Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1906-07-26
The Over Ambitious Girl

By MARGARET f. SANGSTER.
Copyright, 1905, by Joseph B. Bowles,)
Is there such a thing as useless
knowledge, knowledge which is in
itself rubbish, only fit to be slowed
away in the lumber room of the mind?
/ suppose teachers will take eXcep-
ton to the statement, but | am more
and more inclined to think that a
great deal that they laboriously teach,
and schoolgirls laboriously learn,
might as well be dropped wholly out
of the curriculum. We are all aWare
that what remains to us a few years
after we have finished our school edu-
cation is, SO far as facts are concerned,
excessively small. What the schools
have done, if they have wrought well,
has been to give us mental facility and
disciplined powers. The question is
pertinent whether for girls they do
this in the best way.
What ought you, a schoolgirl, to
acquire in order to be prepared for
your work in life?
1t depends, of course, somewhat on
your future. If you are to earn your
bread by the toll of hands or brain,
you must be taught application, con-
c%entration, perseverance and punctu-
ality. Without these good working
qualities, no girl will succeed in any
trade, from dressmaking to novel
writing. Woman's great weakness lies
in the direction of inattention, incon-
sequence and responsibility, and
these defects hamper her in the world
of business and fatally retard her
progress.
The schools should cultivate in girls
these forceful and Indispensable quail
ties, as part Of the equipment for
fighting the world-battle. If arith-
metic, algebra and geometry, or Lat
Il and French, or physics and eco
nomics are best calculated to promote
this sort of mental and moral growth,
by ell means let our young girls study
them. But one young girl should not
have 10 spend all her time and all her
strength during the, golden years of
school and college work in Mastering
them all. For the practical purposes
of life the schools attempt too much
and crowd it into too short a time, in
the education Of girls.
Schoolgirls are naturally aspiring
and ambitious. They respond swiftly
to the spur of an enthusiastic teach
er's desires. They are always ready
to undertake anything that is sug-
gested and to work until the point Of
exhaustion. I am not speaking Of the
idle or the inert or the apathetic type
of girlhood, but CT girlhood in the
mass, when | assert that it does not
hold back from the pace that kills.
Boys cannot easily be pressed be-
yond a certain mark. Girls see the
mark and try TO go beyond it. And
in SO doing they often accumulate a lot
of useless and worthless knowledge
which never does them or anyone else
a particle of good, and which might
better be let alone, especially as 1t
gathers dust aud rust in forgotten
pigeon-holes.
II a girl is to spend her maturity
as a home-maker, as a home daughter,
or later as a wife, or a mother, she
requires not so much an enormous
amount Of erudition. ss whatever tends
to promote common sense, self-re-
straint and genuine kindness, and to
eliminate egoism. Women at home
must be altruistic. Then, too, a girl
WHO would shine in the home and hold
her own In society must have culture
and charm. II the schools help to
form her character on. strong and sim
pie lines AHA to give her courage as
we'll as sweetness, they do more for
her than If they enable her to pass
'uzzling examinations or mu.tiform
iifscul- subjects.