The Education of American Girls | Page 2

uneducated minds, the constant effort to state facts clearly, distinctly, and freed from unnecessary details, almost universally induce a straightforwardness of speech, which savors, to others who are not immature, of brusqueness and positiveness, if it may not deserve the harsher names of asperity and arrogance. It is not these in essence, though it appear to be so, and thus teachers often give offense and excite opposition when these results are farthest from their intention. In the case of these essays, this professional tendency may also have been aggravated by the circumstances under which they have been written, the only hours available for the purpose having been the last three evening hours of days whose freshness was claimed by actual teaching, and the morning hours of a short vacation.
I do not offer these explanations as an apology, simply as an explanation. No apology has the power to make good a failure in courtesy. If passages failing in this be discovered, it will be cause for gratitude and not for offense if they are pointed out.
The spirit which has prompted the severe labor has been that which seeks for the Truth, and endeavors to express it, in hopes that more perfect statements may be elicited.
With these words, I submit the result to the intelligent women of America, asking only that the screen of the honest purpose may be interposed between the reader and any glaring faults of manner or expression.
ANNA C. BRACKETT.
117 East 36th street, New York City, January, 1874.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. Education of American Girls Anna C. Brackett. 11
II. A Mother's Thought Edna D. Cheney. 117
III. The Other Side Caroline H. Dall. 147
IV. Effects of Mental Growth Lucinda H. Stone. 173
V. Girls and Women in England and America. Mary E. Beedy. 211
VI. Mental Action and Physical Health. Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D. 255
VII. Michigan University Sarah Dix Hamlin. 307
VIII. Mount Holyoke Seminary Mary O. Nutting. 318
IX. Oberlin College Adelia A. F. Johnston. 329
X. Vassar College. Alida C. Avery, M.D. 346
XI. Antioch College " " 362
XII. Letter from a German Woman Mrs. Ogden N. Rood. 363
XIII. Review of "Sex in Education." Editor. 368
XIV. Appendix. 392

"Die Weltgeschichte ist der Fortschritt in das Bewusstseyn der Freiheit."--HEGEL.

THE EDUCATION
OF
AMERICAN GIRLS.
"Who educates a woman, educates a race."

THE
EDUCATION OF AMERICAN
GIRLS.
There seems to be at present no subject more capable of exciting and holding attention among thoughtful people in America, than the question of the Education of Girls. We may answer it as we will, we may refuse to answer it, but it will not be postponed, and it will be heard; and until it is answered on more rational grounds than that of previous custom, or of preconceived opinion, it may be expected to present itself at every turn, to crop out of every stratum of civilized thought. Nor is woman to blame if the question of her education occupies so much attention. The demands made are not hers--the continual agitation is not primarily of her creating. It is simply the tendency of the age, of which it is only the index. It would be as much out of place to blame the weights of a clock for the moving of the hands, while, acted upon by an unseen, but constant force, they descend slowly but steadily towards the earth.
That this is true, is attested by the widely-spread discussion and the contemporaneous attempts at reform in widely-separated countries. While the women in America are striving for a more complete development of their powers, the English women are, in their own way, and quite independently, forcing their right at least to be examined if not to be taught, and the Russian women are asserting that the one object toward which they will bend all their efforts of reform is "the securing of a solid education from the foundation up." When the water in the Scotch lakes rises and falls, as the quay in Lisbon sinks, we know that the cause of both must lie far below, and be independent of either locality.
The agitation of itself is wearisome, but its existence proves that it must be quieted, and it can be so quieted only by a rational solution, for every irrational decision, being from its nature self-contradictory, has for its chief mission to destroy itself. As long as it continues, we may be sure that the true solution has not been attained, and for our hope we may remember that we
"have seen all winter long the thorn First show itself intractable and fierce, And after, bear the rose upon its top."
We, however, are chiefly concerned with the education of our own girls, of girls in America. Born and bred in a continent separated by miles of ocean from the traditions of Europe, they may not unnaturally be expected to be of a peculiar type. They live under peculiar conditions of descent, of