The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1880-05-27
Tho Mental and Physical Training Of
GirlQ

>SASA
Girls.
Says writer in the Boston Post: /
could wish that the present generation
OF girls all over the country could be
watched by the doctors during their en-
tire education, and that it should be
just as profitable pecuniarily for the lat
ter to keep them well as to let them
fall i'll, and that the penalty for letting
them spoil their health in any of the
usual ways should be wholly discredit-
able to their regulations. if not damag-
ing to their purses. We should then
see an array of sanitary arrangements
for children and youth put into force
that would astonish the world by its
completeness, aud delight us with ito
effects.
Let us now consider whether the &C
QUESTION of sound, solid education
ought to make invalids of girls. It
ought not to do so if proper precautions
are taken from the first. The girl un-
til ten years of age should not study
more than three hours a day. The les
sons should be short, simple and inter-
spersed with musical exercises, gym
nastics and even "square dances"
The outdoor exercise should never be
less than two hours a day, and even
more when practicable. Fresh air and
sunshine are as needful to the girl as to
the plant. After she is old enough to
undertake exact studies, such as Ian
guages or science, she should not
be stimulated to take more sub
jects than she can manage with
ease and clear comprehension, care
being taken to suit her studies to
the quality of her intelligence. A sci
entifio man once said to me, II never
study when l am fatigued, for the work
I do at such times is never good for
anything. When the mind refuses to
act, it should never be forced to act"
It is far better to devote the intelli-
gence to acquiring thoroughly one art,
one science and one literature, than to
gain superficial smattering of dozen.
There is nothing more unavailable in
this work-a-day world of ours than an
education which resembles q rag-bag
full of homogeneous scraps of learning,
instead of a brightly patterned, even
textured web which may spread itself
about the mind like a garment, at once
comforting and identifying. The girl
whose education is to be of this kind
must not be forced, but rather retard-
ed, so as to give mind and body full
time 70 grow and mature together. She
should lead a joyous, careless existence,
giving no thought to the inevitable
emotional experience of mature years.
She should realize that she is building
herself into glorious womanhood, and
not desire to gather ''unripe the golden
heaven fruits of romance. The oak
grows slowly, but every added year
brings added = strength, and the
human education should follow in
its ideas the deliberate increase
of the vigorous plant. It is the
dollhouse flower whose unnatural
beauty soonest fades. A girl who has
within her the germ of intellectual
eminence does not always show it before
the age of twenty, and it is likely
that most of the exceptional female in
tellects of the world have opened, not
under the stimulus and excitement Of
school life, but rather under the slower
and less trying methods of separate
studies at home, after the school days
were over. The idea that education
can be completed in school is extremely
erroneous, since even under the most
favorable circumstances it can only be
begun there. The marvellous acquire.
ments of Madame Roland and Mary
Somerville were gained as above stated,
while Madame de Stael learned to write
standing with the paper in her left
hand, that her father might not catch
her at it, it is said. To conclude, there
is nothing to prevent American girls
from being strong and healthy as well as
s educ by simply following the die:
sense. The severe discipline enforced
in our best (?) public schools is quite as
much tax upon the nervous system AZ
the studies the children have to take,
and it seems to me that until some more
natural and healthful way of educating
children can be devised than this Of
converting them into little information
machines, we cannot hope to find in
the future American man anything but
Intellectual mediocrity, and in the
woman intellectual medocrity, plus
a WORKOUT nervous system.