Arizona silver belt., 1889-09-14
THE SWEET GIRL GRADUATE.
A View of the Case at Variance with
 Modern Ideas of Education.

A View of the Case at 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 howers2 asks a gray haired growler in The Pittsburg Commercial Gazette.
 Is she fitted for any special calling in lifel
 In a majority of instances she has received no practical instruction what ever. She is scarcely able to put her clothes on, 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 1t 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 more or less distant future stands a knightly looking man in the shadow of vine Cad cottage, surrounded by an II the evidences of wealth and com fort.
 Two years after the S. 2. 2. has re- tired from the schoolroom French is a dead language to her, geometry pug gle and history sealed book. AWhat has she gained9
 5Ashe really studied hard she has 2robably won @ place in the ranks of the nervous host of women, a deep seated dyspepsia and an irritable tenn per
 If she didn't study hard she is prob ably an expert coquette or 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 sense teaches us that girls should not be sent to college or sem mary until afterthey are 16 years old. From 12 to Is they should be subject to physical culture, and only incident ally to mental culture.
 This view of the case is at variance with the modern idea on this subject, but our head school men are slowly coming to it. Medical scientists and experts in physical culture condemn the modern idea in unmeasured terms. They know that girls should not be put to hard study before they are 16, and they can 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 course of studies that is incomprehensible to her? It 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 as sweet l6 Then they knew what they were doing, and why they were doing 1t.
 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 unftness to become the wives of busi- 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 indulges in more physical exei else and leads less unnatural life.
 If he is endowed with a reasonable amount of common sense he has profession in view and studies to fit himself for it. and in that direction at least he is permanently benefited.
 His sister, however, has no profes- sion in, view, and can see no purpose whatever in her education. And it is 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.