EDUCATION OF GIRLS TOO SUPERFICIAL.

The school instruction of our girls is too superficial.  There is a smattering of too many branches, where two or three systematically studied and thoroughly mastered, would accomplish much more for them in the way of a sound mental training, which is the real object of education.  The present method of educating young girls is to give them from five to ten studies, in which they prepare lessons, and this, too, at an age when their physical development suffers and is checked by excess of mental labor.  Such a course of instruction, bestowing only a smattering of many branches, wastes the powers of the mind, and deters, rather than aids, self-improvement.  It is only a concentration of the mind upon the thorough acquisition of all it undertakes that strengthens the reflective, and forms the reasoning, faculties, and thus helps to lay a solid foundation for future usefulness.  The word education means to educe, to draw out the powers of the mind; not the cramming into it of facts, dates and whole pages to be repeated verbatim.

AN EDUCATION APPROPRIATE TO EACH SEX.

The fact is becoming more palpable every year that there is an education appropriate to each sex; that identical education for the two sexes is so unnatural, that physiology protests against it and experience weeps over it.  The physiological motto in education is, “Educate a man for manhood, a woman for womanhood, and both for humanity.”  Herbert Spencer, in speaking of the want of a proper course of education for girls, says:  “It is an astonishing fact that, though on the treatment of offspring depend their lives or deaths, and their moral welfare or ruin, yet not one word of instruction on treatment of offspring is ever given to those who will, by and by, be parents.”  It will thus be seen, that as women have the care, the training and the education of children, they need an education in a special direction, and should have a very thorough one, to prepare them for the task.

WOMEN SHOULD HAVE A KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAWS OF HEALTH.

Physiology is one of the branches of that higher education, which should be thoroughly pursued by women to enable them to fulfill the various duties of their allotted stations.  Yet it is also desirable that they should have a thorough knowledge of all branches that they undertake, and a mastery of the studies pursued by them; for the want of thoroughness in woman’s education is an obstacle to success in all branches of labor.  But woman should especially have a thorough knowledge of the laws of physiology and hygiene.  If she becomes a mother, such knowledge will enable her to guard better the lives and health of her children.  She will understand that when she sends out her child insufficiently clad, and he comes home chilled through,