EDUCATING OUR GIRLS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1601, 19 November 1912, Page 2

EDUCATING OUR GIRLS.

FAULTS TO BE REMEDIED. Miss Marv Isabel Fraser, M.A., gave an interesting address dealing with tlio education of girls before the General Assembly yesterday. In the course of her remarks, Miss Fraser said that when the modern movement for women's education began, the leaders had, perforce, to follow existing models found in schools planned by men for men, and monastic men at that. The schools made much of mind, little of body, something of soul, nothing of the inherent difference between., man's and woman's nature. Schools were organised as if girls were boys, and as if every girl were preparing tor a university course. This worked badly in two ways. The vory few girls marked by nature n.s specially qualified for university work were hampered by being taught in class with girls to whom Latin, Ureok, and mathematics were anathema, while tho latter were trying to learn Latin when they should have been learning to writo and to spell 1 and to count. Girls wero encouraged to shine in the public eye, and it became fashionable to express distaste for household.affairs. Mental and Physical Overstrain. Later, tho claims of the body made themselves heard; gymnastics and . sports came into prominence as school subjects, and ■were, and indeed still are, often overdone, just as mental work was overdone by an earlier generation. Girls educated in British schools had told her that they began by heartily disliking school games, but ended by needing them, because the "sport habit" had been formed at school. It was difficult to induce such ({iris to find exercise later on in attention to household affairs, in gardening, or in walking, or in such games as could be played at homo. Moreover, mothers had told her that, on leaving - school, manygirls went through a. period of acute discontent, because . they ' came home unprepared to be'interested in home affairs. Thus both purely mental training and over-physical training tended to turn girls' and women's minds from tlieir natural bent, while both frequently had bad mental and physical results. A Fashionable Distaste. : Distaste for household affairs-hod spread among all classes, and to-day the department of women's labour that was cry- '• ing most loudly for workers was the domestic department. The "fashion of distaste" for household duties had spread, as fashions would, to the humblest of our fellow subjects, and its absurdity had been made manifest.- The movement'in a corrective direction was world-wide, but, in most cases, domestic subjects were added ■ to an already overfull syllabus, and-were taught in too disjointed and impracticable > a fashion. Tho first step must be materially to lighten mental strain by dispensing with some of the more trying and unnecessary : subjects,-by. cutting off evening preparation of lessons, and by more rational and natural treatment of the subjects that were retained. They must also lighten physical strain by encouraging the gentler and more graceful, instead of the more violent, forms of exercise, and by discouraging over-competition in games. Next, > subjects with .a direct bearing'on homelife must be given—first, a prominent part in each day's work; second, a very practical bearing on our daily life; and third, a simple but sound scientific basis. Cookery, dressmaking, laundry work, music, drawing, painting, wood-carving, plain and art needlework, clay modelling, cardboard modelling would.' all be- taiight in this ■ spirit, a selection among' the latter subjects being made according to each girl's natural .ability.