CULTIVATION OF SELFRELIANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15192, 4 January 1913, Page 5 (Supplement)

CULTIVATION OF SELFRELIANCE.

There are very few girls ; and; young women nowadays who are. able to lead the placid and sheltered existence which so often fell to the lot of our mothers and grandmothers. - The modern: girl ; can--not rely on her brothers, or oven on her husband if she is married, in . the same sense in which her mother used to be able to do. In a hundred different ways she is forced to think and act' for herself about' matters which would be arranged for her a generation ago. The change, whether for . better or worse, has to be accepted . philosophically, but it is • most important that all girls should be- properly : equipped to face the altered conditions. . Self-reliance, fearlessness, the ability to act on her own initiative and in her own defencethese are .the qualities which more than any are needed nowadays by ■■:, the girl who leaves school to begin the business -;, of life. Parents should see to it that their daughters do not,' as it were, leave a conservatory to go out ' into a ; snowstorm. "v It ;is far better (says : the < '■: Gentlewoman) ; .; that; a girl: should be taught 'at school- to look after herself than that she should ' be merely kept under strict protection, in. ignorance of the facts :of life, until finally she is left, to find her way about' the .world as ' best* she can when her : school-' days are over. : ' The whole aim of a girl's education nowadays should surely be not to produce a girl who all her life will need the protection of others, jbutVa'girl who, without 'losing' any 'of her womanliness, can in -any 'emergency protect ' herself.; -