The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1889-08-15
THE SWEET GIRL GRADUATE.
A View of the Case at Variance with Mod.
ern Ideas of Education.

What does your sweet girl graduate
know when she leaves the stage bear
ing her diploma and loads of howersP
asks gray-haired GROWER in the
Pittsburg Commercial Gazette.
Is she fitted for any special calling
in life?
In 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
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 q
born Frenchman it would be about as
intelligent as ChOctaw. She probably
knows an omelet from steak, but has
only the faintest idea of the processes
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
knightly-looking man in the shadow
of vine-clad cottage, surrounded by
all the evidences of wealth and COM
fort.
Two years after the s. g. g. has re-
tired from the school-room French is
a dead language to her, geometry q
puzzle, and history a sealed book.
What has she gained?
If she really studied hard she has
probably won place in the ranks of
the nervous host of women, q deep
seated dyspepsia, and AN irritable tenn
per.
1t she didn't study hard she is prob
ably an expert coquettes or chatter
box. The four or five years that she
spent in school were the years in which
she was growing out of girlhood into
wOmanhood, and the years in which
she should have been under the per-
sonal care of her mother.
Common sense teaches us that girls
should not be sent to college or semin-
airy until after they are 16 years old.
From II to 16 they should be subject
to physical culture, and only incident
ally to mental culture.
The 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.
The healthiest, happiest, and most
useful women in the land to-day are
not graduates of a seminary or high
school.
The best teachers and the best schol-
ars among our women are those who
entered upon their collegiate course
after they had passed the verdant
period known as sweet 16. Then they
knew what they were doing, and why
they were doing it.
There is no doubt but that the pres
ent system of educating young women
is the cause of their imperfect phYsi-
cal development, ill-health, and gem
eral unfitness to become the wives of
businessmen and mothers of a race
of stalwart men and handsome Wo-
men.
This is gospel truth.
The average young man stands the
college ordeal better than his sister,
because he INDUCES in physical exer-
else and leads a less unnatural life.
If he is endowed with a reasonable
amount os common sense he has
profession in view and studies to lit
himself for it, and in that direction
at 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 be-
comes mistress of home and has the
cares of family thrown upon her.