ON EDUCATION.
“Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed.”--TENNYSON, “The
Princess”.
In order to understand Dorothea Beale’s work and that of her many
contemporaries who were working towards the same end, it is necessary
to know something of the depths to which girls’ education had sunk in
that day. All readers of Ruskin’s “Sesame and Lilies” are familiar
with his bitter invective against the attitude of parents towards this
important question, and his passionate appeal for reform. And Ruskin
was only one of the many men who realised the pity of the paltry and
superficial education that girls received, and the extent to which the
whole world suffered on this account. So strong had public feeling
become among the better educated on this burning question that, in the
year 1864, a Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted; and as far as
possible a thorough investigation was made of the subject. Reports on
Girls’ Schools were given by Mr. Fitch, Mr. Bryce, and others.
To all interested in education the Blue Book is an extremely
interesting document. The evidence and reports are based on what was
seen and known, and present a terrible indictment of the then condition
of girls’ schools.
“Although,” says Mr. Bryce, “the world has now existed for several
thousand years, the notion that women have minds as cultivable and
worth cultivating as men’s minds is still regarded by the ordinary
British parent as an offensive, not to say a revolutionary, paradox.”
Dorothea Beale’s report, the one with which we are most concerned here,
is very comprehensive, and gives not only her theories of education but
also an account of the methods employed in her school. The questions
asked give a good idea of the many questions that disturbed the minds
of thoughtful people of that day; the anxiety lest higher education
should injure the health of girls; the fear of the over-stimulating
effects of examinations, of the publicity of examination results and of
the possible effects on girls’ natural reserve and modesty.
In her reply to the various questions asked, Dorothea Beale gave a
good deal of information about her own school and the condition of
education it revealed. The Entrance Examination at Cheltenham showed as
a rule deplorable results. Frequently girls came from expensive schools
incapable of writing, spelling, or composing in their own language,
almost ignorant of French grammar and scarcely able to work correctly
the simplest sums in arithmetic.
“I think the remedy for bad work,” said she, “is to bring such work
to the light. I think it is because it has all been carried on in
darkness, because the parents are not able to distinguish between good
and bad, and nobody knows that things have reached such a state.”
She then went into some particulars about the work at Cheltenham
Ladies’ College, hours of work, the rule by personal influence
rather than by punishments, the law of silence and her approval of
examinations as leading to more thorough work. She also went into the
reasons why she considered that women were better educators of girls
than men, and _ceteris paribus_ were quite equal to them as teachers.
The education of boys at that time she considered to be rather
unsatisfactory, and too limited in scope. She did not believe that boys
and girls should be taught on absolutely different lines, as that would
undoubtedly hinder friendship and _camaraderie_ in marriage as well as
in ordinary social intercourse.
On the question of health Miss Beale was most emphatic. She did not
believe that study alone injured health, and in her belief she is more
in sympathy with the thought of to-day than with that of twenty or
thirty years ago. Examinations and study in the early days of higher
education for women seemed to work a good deal of havoc with health.
But when we look back in the light of modern thought much of the harm
seems to have been wrought by unscientific arrangement of hours of
work--it was considered heroic to “burn the midnight oil”; the eating
of insufficient or unsuitable food; the undertaking of strenuous work
by delicate girls unfit for hard work of any kind; and the lack of
wholesome recreation.
When she was asked by Mr. Acland about the effect of eagerness in study
on the health of girls about sixteen, she replied:--
“I think it improved their health very much, and I am sure great
harm is often done by a hasty recommendation to throw aside all study
when a temperate and wisely regulated mental diet is really required.
They will not do nothing--you cannot say to the human mind that it
shall absolutely rest; but if they have not wholesome and proper and
unexciting occupations they will spend their time on sensational novels
and things much more injurious to their health. When I have heard
complaints about health being injured by study, they have proceeded
from those who have done least work at college. Indeed I do not know
of any case of a pupil who has really worked and whose health has been
injured: we have had complaints in a few cases where the girls have
been decidedly not industrious.”
The following emphatic statement expresses the opinion of most
educationalists on the deplorable effect that “just going to live
at home” has on the health of many girls. There are few things that
teachers of senior girls dread more than an aimless life in a home
where there are no responsibilities and no definite duties. There is no
real reason, of course, why this should be so, as a girl of leisure at
home has often opportunities of doing work that no one else can do; but
many lack the energy and enterprise for seeking out such work, and are,
in consequence, idle and miserable:--
“For one girl in the higher middle classes who suffers from overwork,
there are, I believe, hundreds whose health suffers from the feverish
love of excitement, from the irritability produced by idleness and
frivolity and discontent. I am persuaded, and my opinion has been
confirmed by experienced doctors, that the want of wholesome occupation
lies at the root of much of the languid debility of which we hear so
much after girls have left school.”
She also gave some account of her own methods of teaching. French
and German were studied before Latin and Greek. In Geometry she
always dealt with the propositions as riders, and employed methods
which, twenty years later, became common in all schools. This was
somewhat extraordinary at a time when many children, boys and girls
alike, understood so little of what was required, that they learned
the propositions by heart. Science was taught so as to create
not specialists but human beings with an intelligent but general
understanding of the phenomena of everyday life. It is interesting
to read in a pamphlet published this year, 1919, by the Ministry
of Reconstruction, that much of the present day lack of interest
in Science is due to the lack of general training of this kind.
Foundations are laid at school as if every man and every woman were
going to be a scientist, and the average boy and girl leave school with
a certain amount of skill in measuring and weighing, but with none of
that illuminating general knowledge that makes the world so vastly
interesting.
In religious teaching, “we try,” said Dorothea Beale, “to make our
teaching practical as regards the daily duties of life upon which we
are all agreed, instead of dwelling on points of doctrine wherein we
differ”.
Dorothea Beale was always anxious to work in sympathy with parents, not
in antagonism to their aims. She realised, as does every wise teacher,
that parents see a quite different side of their children and was glad
of any information that might be a help in understanding the child. She
was very desirous that people should be frank with her if there was any
cause of dissatisfaction with the school, and was most anxious to know
if a child was at all overworked. Any complaint of this kind was at
once dealt with, and if a child was overworked the remedy of dropping
one or two subjects was usually applied.
Along with other educationalists of that day Miss Beale deplored
the excessive amount of time given to the practice of the piano,
complaining that it absorbed energies that ought to be used for the
general culture of the mind. She suggested that no girl should give
more than one hour a day to the piano, unless she had decided talent,
that parents should cease to attach so exaggerated a value to this
accomplishment, and that those who had a natural incapacity should be
allowed to leave off music altogether.
Our generation is beginning at last to allow music for girls to take
only its fair share of time along with other subjects and to train the
mind and soul to appreciate rather than the hands merely to perform. We
are beginning to realise that born musicians are few, though the need
for music in life is universal. To train the ear to hear, the body to
feel rhythm, is held to be more important than the mere technique of
piano-playing.