American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1875-06-05
Modern Education.

n.
| society of thoroughly educated persons
should stand in high relief against the
| more slovenly or circumscribed training
of past day-the object of so much rid.
icule and vituperatlon. The grand ed
| ucational effort has been going on long
| enough to tell upon those subjected to
| it. The youth of our social circles should
shine out in happy contrast with the
young men and women of the more care
| less generation gone by. We should see a
lconspicuous, nOt-to-be-disputed improve.
ment in the subjects that occupy their
thoughts; and, above all, in their powers
of expression. The boastcd improve
ment in education should tell upon their
diction. 1t should endow the scholar
with words to the purpose, whatever the
topic, grave or gay, tritiing or important.
The subject of female education has
brought out with special force of &C.
clamation the superiority of the present
day over the past in the thorOughness of
instruction impaired. The slipshod teach
ing of girls in former days, its miserable
pretense and hollOwness, is anincxhas.st-
ible theme; and, indeed, th1xns1U mot
much to be said for it. Compare the
schOol-books of the past with any
paper on teaching addressed to the
young women of the present-compare
what they are expected to know, the
subjects they are to be interested in, the
intricacies of grammar and construction
which are to be at their finger-ends, with
the ignorance or accidental picking up
of knowledge which was once the
wOman's main chance of requirement,
and our expectations are not unrcason-
ably raised. The pupils of the new
school ought to be more companionable
than their predecessors; they ought to
talk better, more correctly, more ele-
gantly; and, as their subjects of interest
become more profound, as science and
.cabulary should meet the need, at once
more accurate, more cOpious, more felic-
ltOus. We put it to our world of readers
lis it SO? Do our young ladies talk bet
ter than their motherse do they express
their meaning with greater nicely? nay,
do they speak better grammar? More
over, is this an ann? Are they taught
sex, who profess to portray the girlhood
of our days Is ii not an understood
thing that three or four epithets
are to do duty for all the definition
the female mind has need of, and that
solecisms which would have shocked the
ears of an earlier generation pass unre-
proved? The present regime not only
does not teach people to talk, it does not
TO judge by appearances-eveni inspire
the wish or prompt the attempt to clothe
thought in exact wording. The best
thinking; but fit words and plenty of
them it ought to put at its pupils COM
mand. Do the boosted systems of our
day succeed in this? In the most care
fully and deliberately trained girl of
eighteen we do not look for more than |
the promise; but we reasonably expect
promise. Taste, careful not. to offend,
we might calculate on, and O sensitive |
ness easily offended. Newly freed from |
the seclusion of the school room, the |
great interests that agitate the intellect |
of the world will impress her with awe
as well as an eager curiosity, held in |
check by modest grace-the natural atti-
tude of an intelligent listener; and by |
the difficulty of finding fitting words to |
express dawning thought. This is mol
ideal of youthful culture |
feeling its way. We approach the object |
of SO many cares; she is not listening, |
but talking with rapidity and dash.
What are the words that first greet our
ears? Two or three hackneyed epithets,
which we had supposed mere school-bOy |
slang, and perhaps word or a phrase !
which-so widely separate is the vernac- |
ular becoming from our written lam |
guage-we hesitate to expose to the or
deal of print. What promise for the fu- |
ture Is there in this? How is it to de- |
velop into the conversation of the gifted |
She is a good girl, we have |
reason to believe, and we take it on trust |
many languages and some science; but |
what is the good of it all if she has no |
adje lives at command but nice, jolly, |
horrid, awful, disgusting and tremen- |
dous? How can she keep what she has !
gots how can it fructifyG Thought dies
il she has no means of expression. 1t Is
really a grand power to have something |
to say and to be able to say it. This it |
is to be educated; but the something TO |
if adequate speech be wanting.
What a struggle to express thought we
detect in anyone who, having aban- |
doned himself to the formulas in vogue, |
tries to- choose words for himself, and to |
say really what he thinks and meansl |
The school-boy, who indolently takes
refuge in slang-or, what is much worse |
than slang, the current phrase of the |
hour-to save himself trouble cuts his |
rhetorical wings for good and all. Words |
are a bondage, They cannot be taken |
up and cast OFF at pleasure. The person
who contents himself with unmcaning |
cpithets, or terms that merely express |
likes and dislikes, without reason, is de- |
stroying his powers of discrimina- |
ton. The girl who finds every |
thing horrid or jolly is uneducating |
herself, neutralizing her life's work,
and putting herself intellectually be-
low one with none of her +" advantages"
but who uses her mind and ear to define |
her thoughts with accuracy and proprie-
ty. There is something painful in watch |
ing the process of deterioration, the sup
preston of thought, the smothering of
which are the consequences |
of adopting q rude and conventional
that throws the labor |
of Interpretation on the listener. After |
some experience of the verbal freema-
sonry current among our young people, |
and observing how prone the young la
dies Of our day are to borrow the Jargon !
of brothers and cousins, we are some |
times disposed to think the past century |
had something to say for itself in treat
ing girls schools as places IN which not
so much to learn as TO unlcarn, to be
cured of awkwardnesses, and to get rid
of vulgarisms Bldckaoood's Magazsne.
HoUsECLEANING was. going on. He
arose early in the morning, put on his
old clothes, lugged one of the carpets
into the yard and went at it. He banged
it and whacked it with clubs, tickled it
with switches and brushed it with brooms. |
Then he turned it over and did likewise
to the other side. Then he heisted it on |
The clotlies-line and did the same over
again. His hands were bllstered, his |
hair full of grit and his nose full of lint. |
He rolled up the carpet, lugged 1t into |
The entry and setit down, with the men
tai resolve that he'd be blamed if he |
shook another one" just then the |
who lives in the other part OF |