The Savannah morning news., 1904-08-14
THE EDUCATION OF MAUD.

is almost upon US, ana IN lhOuSdiluo
of homes throughout the country the
burning question of the hour is the
education of the girls. In a way this
is one Of the penalties of progress.
Time was when any old thing in the
way of a Female Seminary. or a Re
nned school for Young Ladies was con-
sidered good enough for girl Educa-
ton was looked upon somewhat in the
same light as measles. If your daugh-
ter caught It, it was well. If she
proved immune. and it passed over
her without striking in, it was no dis
credit to her. We have changed all
that. Maud is to the front now. Maud
must be educated and so her family
resolves itself into a committee of ways
and means, and where's.
There is father, whose own education
was gained in office or on the street,
but who American-man-hke is deter
mined that his daughter shall have
the most expensive schooling that
money can buy there is mother who
speaks of the higher education of wOm-
en- in awed womens club tones, as if
it were some kind OF a fetch, and
"
glowing accounts of college girl larks,
and who thinks it is swell to go off
to school anyway. But all the diff
ferent views converge at one point,
and that is that Maud shall have all
the advantages of education. and so
pretty soon there will be a packing of
trunks full of new clothes, and the
girl will start forth in search of
knowledge which we all seem to think
I,a
No phase of our national life is more
touching and for my part l never see
the hordes of fuffy-headed school
girls who are scurrying all over the
country to high-priced and pretentious
universities and. colleges without wish
ing / could send nine-tenths of them
back home to their mothers If only
girls were sent off to college who had
displayed some peculiar and unmistak-
able Minerva-like quality of intellect,
or whose passion for study and re-
search had already marked them as
predestined and foreordained from all
eternity TO be school ma ans. it would
be an admirable arrangement. Neither
would there be any objection to it if
only rich girls, to whose parents the
expenditure of a few additional hun
dreds per year made any difference,
were sent away from home to be edu-
Gated.
The pathos of the thing comes in
when you see the sacrifices that poor
people make to send their girls off TO
school, for Maud's going to college
means that her father will have to
work a little earlier and a little later,
and little harder. that her mother
will haXa to do without a servant, and
turn ssain her many times turned
gown. and put up with countless lit
tie pinching economies-and all for the
sake OF educating a girl who isn't GO
ing to set the river on fire after all.
There is too another side to this cues
ton. Besides the material sacrifices
a family makes in sending a girl off
TO school, there is the other sacrifice,
none the less bitter, of being parted
from her during all the formative
years of her life, and having her
grow away from you. Other people
influence her. Other people form her
taste. She takes her beliefs she gets
her opinions, she initiates the habits
and the manners of others.
Send girl off to college for four
or f1ve years, and when she comes
home there is no other woman in all
the world who is such stranger
to her as her own mother. They have
to get acquainted again on a new
basis, and the very cloSeness of the
relationship between them makes an
almost insuperable bar. Mother ma
turally thinks that Maud ought to
show Difference to her Judgment Maud
is uneonsciously patronizing in her at
titude towards the mother who has
not had the advantages that she has
had. The women with whom the girl
has been most closely associated for
the last four or five years-and that
is big gap in a short life-were wom-
en- who were eminent as scholars, art
critics, musicians, and who were polish
ed and travelled. Beside these wom-
ems opinions her mothers view seems
crude, and vulgar. and the price of
the mothers heroism in educating the
daughter ashamed of her.
Don't send your daughter away
from you to school, heard a wom-
an say fiercely. Il sent my daughter
to college. She was away from me
for five years, and when she got back
we were completely out of touch with
each other. We hadn't a single taste,
or a thought, or a habit in common
mot even the same religion. 1 tell
you, back yard full of diplomas and
college degrees wouldn't pay us for
all the pleasure and happiness we
miss in not being companions.
Another mistake that parents make
is in cherishing the fond. but fallacious
belief that the fashionable school Is
the ante-room to fashionable society
Plenty of poor people and people In
moderate circumstances strain every
nerve TO send their daughters TO ex-
pensive and exclusive schools in the
hope that they will make acquaintan-
ces and form connections with rich
girls that will launch them in the so.
cial swim, and enable them to marry
millionaires. Never was a greater er.
ror. School friendships are proverbiallS
brittle, and no matter how intimate
Gwendolin Dives and Mary Jane LAza.
rus have been during the years they
have desked together, or roomed to.
gether. graduation day sees the separa.
ton of the rich lambs from the pooi
goats, and each goes their destined
way. If the rich girl is good naturet
and generous hearted, an invitation oil
two may reach the poor girl for ar
omnibus party, but these soon cease
and the poor girl can only follow hei
wealthy friend through the medium OF
the society columns Of the papers.
Nor is this the worst of il. The pooI
girl has had habits and wants devel.
oped in her that she cannot crafty
She has been taken out OF her owr
sphere, and she finds the doors Of IN,
other sphere shut In her face. sh,
has been given automobile tastes. wher
she has TO walk. and there is nothinl
left for her but a life filed with en-,
vious and bitter repining at her lot
or else to become one OF the despisa bic
MM "A N