THE VITALITY OF THE RACE.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13428, 21 May 1909, Page 6

THE VITALITY OF THE RACE.

The impressive remarks of Dr. Batchelor, of Ihinedin, regarding the effect of the present system of education upon young women, merit serious attention. Speaking from the experience of twenty practice as a specialist in the diseases of women, ho declared that the present educational system "encourages and invites young " women to enter a course of study for " which Nature never intended them." Dr. Batchelpr is no enemy to the higher education of women, providing allowance is made for woman's physiological peculiarities; ,on the contrary, he is in sympathy with it. But he contends that no such allowance is made, and that from the age when the girl begins to merge into the woman ter education and training are in tn© gieit majority of cases conducted on lines that lead, too often, to disaster when eho undertakes, later\ on, the duties of motherhood. The result is seen by doctors in the number of cases of difficult childbirth, which are so much on the increase that the medical piactitioiier of to-day, though far better equipped than his predecessor of a generation ago, " secures no better results as re- " gards maternal and infant mortality." Where the'educational system largely fails in respect of young women is that while it helps them to compete with men in office work and in the profes-

sionSj it does not fit thorn for \rhat is essentially woman's work—the caro, of home and children—and in Dr. Batcholors opinion the remedy lies in the State recognising tK.it after a girl attains the age of thirteen or fourteen her studies 'should be chiefly directed *' to domestic management, domestic

'economy, physiology, and hygiene." Was domestic management so simple, he asked, or domestic -economy so genera], that there -was ne need for special instruction, and ■was not a knowledge of the principles of hygiene more useful

to s young woman than a smattering of Euclid? The tendency of girl'a education, he declared, is "to train '•' them for some occupation which will " b© abandoned ne. soon as their normal

'•'career of matrimony is adopted.' . It would bo more sensible '"to train them " principally for those domestic duties '•for which Nature has destined them, " and a knowledge of which plays such "an important part in the development of a nation. -. There is sound common-sen&o in this, and Dr. Batcholor lias done good service in bringing thf> question once more hoioro the public, in whose hands, after all, lies the power of effecting refenn. The present methods of educating and training of girls would socn be altered if the people demanded the change. It is of no use to throw all the blamo unon the. Education Department; some must rest uixm. those, parents who permit, and even require, perhaps through ignorance, the continuance of the present system. Something is already being dono by the Society founded by Dr. Truby King, and by the spread of technical education. But the* work of reform cannot to carried out by adjuncts to the education system—it must begin with the system itself.