The Daily clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1866-1888, 1880-02-14
Higher Female Education.

NEWTON, Mss, Feb. O. 1880.
EDIToRs CLABIoN-Having noticed in
the columns of THE CLARION of January
%, an appeal to our State Legislature in
the behalf of "higher female education" by
Mississippi woman, and deeming that the
noble sentiments therein expressed merits
and should receive the appreciation ofevery
| Mississippian, and feeling assured from an
address delivered not one year since before
a Literary Institution of our town that such
also are the sentiments of your honorable
self, | cheerfully submit the following, if
perchance it might do any good towards
awakening more lively interest in the
above mentioned subject wish first, to
consider some objections frequently urged
against higher female education. Second
ly, to show the intimate relation existing
between this and our common school sys-
tenn, and that the success of the latter de-
ponds in no little degree upon the interest
our State shall manifest in the former.
Even in this nineteenth century with its
high civilization and advanced decisive
not untrequently hear it said that the mind
of woman is not capable of receiving high
mental culture, to attempt such thing
would be worse than throwing pearls be-
fore swine," and that if it could be accom-
plished Its tendency would be to destroy
womanly modesty, her greatest ornament,
aud to unfit her for those domestic duties
incumbent upon every wife and mother.
That there is no good reason for this obiec-
ton in any of its forms can be very clearly
shown. The principal source of informa-
ton by which the position that the female
intellect is not as capable as that of the
male of receiving high mental training
must be supported or refuted, on the science
of psychology, phrenology, history and that
great test of all Neutrality-suspicious. and,
if mistake not, the teaching of all of these
so to show its utter futility Mental phil.
osophy attributes to 10th sexes the same in.
telleetual faculties. The perceptive, repre-
sentative, including the imagination and
memory and discursive are possessed in
common by both sexes-the laws of mental
action governing them are the same there
being no greater difference manifested be-
tween the sexes than there is between diff |
terent minds of the same sex consequent
ly the training best adapted to the proper |
development and due exercise in the one |
must be the same in the other. 1t has been
claimed by those who take the opposite
view that anatomy shows that the brain of
woman is smaller than that of man-and |
upon this fact an argument has been based
for her mental inferiority, but it remains to
be proven that mental caliber depends ON
the size Of the brain. On the contrary the
recent chronological investigations 90 to
show that the fneness and texture of this
organ, and not the size, effects intellectual
strength. History, while it does not afford
rs numerous examples of females exhibit
ing power of mastering those studies gen.
orally conceded TO the most abStruse, vet
what examples We have had have been of A
most brilliant character, Lady Jane GRAY,
of England, Madame Levert, and Mrs.
Evans, of this country, all were remarkable
for their thorough acquaintance with
the dead languages and proficiency
in those studies usually con.
sidered only suitable for masculine in
tellects, Having been engaged in teaching
for over six years, and during that time
having under my pupilsge members of both
sexes, studying the dead languages and
higher branches of mathematics, | have had
'ome opportunity of judging of their res.
oective ability to master these studies, and
70 far from the girls suffering any by the