The Education of American Girls | Page 2

implying, as it does, division of labor, necessarily renders
all persons more or less one-sided. In the teaching profession, the
voluntary holding of the mind for many hours of each day in the
position required for the work of educating 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