THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2974, 6 October 1882, Page 2

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

The higher education of women, says a Home paper, has recently beenpre-' seuted to the public in a new phase. We are informed in paragraphs which have not received any contradiction from the authorities, and therefore may be accepted as substantially true, that the very youg ladies who constitute the students at Girton College, Cambridge, have, after solemn debate, decreed by a majority of nearly two to one (27 to 14) the desirability of the abolition of the House of Lords. The majority of persons who have given Girton College any consideration, have regarded it as an institution where young girls fresh from school could receive instruction of a more advanced kind than that capable of being obtained at ordinary academies, and where their progress in literal ure and art could be tested by examinations equivalent to. or identical with, those of the University. That these young girls should devote their time and intellectual powers to the discussion of political subjects, of which they are practically profoundly ignorant, has not perhaps entered into the imagination of their parents and guardians, who are furnishing the money for their education. By the great majority of sensible people debating societies are viewed with unconcealed contempt. They serve to pander to the vanity of glib talkers who have a superficial smattering of the snbject under debate, and that is the utmost that can be said in ■ their favor. That a college which should be devoted to the education of female children should encourage or permit political subjects to be debated at a spouting club is deeply to be regretted. The so-called Higher Education of Women has had to endure a large amount of prejudice, which it has, to a great extent overcome; but there is one form of opposition which it is impossible to withstand, and that is the contempt excited by the acts of its supporters. We can imagine nothing better calculated to make advanced female education ridiculous than that the Girton girls, who hare but recently left the nursery and the schoolroom, and whose experience of the world and knowledge of practical politics is absolutely nothing, should have debated the desirability of the abolition of one of the three estates of the realm. The whole proceeding is so supremely silly that it is calculated to injure very materially the character of the college in the estimation of all sensible people.