No Sex in Education; or, an Equal Chance for Both Boys and Girls

Front matter

NO SEX IN EDUCATION;

OR,

AN EQUAL CHANCE FOR BOTH GIRLS AND BOYS.

Chapter 1

He saw with his own eyes the moon was round, Was also certain that the earth was square, Because he had journeyed fifty miles and found No sign that it was circular anywhere."—Byron.

"Let not opinion make thy judgment err." >>—Lady Alimony.

THE questions of the equal and co-education of the sexes have drifted uppermost to-day, and seem forcing themselves to a solution. The present age cannot postpone action; it must take a definite and decided stand in the matter, and it remains to be seen whether it is to make an advance movement or put its seal of sanction upon the dwarfed and inefficient systems of the past.

Edward H. Clarke, M. D., has brought the matter definitely before the public in a little work called "Sex in Education," which has set people to thinking and to talking. Strangely enough (though not so strange either, considering the reverence we have been taught to yield to the man who speaks backed with the authority of a profession), men seem to consider his decision one against which there can be neither defence nor appeal. Women—those thoughtful women who best understand themselves and their sex—are protesting against it as incorrect in its statements and one-sided in its arguments.

"Without denying the self-evident proposition that whatever a woman can do she has a right to do, the question at once arises, 'What can she do?

I thank Dr. Clarke for this statement, and I will add that the further question arises, "Who shall decide what she can do?" Dr. Clarke says it must be the scientist—Agassiz or Huxley. But let us pause and consider. How do scientists arrive at their conclusions? By abstract reasonings based upon theories of their own invention? By no means. They delve deep for facts—for hard, incontrovertible facts—and reason from them. If these facts or the objects of these facts had intelligence and could speak, they would cut short their reasoning by an appeal at once to this intelligence, and by this means get at radical truth. They would ask the fossil of the Miocene or the Pliocene period what it was, how it lived and what it was capable of doing; and receiving an intelligent answer, they would come to far juster conclusions about the creature of a pre-historic age than they are ever likely to do with all their theories, their surmisings and their disputes. Now woman's existence is an incontrovertible fact; all the phenomena of her life are facts; their results too are facts, varying according to circumstances and in individuals. Woman, even if she does not possess an equal intelligence with man, has at least sufficient to carry her through the ordinary affairs of life safely, if she is not interfered with, dictated to and impressed with the idea that she knows nothing about herself. Now, why not in all matters that pertain to her—especially in that question of what she can do—ask her directly, and pay some heed to her answer? If she does not know, who does?

The question comes down then to the one point—which know most about the capabilities and disabilities of the female sex, the doctors or the women themselves?

Did the idea never suggest itself to any one that, however well informed a physician may be in all matters pertaining to disease, when he comes to treat of well people he may be decidedly at fault? He is never by any possibility brought in professional contact with health, and the world resolves itself to his view into a vast hospital, where all are suffering from the conditions, and must submit to the regimen, of invalids. This is precisely the mistake Dr. Clarke has committed in his little book, as I shall try to prove.

Few will be inclined to dispute the author of the work referred to in his somewhat self-evident proposition—which, however, he announces as though he had discovered a new truth, and was just promulgating it to the world—that "The quæstio vexata of woman's sphere will be decided by her organization. This limits her power and reveals her divinely-appointed tasks, just as man's organization limits his power and reveals his work." The wildest "shrieker" after "rights" will not think of gainsaying this; and that brings us back to the original question, "What is the limit?" and the one growing out of it, "Who shall decide?"

Dr. Clarke has made an able and a well-deserved protest against the regulations of our schools and colleges, which encourage and in some cases compel over-study on the part of the students. Such a protest has long been needed, and it should be acted upon at once. But it is a great pity that the doctor's excessive chivalry has aroused him in behalf of girls alone, and caused him to shut his eyes to the equally sad consequences to the young of his own sex.

The thanks of all true friends of women are, it is true, due him for his strenuous advocacy of the fullest education for women; though it must be confessed that the reader is a little puzzled as to his exact meaning when he praises the Syrian girls, whom he saw in a Turkish harem, for their splendid physical developments; and, knowing as he must that such development of body is never attained except at the expense of the intellectual and moral nature, sighs for a like development on the part of American women; and when he quotes the praises of a well-known writer of the magnificent forms of the women of Nova Scotia, laying a stress upon the point that there have been until recently no public schools in that country. Does the doctor wish to insinuate, what he dare not openly proclaim, that after all women are far better off without education, if they would only think so?

It really seems a pity to upset the doctor's theories by taking away the very ground they stand upon, but in the case of the Nova Scotia women it seems strict truth compels such a proceeding. "An injured Nova Scotian," writing to the Woman's Journal, in an article entitled "Nova Scotia Vindicated," says:

"It is no unusual thing for an accurate and conscientious historian to travel many miles in order to verify the facts he states.

"In two days, or less, Dr. E. H. Clarke could have been transported by boat or car to that healthy locality, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. He could have seen for himself the blooming complexions, sturdy frames and unharassed expressions of the little provincials. In a few hours more he could have observed similar manifestations of vigor among the children of Halifax. But the question would quickly suggest itself, 'Have I not been doing these people an injustice? Was I right in attributing their unusual health to the "significant fact that until the past year there have been in Nova Scotia no public schools, and comparatively few private ones," and in insinuating that "to the Sabbath-school alone is due all the knowledge they possess"?' He would find public and private schools in successful operation all over the capital city, while the county schools are placed at no greater distance from each other than three or four miles. He would find ministers, lawyers, physicians, ladies and gentlemen, cultivated in every department of knowledge, the majority of whom have been educated within the borders of their own province.

"If the statement be true that these Nova Scotians had no public schools till within the past year, what a mushroom growth they have made, and what a precocious generation this must be!

"Many of the most successful professional men in Nova Scotia never went outside of the province till their education was completed, and some of them practiced years before seeing anything more of the world.

"Such discoveries as these would be suggestive if not alarming to the author of 'Sex in Education.' He might be led to suspect that his eloquent little work may contain other unreliable statements, and that these may involve equally unsound conclusions."

We may sum up the main points of "Sex in Education" by a quotation from a prominent medical review:

"The modern educational mistake, according to our author, consists in employing for girls the identical methods used for, and perhaps well adapted to, boys. Errors there are affecting the two sexes alike, but these do not come so specially within the purpose of the work before us. The facts to which Dr. Clarke directs attention as having been most harmfully ignored are that during her schooldays the girl is passing through the most critical changes of her life, and that in developing womanhood and establishing a new function, the vital powers are severely taxed. Notwithstanding this fact, as much, or even greater, mental labor is performed by the girl as by her brother, whose pubescence occurs with scarce any disturbance or additional expenditure of vitality. Again, the fact that for a time during each month the girl experiences a great, and at that time unaccustomed, drain upon her vitality, has not been allowed to lighten her tasks a particle. It is this total disregard of the laws of her being that renders the educational methods of the day so calamitous to the American girl and to posterity."

In support of his theory, Dr. Clarke gives his opinion as a physician, backed by clinical evidence. His conclusions we also quote from the same source:

"The precise order of school-life best adapted to favor the harmonious development of the female organism in all its parts can of course be fully settled. only by judicious experiment founded on the observation of physiological laws. Dr. Clarke thinks it would be wise to assume at the outset that four or five hours daily is as much study as should be required of a girl from fourteen to eighteen years old, and that absolute rest, or diminished labor, should always be enforced for a few days every month. These periodical remissions, too, should not be allowed to necessitate extra work or loss of standing."

Dr. Clarke has misstated some facts—unintentionally, I hope—suppressed others; drawn general conclusions from special premises; thrown upon modes of education the evil consequences which are just as likely to be due to other causes; and has failed to see that the very means he recommends would result in evils far greater than those he would remedy. He represents woman as normally an invalid for one-fourth of the time. Let the healthy women of America tell the doctor better than this.

Chapter 2

"Here was a man whose learning almost amounted to a proof of what he believed."—George Eliot.

Ætas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem."—Horace, iii., 6.

THE admirers of "Sex in Education" claim for it a sterling scientific value which they are solemnly convinced ought to turn the balance against a like education of boys and girls. But the statements of the book are far too inexact and unreliable to substantiate this claim. The author's researches, if we are to judge by results, are too narrow in their scope, and his arguments partake too much of the nature of special pleading, to have, in fact, any real value whatever.

When any matter worthy of investigation is brought to a scientific test, the scientist does not dare to impose upon the public loose statements backed by no authority or proof save his own opinions and professional standing. Everything is accurately stated; the facts with all their bearings brought in support; every relative fact is searched out and tested, and its exact influence discussed and determined. Evidence is weighed and sifted with the utmost care, and everything which cannot stand the test of the most searching scrutiny is rejected without hesitation. It would never do to dispose of them wholesale under the general phrases "much else," "many more things," leaving them indefinite in their nature and their results unknown or at best guessed at. The importance of figures is not overlooked, and statistics should play a prominent part in any statement which they may affect. If a single fact or set of figures bearing upon the matter is overlooked, the whole decision is invalidated, and the discussion begins anew.

It seems as though in a matter of so much importance as the education of one-half the human race we have a right to demand a like care. We should not be content with the ex- pression of private opinions backed by loosely stated and one-sided testimony, and conclusions drawn from an experiment only which the doctor himself admits has not yet been tried. How can we judge of a thing fairly by imagining what it will be and then deciding upon the fiction of our own brain?

Now, what does Dr. Clarke do in this scientific book of his? He gives us an elaborate description of the physical economy of men and women, finely worded, and for the most part accurate. The statements in the chapter headed "Chiefly Physiological" will be, in the main, when they do not degenerate into theories and opinions, accepted as facts by admirers and adversaries alike. There is one point upon which there is a divided opinion among medical men, and in view of this difference in opinion it can hardly be considered impertinent in a woman to dare to differ from the doctor. He says:

"The principal organs of elimination common to both sexes are the bowels, kidneys, lungs and skin. A neglect of their functions is punished in each alike. To women is entrusted the exclusive management of another process of elimination, viz., the catamenial. This, using the blood for its channel of operation, performs, like the blood, double duty. It is necessary to ovulation and to the integrity of every part of the reproductive apparatus; it also serves as a means of elimination for the blood itself."

It seems hardly possible that in the economy of nature that material which is held in reserve within the female system for the purpose of maternity, and which, there being no draft upon it in this direction, passes away as waste, should be in itself of the nature of an elimination, carrying off the poisonous and effete matter of the system. If this is the case, the infant which is nourished by this waste is poisoned in its blood and bone from its earliest existence.

"This, by closing an avenue of elimination, poisons the blood and depraves the organization."

It is true that the retention of this waste works sad havoc in the female organism; but it is not because it is in its nature poison- ous, but because its retention at all is a violation of nature and cannot but do harm.

Dr. Clarke is himself unconsciously guilty of the very error of which he accuses the friends of co-education when he quotes a writer who says:

"Woman must be regarded as woman, not as a nondescript animal, with greater or less capacity for assimilation to man."

This is the very thing our author does. He does not comprehend her as a woman at all. She is to him a "nondescript animal," with points of similarity to and points of difference from man. He admits her similarity in the matter of stomach and brain—in fact, of actual identity; but when he comes to take her reproductive system into account, he is in despair. His reasoning is something after this manner: "A man with such a drain upon him, and with only a man's capacity for endurance, would surely succumb unless counteracting measures were taken. His mental powers could be uninterruptedly educated only at the expense of his physical. Therefore a woman, who is like man in other particulars, stands in need of these counteracting measures." He does not comprehend—he seems never to have realized—the full sense of that which he tries to impress upon his readers, that a woman is not a man in any sense. Accompanying the demand upon her system which nature makes, nature has kindly and wisely—nay, more than that, justly—provided such supplies of strength, vigor and endurance as, if not wasted and frittered away by idle, pernicious habits, are equal to all feminine emergencies.

In his plea for periodicity he does not recognize the fact that there is no periodicity of brain action in a woman. That is ever active and eager, and never calls for periodic rest. So that nature would be very unjust to impose a necessity for restraint upon it which is not seconded by its own needs. When the brain craves rest, it calls for sleep. That denied, thebrain suffers. And a rightly balanced body and brain always act harmoniously.

Dr. Clarke is hardly true to his own theories when he admits:

"No organ or function in plant, animal or human kind can be properly regarded as a disability or source of weakness. Through ignorance or misdirection it may limit or enfeeble the animal or being that misguides it; but, rightly guided and developed, it is either in itself a source of power and grace to its parent stock or a necessary stage in the development of larger grace and power. The female organization is no exception to this law, nor are the particular set of organs and their functions with which this essay has to deal an exception to it. The periodical movements which characterize and influence woman's structure for more than half her terrestrial life, and which, in their ebb and flow, sway every fibre and thrill every nerve of her body a dozen times a year, and the occasional pregnancies which test her material resources and cradle the race, are, or are evidently intended to be, fountains of power, not hindrances to her."

How true this is only a woman can know. Dr. Clarke does not even guess it. They are not weaknesses nor hindrances in any sense of the words, nor should they be so considered or treated. Regarded as weaknesses, they will soon develop into weaknesses, and will remain so to the end of the chapter, weighing their victims down with a burden which neither God nor nature intended. Inaction is not the normal state of either manhood or womanhood even for a limited and ever-returning period. Inaction is the parent of weakness and the grandparent of disease. "She girdeth her loins with strength"—not weakness; and in this strength is found a woman's fullest, most harmonious womanliness.

There is another point upon which the doctor is grievously at fault:

"Corsets that embrace the waist with a tighter and steadier grip than any lover's arm, and skirts that weigh the hips with heavier than maternal burdens, have often caused grievous maladies and imposed a needless invalidism. Yet, recognizing all this, it must not be forgotten that breeches do not make a man nor the want of them unmake a woman."

The want of "breeches"—that is to say, the want of a sufficient amount of clothing for her legs, which to afford proper protection can be only of the bifurcate pattern—does unmake many a woman; and when corsets and heavy skirts are added, the unmaking is so complete that all the separate systems of education which a whole dynasty of Dr. Clarkes could invent would never be able to make her again. All the evils from study alone which the doctor can conjure up would dwindle into mere nothingness beside those terrible and terribly common ones which result from the improper modes of dress the doctor has described. Remedy the dress of young women, and the doctor will find his occupation nearly gone, so far as fighting the bugbear of co-education is concerned.

How easy it is to make out a case when one has the whole ordering of testimony, with no adverse lawyer to scan evidence, and a credulous and deferential public for judge and jury! Says Dr. Clarke:

"Circumstances have repeatedly carried me to Europe, where I am always surprised by the red blood that fills and colors the faces of ladies and peasant-girls, reminding one of the canvas of Rubens and Murillo, and am always equally surprised on my return by the crowds of pale, bloodless female faces, that suggest consumption, scrofula, anæmia and neuralgia. To a large extent, our present system of educating girls is the cause of this pallor and weakness."

Not one word of the difference in climate; not even a hint of the active out-of-door life led by those ruddy European girls, who, in truth, think nothing of a five- or ten-mile walk for a constitutional. This is the real secret of their robust health and flushing beauty. When American women shall learn that out-of-door life means life indeed, and in-door existence a death in life, we may hope to see fuller and more rounded forms, stronger pulsating veins and more glowing cheeks.

Only do not let my readers suppose that I am going to fall into the doctor's mistake and imagine that any one of the reforms which I suggest is going to work the salvation of the race of girls. The whole system of our training of girls—physically, mentally, morally and socially—is worthless, rotten to its core and diseased in all its branches and ramifications. I will agree with the doctor there. I will do more than agree with him; I will go farther in this admission than he has ever thought of going. We cannot hope to restore the tree to healthful life by snipping off a single branch, any more than by forcing it to rest by fits and to proceed in its growth by starts.

I do not say whether our present system of education for boys is much better; that is not the question under debate just now. But we may feel assured that when we perfect a system which shall be found to exactly meet the needs of boys—in which their physical, their mental, their moral and their social development shall be equally considered and provided for in the truest and surest manner—which will provide for the average boy; shall not drag the one quick and ready of intellect, and at the same time shall be elastic enough to hold within its embrace the one slow and dull of thought—which will give the fullest opportunities for the boy in perfect health, and at the same time not bear too heavily upon the weakling (and we mothers know there are such among boys as well as among girls),—we shall have found exactly the system which will equally embrace girls in its provisions and which will as perfectly meet their needs as those of boys.

But, it will be argued, such a system cannot exist out of Utopia. Then, if that be true, let me prophesy that the whole system of public education is an egregious failure, and has in it the seeds of ultimate and sure decay. And if that be true, the age will come when it will be looked upon as a relic of barbarism. If it be true, then not only should most girls be excluded from its privileges, but most boys as well; for boys owe quite as much to the world as their sisters, and must cancel their obligations to posterity in as honorable a manner. But it is not of impossible attainment, as I have faith to believe the future will show.

It is a curious idea which seems to have got into a great many minds at the present time besides that of our author that upon woman alone rest the responsibilities of the coming race. It is only after the child is fairly brought into the world, and has been cared for by its mother through its period of helplessness, that its father suddenly wakes to a sense of his rights in the matter—rights which seem to involve no duties—and claims all title to its ownership. If we are going to take special pains to serve the girls, and at the same time allow the boys to overwork themselves mentally and deteriorate physically and morally, I cannot see that the future generations will stand so much better chance, after all, viewing the matter in the light of strict physiological facts.

Then we are reminded of the words of Horace, which I somewhat freely translate—

Our fathers, than our grandsires worse, In us a baser offspring see, And we in time the world shall curse With a still viler progeny"—

when we hear this terrible ado about the physical degeneracy of the present generation of women. Do not two sentences from "Sex in Education" read like a literal rendering of the ancient poet, with the sex changed?

"Each succeeding generation, obedient to the, law of hereditary transmission, has become feebler than its predecessor. Our great-grandmothers are pointed at as types of female physical excellence, their great-granddaughters as illustrations of female physical degeneracy."

It is something worthy of comment that in the history of mankind each new generation, viewing the evils which surround and characterize it, is inclined to look backward, and lamenting the degeneracy of the day, sigh for the good old times when such things were not.

But what is the truth in the matter? Mortuary tables and statistics of all sorts show that the average length of life has been steadily increasing for many generations back. The men and women of to-day are healthier and longer lived than any of their progenitors. In those good old days of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers there were a great many more second, third and fourth wives than there are to-day—that is to say, more women broke down and died from hard physical labor and over-bearing of children and lack of intellectual development than in this age of machinery and female colleges.

Forty years ago an English writer said:

"The Athenæum is fond of bringing out great mouthing articles against modern female education, but the huge mountain of denunciation brings forth but a mouse of instruction in the better way. The weakliness and imperfect forms of modern ladies are all laid to ignorance and want of sense in their governors, pastors and masters. This seems to me by far too unqualified a charge… The Athenæum writer is like a clumsy fencer; he knows that something is to be hit, but he hits far too hard, and hits only half the right place."

The very words might have been written today; and if the last sentence had been written of Dr. Clarke himself, nothing would have been truer. He knows something is to be hit, but he hits too hard, and hits only half the right place. It is comical to remember that these very ladies whose "weakliness and imperfections" are commented upon are the mothers and grandmothers whom we are called upon to admire, and "were the very women," comments T. W. Higginson, "whose undue amplitude and superabundant vigor were satirized by Hawthorne."

Dr. Clarke is not the first one to find out that women are educated too much in a masculine manner. A writer of forty-five years ago, in a letter from Philadelphia addressed to the Ladies' Magazine, then published in Boston by Mrs. Sarah J. Hale (now editor of Godey's Lady's Book), gives the following facts concerning the schools of our grandmothers and mothers, who Dr. Clarke assures us excelled us in physical and mental vigor:

"At the girls' schools kept by gentlemen (with the exception of the academy of Mr. F.) the studies are so multiplied, so abstruse, and I will add so unfeminine, that the minds of the pupils are worn out before they arrive at maturity, and frequently their bodies also."

Yet these girls actually survived and came in course of time to deserve the admiration of the doctor. In view of this fact, there is hope for their descendants yet.

It may be well to test a little the science which finds its way into the pages of "Sex in Education." Take, for instance, the author's illustration of the women who have unsexed themselves by any false mode of life. After describing the physical changes which such perverted females undergo, he proceeds to say:

"There is a corresponding change in the intellectual and physical condition—a dropping out of maternal instincts and an appearance of Amazonian coarseness and force. Such persons are analogous to the sexless class of termites. Naturalists tell us that these insects are divided into males and females, and a third class, called workers and soldiers, who have no reproductive apparatus, and who, in their structure and instincts, are unlike the fertile individuals."

It is unfortunate to spoil the similitude in this instance, but every person familiar with the facts of natural history is aware that the females of the termites, and of all other species of insects which have a third or working class, display no maternal instincts whatever. Their duty and care end when they have deposited their eggs, and these among some of the tri-sexual species are frequently left in most careless and exposed situations. The workers are the true mothers of the race. They carefully search for and bring to places of safety the scattered eggs, watch over the larvæ, feed and tend them carefully, protect them in danger and defend them from their enemies. These workers monopolize all the maternal instincts of the species, so Dr. Clarke is most unfortunate in his comparison.

Chapter 3

Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school."—Shakespeare.

What are little girls made of, made of? What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice, and everything nice, That's what little girls are made of, made of, That's what little girls are made of.

What are little boys made of, made of? What are little boys made of? Snips and snails, and puppy dogs' tails, That's what little boys are made of, made of, That's what little boys are made of."—Old Song.