, 1889-07-16
THE SWEET GIRL GRADUATE.
A View of the Case mt Variance with
Modern Ideas of Education.

a View Of the Case Mt Variance with
Modern Ideas Of Education.
What does your sweet girl graduate
know when she leaves the stage bear
ing her diploma and loads Of aowersi
asks a gray haired growler in The
P%ittsburg Commercial Gazette.
Is she fitted for any special calling
in lifef
In a majority of instances she has
received no practical instruction what
ever. She is scarcely able TO put her
clothes IN, much less TO make or re-
pair them. She may be able TO parse
a sentence, but too often she cannot
write good English, nor does she
speak it
She can chatter in French so as to
be understood by her teacher, but TO a
born Frenchman it would be about as
intelligent as Choctaw. She probably
knows an omelet from a steak, but
has only the faintest idea of the pro-
cesses by which they are made.
To her the world consists Of books
and good looking young men, and in
the o or less distant future stands
a knightly looking man in the shadow
Off vine clad cottage, surrounded by
all the evidences of wealth and COM
fort.
Two years after the S. G. 6. has re-
tired from the schoolroom French is a
dead language to her, geometry a puz-
zle and history a sealed book.
What has she gained7
II she really studied hard she has
probably won a place in the ranks of
the host of women, a deep
seated dyspepsia and an irritable tenn
per.
II she didn't study hard she is prob
ably an expert coquette or a chatter
box. The four or five years that she
spent in school were the years in
which she was growing out of girl
hood into womanhood, and the years
In which she should have been under
the personal care OF her mother.
Common teaches us that girls
should not be sent to college or SEM
mary until afterthey are 10 years old.
From - TO 16 they should be subject
to physical culture, and only incident
ally TO mental culture.
This view of the case is at variance
with tho modern idea on this subject,
but our head school men are slowly
coming 10 it. Medical scientists and
experts in physical culture condemn
the modern idea in unmeasured terms.
They know hal girls should not be
put TO hard study before they are 16,
and they a give the best OF reasons
for it.
Even if no other reason could be
given than that they are better able to
comprehend their studies, it would be
sufficient. What is the use of rushing
a girl through a course of studies that
is incomprchensible to herr 1t is an
unnecessary waste of vital energy, for
which she must suffer for the balance
of her natural life.
The healthiest, happiest and most
useful women in the land today are
not graduates of a seminary or high
school.
The best teachers and best scholars
among our women are those who en-
tered upon their collegiate course after
they had passed the verdant period
known a sweet 16. Then they knew
what they were doing, and why they
were doing it,
There is no doubt but the present
system of educating young women is
the cause of their imperfect physical
development, i'll health and general
untitness to become the wives Of bust
ness men and mothers of a race of
stalwart men and handsome women.
This is gospel truth.
The average young man stands the
college ordeal better than his sister,
because he INDUCES in more physical
exeI else and leadsa less unnatural life.
If he is endowed with n reasonable
amount of common sense he has a
profession in view and studies to fit
himself for it and in thai direction Mt
least he is permanently benefited.
His sister, however, has no profess
sion in view, and can see no purpose
whatever in her education. And it is
a fact that there is little in her whole
seminary course that will be of the
least practical use TO her when she
becomes mistress of a home and has
the cares of a family thrown upon her.