The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-08-10
WOMAN'S
WORLD.


nights trying to decide the school prob
lem for her daughters, and when she
thinks a trifle enviously of the good
old days when a girls education con-
sisted in learning to write fine, cop
nerplate chirography and to make hair
flowers.
Those halcyon times are, inded, of
+be past. Nobody denies a girls right
10 an education now, or questions her
need for one, and so the matter re-
solves itself into a problem of ways
and means and a consideration of the
relative merits of public schools and
private schools, of tutors and COVER
nesses at home and colleges abroad.
A mother, says Dorothy Dix, in the
New Orleans Picayune. does well to
ponder this subject long and deeply,
for selecting a husband for a girl is
not a more delicate task, one requiring
a finer discrimination of her needs or
one that will affect her whole future
happiness and usefulness more. A
girls school days are the formative
and impressionable ones of her life.
Her teachers form her ideals. and her
school makes her traditions. and sets
its ineffaceable seal upon her.
Many things should enter into the
choice of a school for a girl. Her
wealth and social position, her bent of
mind, whether she is to be a profess
sional woman or not, whether her ed
ucation is to be a grace and an ac-
complishment or a tool to work with,
must all be taken into consideration.
Generally speaking, it is a terrible mis-
take to try to educate girls out of the
station in life to which it has pleased
heaven to call them. 1t is an unin-
territorial cruelty, but a cruelty none
the less. to cultivate in girl tastes
and habits and aspirations that she
will have no means of gratifying, and
no spectacle is sadder than that of
poor but foolishly ambitious parents
who sacrifice themselves in order to
send their daughters to fashionable
school.
Here the girl without money is
thrown with the girl who, in the slang
of the day, has money to burn. Here
the beggar maid, whose duty it is to
walk through life, learns that it is bet
ter to be born dead than not to be
born in an automobile; that~society is
he ultimate end of human ambition
wear Paris frockS and outdress your
neighbor. That is very well for little
Miss Millionaire, to whom society is
going to be a career and business. 1t
is even important that she should
spend much time learning the fine art
of dinner giving, the knack of getting
in and out of a carriage, and the lat
est fad in cotilion leading; but no ed
ucation could be more demoralizing to
a poor girl.
1t teaches the poor girl that luxury
is necessity, to look with contempt
upon the poverty of her home, and to
despise her hard-worked parents. More
than that, she must be either continu-
ally mortified by the plainness of her
clothes, or else by her extravaganza
she must add fresh burdens and more
hardships to her mother and father.
She must either withdraw from the
camaraderie of school life and seem
niggardly and mean by not paying her
part in school affairs, or else by par
ticipating in pleasures where some one
l else settles the bill, becomeg a parasite
and deadbeat. The inevitable result
of such life must be to make her eth
er anarchistic, hating the rich girl who
has more than she has or else a syco-
plant, who fawns and fatters in the
hopes of holding on to the skirts of the
wealthy.
Nor is this the end of the disaster
NO matter how intimate the poor girl
and rich girl have been in school. the
poor girl finds that relationship ends
at the school gate. If the rich girl is
good-natured, there may be a few in
vitations extended the poor girl to
quiet affairs, and when they meet there
is suspicious warmth of protestation
on the rich girls part, but their paths
lie IN different directions, and school
friendship is not strong enough to
bridge over the chasm that lies be-
tween the mansion on the avenue and
the shabby cottage on the back street.
But for the poor girl the tragedy is
complete. She has been made dissatis-
ned with her own home and friends
and has been given no other. She has
learned to despise the honest young
mechanic or clerk who would marry
her. and there is no fairy prince loom
ing up on the horizon on a milk white
steed for her. She yearns for society,
and the nearest she ever gets to 1t is
reading in the papers the accounts of
oalls and parties to which she is never
asked. She has been given a cham
payne taste, and she has only cistern
water to quench it.
so, 1 say, send your daughter to a
school where she will be thrown with
girls of her own class, where she will
learn the things that will sweeten and
not embitter her. where she will ac-
quire practical knowledge that will be
OF use to her instead of frills that will
De IN her way. Do not believe for one
minute that fashionable education
VIII open the doors of society for a
girl. Such an investment is a ticket
that always draws blank in the lot
terry of life.
II girl has a talent, send her to a
scnool where she can develop it. but
ior PHYS sake don't force her into try
ing to be something that God and ma
ture never intended her to be. Chief
among the noble army of martyrs are
me mllllons of little girls with no more
slit OF music than a rabbit, who have
peen forced to spend hours of torture
drumming scales in the vain effort of
.nelr conscientious mammas to make
them musicians. They tell me that the
P4oIesslon of the music teacher is one
that is passing almost out of existence
except in its very highest branches,
ana L know of no other fact so COM
aorUng, and that indica ties such prog
tess IN civilization. No teacher can
make a child a musician unless heaven
mace 1t one first but it is only of late
mat we have got intelligence enough to
recognize that
lime was when every house had its
piano and every miserable little girl
i idu 10 be sacrificed upon 1t, a poor,
Httle, helpless victim to her parents
mistaken belief that anybody could
learn to play it.