Marion Harland's Complete Etiquette

<h2>CHAPTER X<br/> <small>THE EDUCATION OF A YOUNG GIRL</small></h2> <p class="drop-cap">IS IT a good thing to send a young girl away to school, and, if so, shall one send her to boarding-school or college? are the questions that agitate many a household where the daughter or daughters are old enough to make these questions pertinent. Over-conscientious and fearful mothers sometimes decide that the risk is too great in sending girls away from home. They fear, with the loosening of home ties, a lessening of a sense of responsibility, while at the same time they doubt a girl’s power to get on without maternal supervision. The judgment and experience of the world is against this point of view. “Homekeeping youths have ever homekeeping wits,” is no more true of boys than of girls. Going away to school should be one of the richly vitalizing influences of life. To a certain extent a girl is thrown on her own resources when away as she would not be at home, yet the conditions in any school worthy of the name are such that she is guarded and protected. At home, her<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</SPAN></span> friendships and acquaintances have been made largely through the connection of her family with the community in which she lives. Away, she must make her own friends. At home, it is probable that mother, older sister or a kindly aunt have done her darning and other mending. Away, she must do these things for herself or they remain undone. In many ways the opportunity is given her by a year or two away at school to prove herself, yet to do so without danger, as the amateur swordsman fences with a button on his foil. Outside of these considerations one of the most important is the development that comes through delight in change. Novel conditions have charm for all ages, and in youth, much more than in age, they are a spur to endeavor. Happiness of a healthful kind stimulates the mind, and it is commonly true that the years spent away at school are pleasant ones.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <div class="sidenote">WHAT SCHOOL TO CHOOSE</div> <p>The advocates of the different sorts of training represented by boarding-school and college life are often hostile to each other. There is much to be said in favor of both educational methods, and the decision concerning which shall be adopted for a young girl should depend largely upon her own temperament, tastes and inclinations. The advocates of college life are too apt to assume that the texture of boarding-school learning is flimsy, which<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</SPAN></span> it sometimes is. The friends of boarding-school life assume that a college training means an absence of regard for the feminine graces; and it is true that some of its representatives are not social successes. But such comment goes a short way in helping one to a decision as to whether boarding-school or college shall be the destination of one’s daughter.</p> <div class="sidenote">THE BOARDING-SCHOOL</div> <p>The character of the girls’ colleges in our country is much more generally known than that of boarding-schools. The colleges are few in number, and to their proceedings is given a degree of publicity not accorded the proceedings of smaller educational enterprises. There are boarding-schools and boarding-schools. Investigation can not be too careful before placing a girl in one of them. The best offer advantages of an admirable kind. The courses of study, while not so diverse as those of college, are particularly adapted to feminine tastes, while the accomplishments which tend to make social life more interesting and agreeable are given a large share of attention. History, literature, the modern languages, music and drawing have perhaps the foremost places in the curriculum. Many of these schools are in cities where opportunities are given, under proper chaperonage, for girls to see the best theatrical performances and to hear concerts of value. In these schools girls come into<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</SPAN></span> more intimate relations with their teachers than is possible in a college, and they are also much more strictly chaperoned. Matters of form and deportment, details of manner, so far as they can be taught, are given thought and attention often with happy results. One may say that a girl should learn these things at home, but sometimes her surroundings there are not favorable and again she needs the impetus of just such criticism as she receives at a good boarding-school to make her aware of the value of form. The aim of a good boarding-school is to make of a girl an attractive member of society as well as to make her mentally appreciative. The stamp of certain admirable boarding-schools upon the manners of the women who have attended them is unmistakable. I once heard a man say that he could always “spot” a pupil of Miss Porter’s famous Farmington School within half an hour after introduction, by certain delicate formalities in her manner.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <div class="sidenote">THE WOMAN’S COLLEGE</div> <p>A woman’s college offers a much wider sphere for a girl’s energies and abilities than does boarding-school. If she loves study, is fond of athletics and is interested widely in human nature, college is the place for her. Here she has a chance for the development of her best mental powers. Deportment is not one of the unwritten branches of the curriculum<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</SPAN></span> as it is in the girls’ boarding-school. Nevertheless it is taught by the social preeminence of those who bring the best breeding with them. Though the surveillance is not what it is in boarding-schools, it is not so necessary, because the girls are somewhat older than those in boarding-schools and because the sentiment of the students generally is for law and order.</p> <div class="sidenote">WELL-KNOWN COLLEGES</div> <p>The best-known girls’ colleges in the United States are situated in the country, and the opportunity thus given for sport and for a healthy appreciation of nature is an invaluable asset for those institutions. At no time in life is the love of beauty at once so delicate and so keen as in those years when one is eligible to college life. To foster this perhaps latent appreciation by a direct contact with the beauties of nature is one of the opportunities offered by Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith and other well-known women’s colleges.</p> <p>The three or four years in college among a hundred or more other girls often form one of the happiest and most fruitful periods of a girl’s life. She makes interesting and valuable friendships. Often her knowledge of the world is broadened by visits paid to her schoolmates in vacation time. The advantages she derives from properly directed study are great; the advantages in other directions are possibly even greater. A women’s college is a little<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</SPAN></span> world in which every variety of femininity may be observed. The life there gives opportunity for the development of the most diverse talents. Any sort of capability eventually finds scope for action in college life. The serious side and the recreative side of life find expression there. A girl who lends herself freely to the opportunities of a college should quit its doors prepared for social and domestic life and able also to take care of herself financially if exigencies require.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <p>The comparative cost of college and boarding-school is often an important point in the matter of deciding a girl’s educational destination. The best boarding-schools are more expensive than the colleges as far as formal expenditure is concerned. A girl’s personal expenses, though they are regulated in some boarding-schools, are in college and at most boarding-schools what she and the family council choose to make them.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <div class="sidenote">TRAVEL AS EDUCATION</div> <p>If college and boarding-school exercise a beneficial influence upon the development of a girl’s mind and manners, travel is a happy third in the list. Unfortunately travel is an expensive luxury. If, however, the financial circumstances of a girl’s parents are such that she may travel for six months or a year after her schooling is over, this puts the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</SPAN></span> finishing touch upon her educational opportunities. Travel is the easiest, the quickest and the most delightful manner of gaining knowledge in the world, while, at the same time, it is what study is not always, an encouragement to social facility.</p> <p>The young girl must be educated at home as well as away from home. The foundation for such accomplishments as she has a preference for must be laid there and she must prepare there, in however slight a way, for the responsibilities that may rest upon her shoulders when she has a house of her own. For her own training, as well as the relief of her mother, every girl should assume some household duty or duties. But these, unless necessity commands, should not be severe, and occasional laxity in performance should not be dealt with harshly. Young girlhood is a growing time and a dreaming time; and a too stern insistence upon household duties sometimes blights important capabilities of mind and body.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <div class="sidenote">ACQUIRING ACCOMPLISHMENTS</div> <p>It was an old-fashioned idea that every girl should be equipped with an accomplishment, should cultivate some definite ability to please. The idea was much abused, and resulted in the torture of many innocent persons who were compelled to look at crude sketches, to admire grotesque embroideries and to listen to mediocre performances on the piano.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</SPAN></span> But there was at the bottom of the idea something sound and wholesome. It is vitally important that women should please, should help to make the wheels of life go easily. That was not an ignoble epitaph discovered on an old tombstone in an English churchyard, “She was so pleasant.” Perhaps in the matter of education we are now swinging too far away from the old-fashioned ideal and are too much inclined to regard as trifling a young girl’s special efforts to please. Do we not somewhat puritanically regard the studies one does not like as necessarily more efficacious than those pursued with joy? Drawing, music, the modern languages, the art of reciting or conversation—we speak of these usually not only as secondary in importance to the study of Greek, Latin and mathematics, but as involving little in the way of labor, while the truth is that the pursuit of these subjects not only involves endless labor but a labor that in the end unveils personality and individuality, and makes for original interpretation of life to a degree far exceeding results from the so-called severer branches.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <div class="sidenote">THE DILETTANTE</div> <p>The theory is generally disseminated that those studies which give most pleasure to one’s self and to others when actually transformed into accomplishments are easy of attainment and demand only the careless and dilettante touch. The elders as well<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</SPAN></span> as the youth are much impregnated with this idea. Let a girl understand when she begins to study drawing, the violin, the pianoforte or the art of singing that no success is possible without hard work, that the privilege of lessons will be withdrawn if she does not put effort and determination into her work, and results of a correspondingly good character may be forthcoming.</p> <div class="sidenote">THOROUGHNESS NECESSARY</div> <p>For the happiness of themselves and their friends, it is well that young girls should pursue any accomplishment toward which they may have a leaning. Certainly such a pursuit, if entered into with delicacy and vivacity, must increase the sweetness of life by adding to one’s sense of beauty; and it is never trite to say that a thing of beauty is a joy forever.</p> <p>Pursuit of an accomplishment does not always mean possession, but where it does, even measurably, it means also the power of imparting pleasure to one’s friends, and pleasure that is touched upon and mingled with one’s own individuality. In a day when wealth counts for so much in relation to the bestowal of pleasure, one can scarcely overestimate for those who do not have wealth the value of the personal touch in the entertainment of one’s friends.</p> <hr class="chap" /></div> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</SPAN></span></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />