The times dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1903-1914, 1913-07-20

girls should know. We believe their
heredlty and their training qualify and
entitle them to know We believe that
they will learn as rapidly and retain
as readily as any girls Of the world.
Yet our schools instruct for the pur-
pose of culture at all times and in all
things. We know that considerable
percentage of our girls will have to
earn their living in the world, and
that, in consequence, they must be
given information sufficient to meet
their greatest needs. But we know,
also, these girls represent the most
splendid traditions of cultured woman
hood, and that these traditions must be
maintained.
Precisely to define the difference in
this respect between our Southern
colleges and schools for girls and those
of the North and West is not easy.
We teach the same things and we
graduate girls with practically the
same store Of information, yet there is
difference in the intellectual outlook
which cannot be explained away on the
ground that the girls themselves are
different. The girl trained in South
ern college has livelier appreciation,
truer perspective and more universal
interest. 1t must be so, else why should
the Southern schools for girls number
among their pupils as many young
women from other States as from
their own.
The Standard of Service.
This does not mean that the people
of the South have established system
OF educating women which is essenti-
ally selfish. On the contrary, there is
to-day in the educational doctrine of
the South canon of usefulness and
standard of service. Perhaps it was
not always so. Perhaps there was a
time-brief, thank Heaven-when we
had the false idea that when we taught
girl how to behave in the presence of
strangers and when we had tutoreG
her in social usage, we had educated
her. If there ever was such time it
has passed, and in it's place has come an
era when we demand usefulness with
culture and service with knowledge!
Take, for example, the discipline
and the courses in those magnificent
schools for girls whose announcements
appear in this section. A careful study
of the catalogues which will be sent
upon request will show that in every
school the whole tenor of instruction
is toward training girl, not for the
enjoyment of her intellectual acquire
ments, but for the use to which she can
put the things she has learned History
is taught not that the girl may be able
to rattle off the Kings of England or
the Presidents of the United States, but
taught for its bearing on the life and
thought of the day-taught to give the
women who are to make the homes an
appreciation Of how those homes were
wrought by the service of brave men
and women. Literature, science,
mathematics-the end of all instruction
is the same. Indeed, the South voices
much the same sentiments to-day, in
training it's girls, which General Lee
expressed in that immortal letter to
his daughter, where he urged her,
above all else, to learn usefulness in
life.
Higher Standards Ahead.
With this history and with these
ideals, the schools for the training of
young women in the South are moving
rapidly toward the highest possible
standards of scholarship, of woman
illness, of culture and of usefulness. In
respect to the first named, one need only
study the reports of the Federal
Bureau of Education to see how our
standards have advanced during recent
years, and how, session after session,
they are being raised. Not only have
our girls colleges stiffened their
entrance requirements until they are
the equal Of any in the United States,
but our private and preparatory schools