The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-08-25
Dorothy Di1 Says
How Shall We Educate Our Girls?
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writs


Conceding, as most pc orle do. that |
and that woman as a general propo-
sition is happiest herself ard of most |
use to the world when she follows the |
ancient avocation of wife and mother, |
how shall we best fit our girls for this |
career?
How shall we educate them? What |
shall we teach them SO that they may |
capture husbands in the first place. |
and hold their husbands after they
capture them in the second place?
Shall We teach them domesticity or
dancing? Shall we teacn them the
differential calculus or the different
ways of flirting? Shall we teach them
how to roll their eyes effectively or
efficiency in rolling pei ambulator?
A western millionairess rsls attempt
ed to solve this great problem of fe-
male education by having her young
daughter taught all the arts of allure
ment-how to dance, how to dress,
how to play and sing. and coQuette-l
without wasting any TINA on such
prosaic matters as reading, writing
and 'rithmetic.
This girls parents were arraigned
in the probate court of their city for
neglecting her education, and in jus
tifying their course the mother said
that inasmuch as every woman of
good fortune and family had to fight
with chorus girls, cabaret dancers,
actresses and singers, vampires and
coQuettes, for the interes. and affec-
ton of men, a wifes only safety con-
sisted in being able to peat profess
Sional fascinators at their Cwn game
This is a novel and interesting sug-
gestion of how to solve one of the old
est and most difficult problems in the
world. but, alas, it has ono fatal de-
feet 1t does not provide shy way of
Irn he fn
and beautiful, and this q absolutely
necessary in dealing with the type of
! man whose ideal of perfect home is
a place that you can go to when the
curfew rings in the cafes.
The theory that if you teach a girl
to dance like a ballerina her husband
| will fox trot the years with her with
| out wearying, or that If she knows
every move in the game of filtration
| that she can keep him always ro-
mantle and signing lover is a good
| one. The only trouble with it is that,
| like so many other good theories, it
doesn't work out in actLa- practice.
Facts are facts. A mans wife is his
| wife. Age will come. Custom will
state And the man who finds his
greatest interest in life in dancing and
| flirting is bound to have IA change of
partners somebody always younger
l and fresher, to give yes T. the game.
| even if his wife is past mistress of
both arts.
| Equally fallacious is the idea that a
man finds coquetry as alluring In the
| home circle as out of it. Before mar
riage it undoubtedly stimulates a
mans interest in a girl and his de-
sire for her if she keeps him guessing
as to the state of her affection and
whether she really prefers him to
some other man. But after marriage,
trust and faith are essential to domes-
tic peace and happiness, and the
| strongest hold that any wife has upon
her husband is just his surety of her
| unfaltering devotion and the knowl-
! edge that no matter if all the world
turned against him she would stand
unfalteringly at his side.
Undoubtedly. however, the mascu-
line moth is eternally attracted by
glare and glitter and the girl who is
pretty, and snowy, and smartly dress
ed, and who is a good dancer, and
| who has the best repertoire of tricks
and wiles, has men swarming around
her like bees around honey pot
while her prim, demure, domestic
puritanical sister is left to paper the
distance of her.
That's fact No. 1. Fact No. 2 is
that altho a man may be caught BY
glare and glitter, he doesn't often de-
sire to spend the balance of his life
| circling around an arc lamp. h
wants the quiet, shaded candle ligh
for the long pull of years. For it i:
one of the inexplicable vagaries OF
the masculine temperament that {
man generally desires his wife to bt
an entirely different woman from the
girl he married.
The thing that attracted him to hel
may have been because she was sucl
silly, cute little doll baby, with sucl
clinging ways, but as wife he ex
poets her to be wise and common
/ ff4iA IJn hoy
: fallen in love with her because sh
, was such a good sport and so uncon
ventional, but as his wife he demand
' that she shall be the pink of prophet,
: and not give Mrs. Grundy any reason
for talk.
/ All of this shows how difficult
task 1t is to decide just what a cir
= needs to be taught to fit her for tn
profession of wifehood. If we teacl
her how to make the most of sucl
looks as it has pleased heaven t.
vouchsafe to her, how to dance, hoy
l to tear off a little ragtime. how t.
e flirt a little and jolly a lot, we shall
I have taught her all that can be laugh
fof the gentle art of catching a hus
s band. But we will not have laugh
1 her how to keep him after she get
him.
To be a successful wife a woma
L needs to have a cultivated mind, to b
thrifty, to be a good executive, to b
domestic, to be patient and forbearint
to have all the qualities that the littl
painted butterfly does not possess.
Yet if we educate our girl alon
these lines, if we teach her how t
- make bread instead of cocktails, if W
I teach her to darn stockings, instead {
| dancing them out. if we teach her
[ shrink from being conspicuous in
! stead of being a good locker, that SCI
everybody rubbcring, why, we've sim
ply handicapped her chances of catcl
ing a husband and making the goo
S wife we've educated her to be.
So there you are, as the late Hem
Il James would say. And it all goes
show that being a woman is the mo-
v complicated job on earth and require
g the widest range of education that
is possible to give to any human b'
: ing. II needs to take in everythin