The Education of Catholic Girls | Page 2

which
Catholic girls pass nowadays on leaving school is not the world of a
hundred, or of fifty, or of even thirty years ago. But this recognition
brings out, more clearly than anything else could do, the great and
unchanging fact that the formation of heart and will and character is,
and must be always, the very root of the education of a child; and it
also shows forth the new fact that at no time has that formation been
more needed than at the present day.
The pages of this book are well worthy of careful pondering and
consideration, and they will be of special value both to parents and to
teachers, for it is in their hands and in their united, and not opposing
action, that the educational fate of the children lies.

But I trust that the thoughts set forth upon these pages will not escape
either the eyes or the thoughts of those who are the public custodians
and arbiters of education in this country. The State is daily becoming
more jealous in its control of educational effort in England. Would that
its wisdom were equal to its jealousy. We might then be delivered from
the repeated attempts to hamper definite religious teaching in secondary
schools, by the refusal of public aid where the intention to impart it is
publicly announced; and from the discouragement continually arising
from regulations evidently inspired by those who have no personal
experience of the work to be accomplished, and who decline to seek
information from those to whom such work is their very life. It cannot,
surely, be for the good of our country that the stored-up experience of
educational effort of every type should be disregarded in favour of rigid
rules and programmes; or that zeal and devotion in the work of
education are to be regarded as valueless unless they be associated with
so-called undenominational religion. The Catholic Church in this and in
every country has centuries of educational tradition in her keeping. She
has no more ardent wish than to place it all most generously at the
service of the commonwealth, and to take her place in every movement
that will be to the real advantage of the children upon whom the future
of the world depends. And we have just ground for complaint when the
conditions on which alone our co-operation will be allowed are of such
a character as to make it evident that we are not intended to have any
real place in the education of our country.
May this treatise so ably written be a source of guidance and
encouragement to those who are giving their lives to the education of
Catholic children, and at the same time do something to dispel the
distrust and to overcome the hostility shown in high quarters towards
every Catholic educational endeavour.
FRANCIS CARDINAL BOURNE, ARCHBISHOP OF
WESTMINSTER.

CONTENTS
PREFACE INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
RELIGION II. CHARACTER. I. III. CHARACTER. II. IV. THE

ELEMENTS OF CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY V. THE REALITIES OF
LIFE VI. LESSONS AND PLAY VII. MATHEMATICS, NATURAL
SCIENCE, AND NATURE STUDY VIII. ENGLISH IX. MODERN
LANGUAGES X. HISTORY XI. ART XII. MANNERS XIII.
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN XIV. CONCLUSION
APPENDIX I APPENDIX II INDEX

Pair though it be, to watch unclose The nestling glories of a rose, Depth
on rich depth, soft fold on fold; Though fairer he it, to behold Stately
and sceptral lilies break To beauty, and to sweetness wake: Yet fairer
still, to see and sing, One fair thing is, one matchless thing: Youth, in
its perfect blossoming. LIONEL JOHNSON.

INTRODUCTION
A book was published in the United States in 1910 with the title,
EDUCATION: HOW OLD THE NEW. A companion volume might be
written with a similar title, EDUCATION: HOW NEW THE OLD, and
it would only exhibit another aspect of the same truth.
This does not pretend to be that possible companion volume, but to
present a point of view which owes something both to old and new, and
to make an appeal for the education of Catholic girls to have its
distinguishing features recognized and freely developed in view of
ultimate rather than immediate results.

CHAPTER I.
RELIGION.
"Oh! say not, dream not, heavenly notes To childish ears are vain, That
the young mind at random floats, And cannot reach the strain.
"Dim or unheard, the words may fall. And yet the Heaven-taught mind
May learn the sacred air, and all The harmony unwind." KEBLE.
The principal educational controversies of the present day rage round
the teaching of religion to children, but they are more concerned with
the right to teach it than with what is taught, in fact none of the

combatants except the Catholic body seem to have a clear notion of
what they actually want to