EDUCATED GIRLS.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4058, 31 December 1881, Page 1

EDUCATED GIRLS.

rWe are told that - advanced mental , culture unfits women for home ;;use. _ Half-culture may do'so but anvaneed 1 mental culture wilf notjl'.as we will endeaTor to show. It would, no doubt, be well to educate bur girls with a'''view to (heir becoming suitable companions for their husband), supposing we.coUld ensure r . them all getting husbands; but,.at in' England there are more women than men," and as therefore. some of these women '. must necessarily remain unmarried, why educate her exclusively" for duties she may never be called on to fulfil P A girl's school life is admittedly short. Let her household training,. then, not be begun until she has left school, when, if she has had capacity, to past an examination in mental exercises,' she will speedily master material duties, and easily learn how. to , make pies and pudding, make beds, .starch and irop, &c. The discipline her mind has undergone and . the., method acquired . during, her traiping at school Mill enable -; her not only to acquire tbene things more ■<- quickly, but to perform them better and quicker than a.girl whose mind has not * been so disciplined. She will thus ?' make * ■'- time", for keeping np her" studies— of course to a more limited extent than:when , r at school. It has been said that the / passing of a Cambridge examination is of no earthly use. to women who marry; Is "~ it then of no use that a woman *ho is married should be able in a great measure. to educate her own children; to give a right bias to their. minds; to answer the innumerable " Why is this," and " What makes so and so" of little people; to , teach them to think accurately; to clear '' up school difficulties, &c. ? to say nothing , r at all of the great rest and refreshment to,,' her own mind to bo able to enjoy leading <. articles in the papers, magazines, &c., and to forget for a while those, minor house• .„. hold cares to which some would entirely , consign her. Is it of no earthly use that she can strengthen herself to fight against petty carking caees, by forgetting herself for a little time in that delightful abstract world of fancy and speculation which lies before us in books ? Then let us take the I oase of, a woman who does not marry. . What is she to do P Girls cannot know ~ at fifteen, an age when the higher education usually begins, whether they will marry or not. All cannot, and tbosowho do not are often obliged to earn, their own "" living. How can they do that P With a. half-education they cannot become gover- , 1 nesses. little, else is open to them. save domestic aer?ice. Thud they become .. more dependent than ever on the idea of ' marriage, and the result of such a system of education (more purely domestic than ■ anything else); would be a keener a huntthan ever amongst women after the man who is to give them a home and a position. If indeed there is one thing which can _. prevent a single woman from becoming a "melancholy." old maid, it is—genuine piety excepted—a cultivated mind which enables* her to take a larger view of life. By means of the culture begun at school through one or mother of the different doors of knowledge opened to her then, she can throw herself into one particular ; pursuit, instead of brooding over her,own -7

incomplete life. Anyone looking round will see, that dressing and flirting are the! •Ole things for which a great many of the young ladies of the present day live. Certainly young men are afraid to marry them, when these are their chief characteristics. This is not: a fault, of over but; ;»thor of under-education. A girl who can take pleasure in reading our English Ipoetfif in designing graceful forms from flowers and leaves, in reading of the manners and customs of foreign peoples, in working out complicated problems in perspective or Euclid, in reading Schiller and Goethe in the original, has so many more resources in herself that:it becomes! •n impossibility for her to spend her entire: time altering her dresses and 'costumes,; •nd going here and going there for the ■ole purpose of. flirting, because she'feels pile has more solid eDJoy men tin intellectual pursuits—pursuits which will remain a joy to her long after the age when flirting baa .become impossible, and the zest for it flied'out.' It is said, girls should 'be' educated to fit them for their station in lift, idea aims a blow at all rising in life, and cuts at the root of all healthy ifflbition. Who can tell what station in life they, may be called on to fill P Nay, lather let all girls receive a broad, thorough education,, that: supposing tjoeyj possess^ /the , for great tnings—and some women do possess it—these may produce noble and great work. And the others having less capacity, willyet find that a higher education does riot unfit them for common duties, but only renders them more helpful, more self-reliant, more sympathetic, more charitable, more true women, in short than if they confined themselves to the narrow circle of domestic duties, with the usual spice of household pride, scandal, and gossip.—Graphic. . ...