LEARNING TO LIVE

Evening Star, Issue 22032, 18 May 1935, Page 2

LEARNING TO LIVE

[Written by Mart Scott, for the ‘Evening Star.’] “ She was the most brilliant student of her year—and there she is, keeping house and looking after babies What a waste of all that education I ” We had just left the house—a house run beautifully and smoothly with two small happy children, not too much in evidence —when my companion turned to me with her petulent criticism. It was, of course, the kind of remark very provocative to any university graduate who happens also to be a wife and mother. “ It all depends what education is for,” I retorted hotly. “It was in a nov el of Dorothy Whipple’s, I think that I lately saw a distinction drawn 'between the.kind of education that fits you to earn your own living and the kind that fits you to live. After all, they need not be two individual courses; you may learn the one as yo,u acquire the other. It all depends on your own attitude towards education, for, like everything else, you mostly procure from it what you bring to it.” “ But surely you can’t contend that a brilliant degree'is doing that girl any good now? Either she must regret all those years of study or she must despise the humble work that she is compelled to do. What’s the use of her first-class honours now? ” “ Well, they appear to have helped her to make a ‘first-class business of marriage and maternity—probably far better because of all the discipline of body and mind, the capacity for hard work and drudgery. They have helped to widen and develop her‘intelligence, and so fit her for the battle of daily life.” My companion retired from the fray with the time-honoured remark that it all depended what you had studied. If our hostess’s subject had,been languages she would perhaps be able to enjoy the classics if sne were not too tired in the evenings. If economics had been her bent sne would doubtless find present conditions interesting, and be able to discuss quotas and exchange with her husband and his friends. Domestic science, which, my friend vaguely and optimistically supposed to be all about vitamins, would certainly be useful. But if she had studied mathematics and science it could be nothing but sheer waste. And in any case she would probably run a house just as well and rear children as healthy if she had never passed matriculation. As I smiled politely and passed to the more congenial subject of Queen Mary’s taste in hats, I reflected with amazement that this is probably the point of view of more people than we realise even to-day. If a woman, does not make any commercial use of her education, it is economic waste. That would account for the curiously prejudiced and distrustful attitude of many women towards such books as Vera Brittain’s ‘ Testament of Youth ’ and her friend Miss Holtby’s ‘ Woman.’ There is still surprisingly current the idea that women belong to two classes, those who are high-brows and take degrees, and those who are destined for mar- , riage and maternity, and who only heed to Icnow enough to decipher a cookery book, discuss the _ latest novel at a party, .-or entertain their husbands. Moreover, there is sometimes an attitude of slight resentment towards a woman who has combined the culinary art with those that give her hn M.A., or who has used her knowledge, painfully acquired at the university not to teach or earn a living, but to unite the various fragments of her own life into one harmonious whole. For that, after all, is the true value, the only real end and aim of all education. It is not, to help us to be economically independent, although that was never more desirable than to-day; it was not to help us to ( understand the Mortgage Corporation Bill or even to read Goethe and Anatol.e France in the original; it should surely be fo teach us so to order our minds and our energies as to make the best and the fullest lives for those amongst whom we live, and especially for ourselves. If education is really cultural, it will help us to do this, and if we have this permanent possession from our college days it will not matter in the slightest that we have never . written a French essay since we left those class rooms, or that we have forgotten our mathematics so successfully as to be unable to help our offspring with its entirely revolting algebraic problems. We shall still retain the best. But mir educational efforts should do more than this; they should leave us with two other gifts beyond rubies—a right estimate of values and an ordered habit of reasoning. If we are fortunate, there will be many oth.er bequests from those strenuous years of work and play that will not desert us in middle life—a sense of humour; a capacity for easy and natural friendship with men, learned — and where better?—in the struggles and the mutual successes of the classroom ; an interest, too, in things rather than people, and a desire to discuss 1 them.' Given this handicap, the odds are heavily in favour of any woman making a success of married life. Not that the onlookers arc always inclined to help her—though for the matter of that I doubt if they ever are, for there is something dreadfully interesting in watching the first struggles of another adventurer in the difficult sea of matrimony. Nevertheless, I have often noticed a particular sharpness in the critics' voices when they are_ discussing the capabilities of a university woman.* “ She’s marrying a farmer. Poor chap! Fancy having an M.A, for a wife! Talk of square pegs!”—and they watch hopefully for the M.A.’s bread to bo doughy, her children undernourished, and jjjer husband a permanent dyspeptic. ' When none of these things happen, when her house is well kept and her husband and children survive cheerfully, they say grudgingly: “ She’s managing all right in spite of all that education.” Which is exactly, where the criticism is .all wrong. She is managing well because of it, because she is not afraid of hard work, nor scornful of the success that it brings, because she has brains enough not to underrate her profession of housewife and mother, and common sense enough not to despise advice and help, not to imagine that mere “ book learning ” can weigh in the balance against the mellow wisdom of experience. She is accustomed to learning and realises that housecraft is a study just as serious as higher mathematics or economics. Moreover, if she has gone successfully through the mill of university life, she should be able to make good use of the patience and endurance it has taught her. May 1 add, that, if she be placed in a certain type of country district, she will find her sense of humour stand her in good stead, help her to smile at criticism, and disarm hostility? At least, this is what should happen if the individual and the system are both all they should be. If our education, so often and so pompously called “ higher,” is worth its cost and its high-sounding name it will help us to face life gallantly and patiently, to take broad views on every subject, to be tolerant and humorous, to woo rather than stampede opposition. If it does | not do these things, the fault must lie . mostly with the individual, with the

arrogance of “cultured” youth; but a little also with a system that is still somewhat inclined to weigh education in terms of. commercial advantage rather than to regard it ns a preparation for wiser and fuller living.