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Untitled Article
at all events , let her not presume to teach what she has not been able or willing to learn . She may take it as a rule , that if she cannot read Livy and Cicero with ease , she cannot explain a page of Delectus . The same may be said of the modern languages , even when they are taught on the Hamiltonian system ; . the same may be said of every thing that is taught ;
the more and the more thoroughly the subject has been studied , the better is the mind prepared to teach even the rudiments . It may be a seeming exception that there are many things which a child learns better from its mother than from a professor ; it is only a seeming exception , for the mother with the professor ' s knowledge would succeed better than either .
We have said nothing of history , but an instructor can hardly possess a more important qualification than a philosophical and extensive acquaintance with the institutions and customs of the various nations and ages which are successively presented to the child ' s observation . A mother should have clear and comprehensive views of government , of legislation , of the effect of natural and adventitious distinctions upon national manners , and of the action of national customs and feeling upon individual character . Is this-to be attained by extracts , and catechisms , and the mummery which
is practised at our girls' schools , under pretence of imparting historical knowledge ? If a woman would qualify herself , not for heaping up in her children's minds a mass of incongruous facts , but for exercising their judgment and training their moral feeling , let her enter resolutely and deeply into the study of history . Returning then to the question , What kind and degree of intellectual attainment is requisite or desirable in an instructress ? " it is necessary , we reply , that she should study mental and moral
philosophy ; that she should acquire extensive and accurate information in natural history , manufactures , natural philosophy , and history ; it is highly desirable ( and indeed , essential , if she means to retain this branch of education in her own hands ) that she should make herself mistress of the principles of arithmetic and the elements of mathematics ; and if she can add to this a knowledge of the ancient and modern languages , and an acquaintance with their best authors , so much the better . Let us now see what there is in these qualifications which is likely to interfere with the other distinctive duties of women . And first , it may be said , " In such a course of study as you have marked out , what will become of the accomplishments , the elegant accomplishments , of music and drawing ?"
" Let them rank , " we should say , " as amusements , and not as the business of life ; those who have taste and leisure do well to pursue them , and it would be well for the world that none else should pursue them . " Again we are told , that " the habits of the student interfere with those of the woman * " " For which reason ; the woman is in no danger of acquiring the habits . of the student : " the objection destroys itself in the making . " How can she , study mathematics , " it will be said , ' * if she is to be interrupted by the _ daily duties of feminine life ? " *' If it is inconsistent
Untitled Article
PFhat should a JPbman Learn ? 629
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1831, page 529, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2600/page/25/
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