Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1874-01-22
Education of Girls.

Colonel Higginson writes to the
Herald of Health in this strain:
':W alking down the street with a
Greek book under my arm the other
day, [ joined lady who asked to see
the book. She examined it with in
terest, read some lines aloud, and sigh
ed as she gave it back. Il liked
Greek better than anything [ ever
studied she said-and | knew sher
father, clergyman, had been rather
an eminent scholar-'but my friends
of both sexes thought it unwomanly,
so [ gave it up 1t brought back to
me the old complaint of Queen Christ
ina to Nine. Dacier, Such pretty
girl as you are Are you not ashamed
to be go learned =
'The higher education Of women is,
in this respect, like one Of Spenser's
palaces in the 'Faerie Queen, that it
is guarded by series Of ghostly SEN
tinels, all individually powerless as you
approach, but collectively formidable
to the Imagination. There is series
of facilities, each of which has been
exposed a great many times, but still
they rear their heads, unconscious of
apnihilation. Every energetic woman,
every man who has had daughter to
educate, has encountered and over
come them; still it is impossible to ap-
proach the subject without at least rec
ognizing their existence as you pass.
They resemble the Portuguese soldiers
who used to be instructed to attack
the enemy with ferocious counten-
ances > and, like those traditional SOL
diers, they seldom stand fire.
zone of these fallacies is that which
confounds the law Of sex with the law
of digestion. Men and women being
of different sexes, says some physiolo-
gists, must obviously require different
intellectual diet? If we 90 home and
Gine with the physologist, we find him
politely assisting his wife to soup and
his daughter to roast mutton, ignoring
the fact of sex. His own dinner-table
refutes his theory his knife is sharp
er than his logic, and his joints of
mutton disioint his argument, Sex is
certainly as marked in the body as it
is anywhere, yet nature shows an es-
sential identity of the digestive system
in man and woman.
"lf this is true CT the body, 1t
would seem to be true of the mind.
To say boys study Greek and mathe-
matics therefore, girls, being different,
should not, is as if you said boys eat
beef and potatoes, therefore, girls, be-
ing different, must find something else
to eat. | resist the argument of the
physioIcgist, therefore, till [ see him
prohibiting his own womankind from
the dinner they have superintended,
and restricting them to the judicious
dry toast and the enlivening tea-cup.
Another of these ghost of objec-
tions is the assumption of the hopless
intellectual inferiority in the case cf
women. | call it an assumption be-
cause there is no class of facts directly
sustaining it and the class Of facts
which have most to do with it the
records, that is, Of our public schools
look just the ether way. The
school superintendent Of my own city
said to me Those who theorize on
public schools, without personal knowf
edge, imagine us to be constantly tax
ing the powers of the girls to keep
them up to the standard of the boys.
1t is the other way j; my whole strug'
Gle is to keep the boys up to grade
which the girls maintain without diff
fculty' l myself remember, in city
where we had twenty prize medals fol
the high-schooi, that two-thirds of the
pupils were girls, and all our eforf
was to keep the girls from getting
three-quarters of the prizes. Girl
are so quick-witted, they have so few
distractions compared to the boys, ant