SEX IN EDUCATION.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 80, 2 September 1874, Page 4

SEX IN EDUCATION.

[From the “ Queen.”J

Should women have the same education as men 1 is*a question asked in the “ Queen.” How are we to test women’s education ? If they are not to receive the same education as men, what are they to have? These are all questions of great and increasing interest. A note of warning has been sounded from America in a little book written by Dr Edward Clarke, which is an expansion of two lectures on the education of girls that he delivered before an audience which included many teachers and other persons interested in education. The substance of Dr Clarke’s book consists in the assertion that in America educationists are too apt to forget that women are women, and not men; that in work they subject girls and young women to a strain which their physical structure will not bear ; and that young women, successful students of such colleges as Yiscar and Cornell Colleges attain the highest honors as students at the expense of their health and the destruction of their special functions as women. From a wide experience Dr Edward Clarke gives instances which proves what he asserts ; and he exhorts teachers in America to reconsider their ways and to refrain from educating young men and young women together, and from expecting from girls the same efforts, physically and mentally, as can be made by young men. Dr Clarke has made statements in a very plain manner, setting forth, in terms not frequently found beyond the pages of a medical journal, the evils which in his practice he has found to arise from the system of education which is popular in America. The volume has been known in England for several months, but has been brought into special prominence by an article in the “Fortnightly Review ” on “ Sox in Mind and Education,” by Dr Maudsley. In this article Dr Maudsley repeats and enforces the warning given by Dr Clarke. In consequence of the attention thus directed to the matter, several journals have given expression to their opinions, and there appears to be some danger lest we, who are only wakening to the importance of the complete education of women, should be frightened at the outset, and, for fear of doing too much, should end in doing nothing at all. We are bound to confess our obligations to

Dr Clarke and Dr Maudsley ' for speaking fearlessly the warning which they consider to be wanted. It is granted without a moment’s hesitation that the majority of women will marry, and that to be wives and mothers is their natural and legitimate vocation. It is also granted that any system of education which forgets that a woman is a woman, and endeavors to educate her without regard to her peculiarities, mental and physical, must be mistaken, and will in the end defeat its own purpose. Cn the other hand, we are quite certain that in all which has yet been done in England there is not the slightest danger of forgetting that women are being educated, and that the fears of over-work in school girls in consequence of increased mental education are, to say the least, as yet premature. Women of our day are suffering from under rather than over education; and the waste of energy and mental power among women is enormous. Our medical men could tell us, if they would, of soured lives, of hysterical and nervous affections, of insanity itself, produced among women by want of healthy occupation.