages, safeguarded
mines and factories, honest public schools. These are our questions.
Already women are speaking and speaking nobly, and men are speaking with
us. To be sure, some men and some women are speaking against us; but
their contest is with the spirit of life. Lot’s wife turned back; but she
is an exception. It is proverbial that women get what they are bent on
getting, and circumstances are driving them toward education.
To Reach the Divine
By Emma Marwedel
Froebel learned to recognize in each child a new educational problem, to
be solved according to its nature.... He therefore demands a methodical
unification in education, in order to reach the divine through a
unification of action.
By Mrs. Macy
(The teacher of Helen Keller.)
There is no education except self-education, no government but
self-government.
By C. Gasquoine Hartley
(Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan)
(From “The Truth About Women.”)
To assume, as Schopenhauer and so many others have done ... that woman,
on account of her womanhood is incapable of intellectual and social
development, paying her sole debt of Nature in bearing and caring for
children, is really to state a belief in decay for mankind.