REACTIONARY IDEALS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2883, 23 June 1909, Page 94

REACTIONARY IDEALS.

Bs Colona. "Mr Stalling," said little Maggie Tulli-v-er to h«r brother's tutor, "couldn't I do Euclid and all Tom's lessons if you were to teach me instead of him?" "JMo, you couldn't," said Tom indignantly. "Girls can't do Euclid — can they, sir?"" "They can pick up a little of everything, I dare say," conceded Mr Stalling; "they've a deal of superficial cleverness ; but they couldn't go far into anything. They're quick and shallow." The remarks of little Tom Tulliver and his tufcrr are typical of the masculine way of regarding woman's intellectual powers in-the.dayis before ''higher education" for girls became familiar. A few women, as Elizabeth Carter and Mts Somerville, had forced scholars to recognise that they could do .more than "pick up a little" of mathematics and other masculine knowledge. ' But their achievements were not generally laiowsn, * and if they had been it might have been fairly argued that such instances were too exceptional to furnish any rule as to the powers of women in general. During the last 50 years, however, girls have proved l-hemselves abundantly capable of going into things as far as boys, so far a,t least as the passing of examinations is concerned. Time and again a girl has beaten every man of her year in competition for scholarships or nonours. As medical students girls have won the most brilliant success ; and in the primary and high schools we know that teachers find girls at least as apt students as boys, and usually far more assiduous ones. It is certain that the feminine mind can acquire knowledge as well as the masculine one. It is not yet quite so certain that it car make such good use of knowledge when acquired. Still less is it certain that girls can go through the stress and strain of study and examination with as little risk of physical or psychological detriment as exists in the case of boys.. The presumption must rather be that, granting women to possess equal acquisitive powers with men, severe study must present, greater danger to the sex of feebler pliysiqu-e and mor-e delicate ja-ervoue organisation. Advocates of the advancement of women might have been disposed to flatter themselves that this presumption was practically outruled by the healthy and happ}- appearance of the average high school and university girl. tSut sociologists and medical authorities -have long warned us of a more insidious danger threatening the race rather than the individual — the danger arising from what they consider the established fact, that high intellectual culture, in particular severe study during the years of physical development, unfits women for maternity. Dr Batchelor and Dr Truby King, addressing the Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children, have < uttered an urgent warning against this danger. Modern education for girls, they tell us, is "opposed to the most elementary principles of physiology,'" for it "invites young worn-en to enter a. course of sA-udjr for which 'Nature nev-er intended them" ; and, in short, "the common education of girls and boys on similar lines is one of the most preposterous farces ever perpetrated." ''Similar lines, "' observe, not "identical." .Chose interested ji the progress of women would cheerfully concede the im~ portance of domestic training for girls, while they are as insistent as Dr Batchelor on the need for instructing them in those physiological principles of vital importance to women and children. But they had hoped that such knowledge was not incompatible with general education as thorough and liberal as that accorded to boys. Dt Ba+chelor, however, holds frrml^ that the education of girls and boys should "absolutely diverge" after the twelfth or thirteenth year; the energies

of the girls being thencewortli devoted to } subjects 'having special relation to • woman's true function, in society. The j education of women.; for the learned pro- j fessions is an "absolutely indefensible ' thing." If these doctors are right, farewell to 'the hopes of women. For it is mental • ability that determines the position of a ! class or race. If women are not to enjoy I the educational advantages of men, not only will they be excluded from all vocations demanding high mental training, but as a sex they will be relegated to their old position of inferiority and subordrnatjon. \Women may be trusted to see the significance of the counter revolution urged by Dr Batchelor and Dr Truby King ; and it was to be expected that j some of our leading women would oome forward to challenge both the facts and the deductions of these two eminent specialists. Dr Emily Siedeberg has done so. She flatly denies Dr Batcbelor's state- ' nient tnat female medical students com- j inonly break down during their course of ' study. And -she lays the blame of most i of the ill-health and disability among ! women of the educated classes on the I wear and tear of social -claims and amusements. ' This view .seems reaeonnbUe. Dr iSatchelor 'mad other" <Lecriers of modern education make over-study the scapegoat lor a thousand f auitis of our complex civilisation. Dr Siedeberg contends that a woman with disciplined mental faculties will make the best 'housewife, and that the highest education caW go hand in hand I with domestic training. Not a few of our colonial graduates "are living witnesses to ■fche truth of this. But, in estimating the achievements of girls in the intellectual - race, it jshould not be forgotten what a , heavy handicap domesticity may be. A S girl student living at home helps with the ' housework, entertains her mother's' visi- ' tors, makes her own blouses, fills up domestic gaps generally, while her brother divides his time between study and athletics. Then she sits up late at night over her books, and if die has a headache she is evidence of the futility of woman's attempt to compete with men.' It is a little remarkable that woman's efforts should commonly be pronounced injurious to her in proportion as they place her on a footing of equality with man. The authoress of "Elizabeth and her Ger- . man Garden" gives a picture of the lives of the women workers among Russian itinerant field labourers which may serve as a highly-coloured illustration of the kind of labour that women may do without cavil. Thase womei? toil from daylight to dark, and live on potatoes washed down by weak vinegar and water. "The women get lower "wages than the men, not because they work less, bait because they are women, and must not be encouraged. I suppose it was my own superfluous amount of civilisation that made me pity these people when first' I came to live among them. I have not y-ep, however, persuaded myself that the ' women are happy. While working as hard as the men, they have to produce offspring, quite regardless of times and seasons and the general fitness of things ; thW have to do this as expeditiously as possible, so that they may not unduly, interrupt the work in hand. . . . It'is quite a usual thing to see them working in the fields in the morning, and' working again in the afternoon, having in the interval produced a baby." Bub when Elizabeth expressed her horror at this her husband informed her that the women did not suffer because they had never worn corsets, nor had theii mothers and grandmothers. Her© is the trnth in a nutshell. The less woman is differentiated from a mere female animal the more readily and easily wil she fulfil her prime function of bringing babies into 'th© world, and the more submissive will she be to her lord and master. The quality of the children and the rate of infant mortality amongst them is another matter. Surely Nature has erred in endowing women with diverse capacities andtbe instincts for their development, if while man may, and must, develop himself in the interests of the race these interests demand woman's self- j repression. • I But whether our social evolution has ' entered on wrong lines or not, it is not easy to effect a revolution, even in this | matter of education. For, spite of Dr Batchelor and other critics, women are daily more and more driven to economic independence. In long-settled countries they greatly outnumber men, and owing • to many causes for which "they are at , least no more responsible than men, a iarge proportion will remain unwedded — not to mention that marriage by no means always ensures woman a maintenance. '• Women, then, must earn their living as best they can. And as the marriage rate is lowest in the middle classes, women must, according to their talents and opportunities, fit themselves for clerical work, for business, and for the learned professions. It is, of course, very wrong ' for a woman to seek independence from : a desire for freedom and self-development. But she must be at all times ready to be ' self-supporting if need demands. A father may be willing to support bis unmarried ; daughters. But the man who denounces woman's competition with mam is by no lileans -vvillxii^j to support -His unpr-o-sridecl- ' for sisters, cousins, or aunts. No ; these ■ must provide for themselves by the readi- > est means available, whether by so doing they compete with men or not. There is ' no logical halting place between the primi- ' tive system of universal early marriage ! and the throwing open to %vomen of all ' fields of labour within their capacity to ] enter. By all means let 'domestic work 1 be held in honour, - and let girls be > guarded as much as possible from mere ] educational cram. But woman has tasted ' of the tree of knowledge, and she is not i going to renounce its fruits at the bidding i of masculine theorists. i j Moreover, man is sucli a perverse being j that he really does not esteem or admire < woman so well ivhen he has got I her purely domestic and paratitic, ! ]

regarding him from the Eve standpoint — "My autihor and disposer,' what thou Didd'st unargued I obey, to }enow no more is woman's happiest knowledge and her 1 praise" — as when she asserts her own individuality. xue restriction of women to a severely pTa<rfacal education on wholly diverse lines to that of men does not conduce to the mental sympathy and oomiradeship that men of the highest type now look for in marriage. And when women -can readily secure on independence, though many remain unmarried, those "who do marry will - more commonly be guided by, the motives that a3tme should lead to marriage. Whatever else modern education and a widened field of activities may have done, they have at least freed women from the. repulsive necessity of seeking marriage as a means of maintenance. Few thinkers will deny that the emancipation of woman is a necessary effect of the ethical progress of mankind, and that it in turn furthers that progress. " Our present educational .systems may. demand much improvement.;, but the onward course of humaxiity is not going to bo reversed.