Part 3

"It will be observed that in this charge against parents I do not speak of those causes of ill health which really have nothing to do with overwork, but which are oftentimes forgotten when a school-boy or girl breaks down. I allude to the eating of improper and unwholesome food, to irregularity of eating and sleeping, to attendance upon parties and other places of amusement late at night, to smoking, and to the indulgence of other habits which tend to unduly excite the nervous system. For very obvious reasons these causes of disease are not brought prominently forward by the attending physician, who doubtless thinks it safer and more flattering to his patrons to say that the child has broken down from hard study, rather than from excesses which are somewhat discreditable. While parents are clearly to blame for endangering health in the ways indicated, it may be a question whether the work required to be done in school should not be regulated accordingly; whether, in designating the studies to be taken, and in assigning lessons, there should not be taken into consideration all the circumstances of the pupil's life which can be conveniently ascertained, even though those circumstances are most unfavorable to school work and are brought about mainly through the ignorance or folly of parents. Of course there is a limit to such an adjustment of work in school, but with proper caution and a good understanding with the parents there need be little danger of advantage being taken by an indolent child; nor need the school be affected when it is understood to be a sign of weakness rather than of favor to any particular pupil to lessen his work. Not unfrequently there are found other causes of ill health than those which I have mentioned; such, for instance, as poor ventilation, overheating of the school-room, draughts of cold air, and the like; not to speak of the annual public exhibition, with the possible nervous excitement attending it. All of these things are mentioned, not because they belong directly to the question of overwork, but because it is well, in considering the question, to keep in mind all possible causes of ill health, that no one cause may be unduly emphasized."

In private schools the same kind of thing goes on, with the addition of foreign languages, and under the dull spur of discipline, without the aid of any such necessities as stimulate the pupils of what we are pleased to call a normal (!) school.

In private schools for girls of what I may call the leisure class of society overwork is of course much more rare than in our normal schools for girls, but the precocious claims of social life and the indifference of parents as to hours and systematic living needlessly add to the ever-present difficulties of the school-teacher, whose control ceases when the pupil passes out of her house.

As to the school in which both sexes are educated together a word may be said. Surely no system can be worse than that which complicates a difficult problem by taking two sets of beings of different gifts, and of unlike physiological needs and construction, and forcing them into the same educational mould.

It is a wrong for both sexes. Not much unlike the boy in childhood, there comes a time when in the rapid evolution of puberty the girl becomes for a while more than the equal of the lad, and, owing to her conscientiousness, his moral superior, but at this era of her life she is weighted by periodical disabilities which become needlessly hard to consider in a school meant to be both home and school for both sexes. Finally, there comes a time when the matured man certainly surpasses the woman in persistent energy and capacity for unbroken brain-work. If then she matches herself against him, it will be, with some exceptions, at bitter cost.

It is sad to think that the demands of civilized life are making this contest almost unavoidable. Even if we admit equality of intellect, the struggle with man is cruelly unequal and is to be avoided whenever it is possible.

The colleges for women, such as Vassar, are nowadays more careful than they were. Indeed, their machinery for guarding health while education of a high class goes on is admirable. What they still lack is a correct public feeling. The standard for health and endurance is too much that which would be normal for young men, and the sentiment of these groups of women is silently opposed to admitting that the feminine life has necessities which do not cumber that of man. Thus the unwritten code remains in a measure hostile to the accepted laws which are supposed to rule.

As concerns our colleges for young men I have little to say. The cases I see of breakdown among women between sixteen and nineteen who belong to normal schools or female colleges are out of all proportion larger than the number of like failures among young men of the same ages, and yet, as I have hinted, the arrangements for watching the health of these groups of women are usually better than such as the colleges for young men provide. The system of professional guardianship at Johns Hopkins is an admirable exception, and at some other institutions the physical examination on matriculation becomes of the utmost value, when followed up as it is in certain of these schools by compulsory physical training and occasional re-examinations of the state of health.

I do not see why the whole matter could not in all colleges be systematically made part of the examinations on entry upon studies. It would at least point out to the thoughtful student his weak points, and enable him to do his work and take his exercise with some regard to consequences. I have over and over seen young men with weak hearts or unsuspected valvular troubles who had suffered from having been allowed to play foot-ball. Cases of cerebral trouble in students, due to the use of defective eyes, are common, and I have known many valuable lives among male and female students crippled hopelessly owing to the fact that no college pre-examination of their state had taught them their true condition, and that no one had pointed out to them the necessity of such correction by glasses as would have enabled them as workers to compete on even terms with their fellows.

In a somewhat discursive fashion I have dwelt upon the mischief which is pressing to-day upon our girls of every class in life. The doctor knows how often and how earnestly he is called upon to remonstrate against this growing evil. He is, of course, well enough aware that many sturdy girls stand the strain, but he knows also that very many do not, and that the brain, sick with multiplied studies and unwholesome home life, plods on, doing poor work, until somebody wonders what is the matter with that girl; or she is left to scramble through, or break down with weak eyes, headaches, neuralgias, or what not. I am perfectly confident that I shall be told here that girls ought to be able to study hard between fourteen and eighteen years without injury, if boys can do it. Practically, however, the boys of to-day are getting their toughest education later and later in life, while girls leave school at the same age as they did thirty years ago. It used to be common for boys to enter college at fourteen: at present, eighteen is a usual age of admission at Harvard or Yale. Now, let any one compare the scale of studies for both sexes employed half a century ago with that of to-day. He will find that its demands are vastly more exacting than they were,--a difference fraught with no evil for men, who attack the graver studies later in life, but most perilous for girls, who are still expected to leave school at eighteen or earlier.

I firmly believe--and I am not alone in this opinion--that as concerns the physical future of women they would do far better if the brain were very lightly tasked and the school hours but three or four a day until they reach the age of seventeen at least. Anything, indeed, were better than loss of health; and if it be in any case a question of doubt, the school should be unhesitatingly abandoned or its hours lessened, as at least in part the source of very many of the nervous maladies with which our women are troubled. I am almost ashamed to defend a position which is held by many competent physicians, but an intelligent friend, who has read this page, still asks me why it is that overwork of brain should be so serious an evil to women at the age of womanly development. My best reply would be the experience and opinions of those of us who are called upon to see how many school-girls are suffering in health from confinement, want of exercise at the time of day when they most incline to it, bad ventilation, and too steady occupation of mind. At no other time of life is the nervous system so sensitive,--so irritable, I might say,--and at no other are abundant fresh air and exercise so important. To show more precisely how the growing girl is injured by the causes just mentioned would lead me to speak of subjects unfit for full discussion in these pages, but no thoughtful reader can be much at a loss as to my meaning.

The following remarks I owe to the experience of a friend, a woman, who kindly permits me to use them in full. They complete what I have space to add as to the matter of education, and deserve to be read with care by every parent and by every one concerned in our public schools.

"There can be no question that the health of growing girls is overtaxed; but, in my opinion, this is a vice of the age, and not primarily of the schools. I have found teachers more alive to it than parents or the general public. Upon interrogating a class of forty girls, of ages varying from twelve to fourteen, I found that more than half the number were conscious of loss of sleep and nervous apprehension before examinations; but I discovered, upon further inquiry, that nearly one-half of this class received instruction in one or two branches outside of the school curriculum, with the intention of qualifying to become teachers. I could get no information as to appetite or diet; all of the class, as the teacher informed me, being ashamed to give information on questions of the table. In the opinion of this teacher, nervousness and sleeplessness are somewhat due to studies and in-door social amusements in addition to regular school work; but chiefly to ignorance in the home as to the simplest rules of healthy living. Nearly all the girls in this class drink a cup of tea before leaving home, eat a sweet biscuit as they walk, hurried and late, to school, and nothing else until they go home to their dinners at two o'clock. All their brain-work in the school-room is done before eating any nourishing food. The teacher realized the injurious effects of the present forcing system, and suggested withdrawing the girls from school for one year between the grammar- and high-school grades. When I asked whether a better result would not be obtained by keeping the girls in school during this additional year, but relieving the pressure of purely mental work by the introduction throughout all the grades of branches in household economy, she said this seemed to her ideal, but, she feared, impracticable, not from the nature of schools, but from the nature of boards.

"A Latin graduating class of seven girls, aged seventeen and eighteen years, stated that they do their work without nervousness, restlessness, or apprehension.

"This, with other statistics, would seem to bear out your theory that after seventeen girls may study with much less risk to health.

"So far as I have observed, the strain or tear is chiefly in the case of girls studying to become teachers. These girls often press forward too rapidly for the purpose of becoming self-supporting at the age of eighteen. The bait of a salary, and a good salary for one entering upon a profession, lures them on; and a false sympathy in members of boards and committees lends itself to this injurious cramming.

"Our own normal school, which is doing a great, an indispensable, work in preparing a trained body of faithful, intelligent teachers, has succumbed to this injurious tendency. We have here the high and normal grades merged into one, the period of adolescence stricken out of the girl's school life, and many hundreds of girls hurried annually forward beyond their physical or mental capacity, in advance of their physical growth, for the sake of those who cannot afford to remain in school one or two years longer. I say this notwithstanding the fact that this school is, in my opinion, one of the most potent agencies for good in the community."

"Overpressure in school appears to me to be a disease of the body politic from which this member suffers; but it also seems to me that this vast school system is the most powerful agency for the correction of the evil. In the case of girls, the first principle to be recognized is that the education of women is a problem by itself; that, in all its lower grades at all events, it is not to be laid down exactly upon the lines of education for boys.

"The school system may be made a forceful agency for building up the family, and the integrity of the home is without doubt the vital question of the age.

"Edward Everett Hale, with his far spiritual sight, has discerned the necessity for restoring home training, and advocates, to this end, short school terms of a few weeks annually. It is probable that in the future many school departments will be relegated to the home, but the homes are not now prepared to assume these duties.

"When it was discovered that citizens must be prepared for their political duties the schools were opened; but the means so far became an end that even women were educated only in the directions which bear upon public and not upon household economy. The words of Stein, that 'what we put into the schools will come out in the manhood of the nation afterward,' cannot be too often quoted. Let branches in household economy be connected with all the general as distinguished from normal-school grades, and we not only relieve the girl immediately of the strain of working with insufficient food, and of acquiring skill in household duties in addition to the school curriculum, we not only simplify and harmonize her work, but we send out in every case a woman prepared to carry this new influence into all her future life, even if a large number of these women should eventually pursue special or higher technical branches; for we are women before we are teachers, lawyers, physicians, etc., and if we are to add anything of distinctive value to the world by entering upon the fields of work hitherto pre-empted by men, it will be by the essential quality of this new feminine element.

"The strain in all work comes chiefly from lack of qualification by training or nature for the work in hand,--tear in place of wear. The schools can restore the ideal of quiet work. They have an immense advantage in regularity, discipline, time. This vast system gives an opportunity, such as no private schools offer, for ascertaining the average work which is healthful for growing girls. It is quite possible to ascertain, whether by women medical officers appointed to this end, or by the teachers themselves, the physical capacity of each girl, and to place her where this will not be exceeded. Girls trained in school under such wise supervision would go out into life qualified to guard the children of the future. The chief cause of overwork of children at present is the ignorance of parents as to the injurious effects of overwork, and of the signs of its influence.

"The first step toward the relief of over-pressure and false stimulus is to discard the pernicious idea that it is the function of the normal school to offer to every girl in the community the opportunity for becoming a teacher. This unwholesome feature is the one distinctive strain which must be removed from the system. It can be done provided public and political sentiment approve. The normal school should be only a device for securing the best possible body of teachers. It should be technical.

"Every teacher knows that the average girl of seventeen has not reached the physical, mental, or moral development necessary to enter upon this severe and high professional course of studies, and that one year is insufficient for such a course.

"Lengthen the time given to normal instruction,--make it two years; give in this school instruction purely in the science of education; relegate all general instruction to a good high school covering a term of four years. In this as in all other progressive formative periods the way out is ahead.

"It will be time enough to talk of doing away with a portion of the girls' school year when the schools have fulfilled their high mission, when they have sent out a large body of American women prepared, not for a single profession, even the high feminine vocation of pedagogy, but equipped for her highest, most general and congenial functions as the source and centre of the home."

I am unwilling to leave this subject without a few words as to our remedy, especially as concerns our public schools and normal schools for girls. What seems to me to be needed most is what the woman would bring into our school boards. Surely it is also possible for female teachers to talk frankly to that class of girls who learn little of the demands of health from uneducated or busy or careless mothers, and it would be as easy, if school boards were what they should be, to insist on such instruction, and to make sure that the claims of maturing womanhood are considered and attended to. Should I be told that this is impracticable, I reply that as high an authority as Samuel Eliot, of Massachusetts, has shown in large schools that it is both possible and valuable. As concerns the home life, it is also easy to get at the parents by annual circulars enforcing good counsel as to some of the simplest hygienic needs in the way of sleep, hours of study, light, and meals.

It were better not to educate girls at all between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, unless it can be done with careful reference to their bodily health. To-day, the American woman is, to speak plainly, too often physically unfit for her duties as woman, and is perhaps of all civilized females the least qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man. She is not fairly up to what nature asks from her as wife and mother. How will she sustain herself under the pressure of those yet more exacting duties which nowadays she is eager to share with the man?