Education

IT would be a boon to society if facts and statistics could be presented on the subject of the higher education of women, instead of the mass of theoretical assumptions now showered upon the reading public in regard to this question. There are, however, no data sufficiently comprehensive from which conclusions can be drawn. The local examinations in England appear at first sight a probable source of information in regard to the capabilities of women for pursuing, profitably, courses of scientific study. We learn from these examinations that women appear to be less competent in the sciences than in the languages. Yet when we consider that good teaching in elementary science is as rare in England as in our own country, we are forced to doubt any conclusions that may be drawn at present from these examinations. The summer courses of instruction in Harvard College in 1873 were attended by women, sixteen in all, of which number thirteen took the course

Devotion. By H. LICHNER. Philadelphia : Louis Meyer.

Album Leaf and Nocturne for piano-forte. By RICHARD ZECKWER. Philadelphia: Louis Meyer. in botany, three that in chemistry, and none that of physics. We learn from the second annual report of the Woman’s Education Association of Boston, 1873-1874, that their aid was asked by Dr. Samuel Eliot to forward a plan for the advanced instruction in chemistry of a class of young women. “ The money was subscribed by members of the association, and the class was formed in February, 1873, under the supervision of Professor Crafts, of the School of Technology. It consisted of sixteen young women, who, with perhaps two exceptions, were rather over than under twenty-two years of age.

“ Fully half of them were actually engaged in teaching at the same time ; but, nevertheless, two afternoons a week were regularly given to the study of qualitative analysis for about five months.”

The instructors reported very gratifying results at the final examinations.

Here our facts desert us, and only theories

Stars the Night Adorning. Serenade from Victor Hugo’s Ruy Bias. English words by MRS. N. MACFARREN. Music by J. B. WEKERLIN. Baltimore : George Willig & Co.

for and against a higher education in science remain. There is no doubt that questions relating to the higher education of women will not sleep, and the agitation of the subject will doubtless result in a certain eform. The views of those who have had a scientific training, the estimation of its effects from their standpoint, and of the means best qualified to improve the elementary education in science, have more or less value in the absence of statistics.

There is, at the present moment, an increasing enthusiasm for science in America. Leading publishers have large orders for science primers, science series, and popular expositions of scientific truths. The scientific branches of learning in our colleges are daily receiving more and more attention. The principal instrument makers abroad receive large orders from Americans. Browning, the optician in London, told the writer that his American orders exceeded those from any other nation. The brilliant achievements of science have much to do with this enthusiasm. The instantaneous communication opened between the Old and New World by cables beneath the ocean ; the improvements in mechanical science ; tunnels driven speedily beneath miles of mountains; railroads laid across continents ; new engines that, fed with iron, produce, automatically, refined products; multiform electro-magnetic engines that change motion into light and bid fair to light steamships on their dark and perilous way across the ocean ; the discoveries in regard to the phenomena daily taking place on the sun’s surface ; the facts in regard to the correlation and conservation of forces : all appeal to the utilitarian imagination of a new people. That much of this popular enthusiasm is the result of a prevailing fashion is undoubtedly true. This fashion in due time will recognize the well-established claims of the old curriculum of study; and the advocates of a purely linguistic training will see much to admire in the new education.

It is very natural that women should desire to know more of the sciences which are attracting such universal attention by the brilliancy of their applications. At the lectures delivered by Tyndall in our great cities during the winter of 1872, ladies young and old could be seen with notebooks in their hands, industriously jotting down facts in regard to the polarization of light. The more learned of the male sex could not but smile, for the subjectmatter of the brilliant lecturer, after the flash of splendid experiments had disappeared, was often enveloped in mathemat ical gloom even to them. There was strong evidence of a desire for knowledge, however, which could not be smiled down. This desire is further exemplified by the full attendance of women at free courses of laboratory instruction wherever they are opened. In a family of boys and girls there is generally one sister who looks with envy on the course open to her brothers at college. She listens with eagerness to their stories ; she is infected by their enthusiasm, and sets resolutely and blindly at work to pursue a plan of study comprehensive enough for a life-time. A fixed number of pages must be read every day in Tytler’s Universal History, Buckle’s History of Civilization, Tyndall’s Heat as a Mode of Motion, Roscoe’s Elements of Chemistry. And a paper mark is moved forward, conscientiously, by the same amount each day, with a feeling of exultation. Such desires grow by repression, and nothing short of a wide extension of scientific studies will enable the doctrine of natural selection to add its facts to corroborate or refute the opponents of a severe scientific training for women.

Every thinking American, as he grows older, is conscious in a dim way that his education at home was defective; he is brought in contact, it may be, with an intelligent German, who tells him of the early training given him by parents in scientific and artistic studies. He looks back and recalls nothing of the kind in his own education. The bustling life of American men will not allow them to direct, except in rare cases, the home education of their children. If a son manifests a taste for catching butterflies, it is true, the father will generally be indulgent and allow him to follow his bent; if the child is fond of engines or of electrical machines, he is allowed to sacrifice valuable time to the detriment of a solid foundation. The mother who does not know the value of scientific training, or the requirements for the successful prosecution of scientific studies, cannot influence the son, who frequently finds that his early desire to become a naturalist, an artist, or a chemist, has led him to a wrong choice of a profession, in which he cannot compete with men who have been properly trained, and cannot recede from because he is too old to begin a new course of study for another profession. There is no doubt that intelligent home instruction and home direction, so to speak, of the mind of a child, is of more value than all that is learned in the lower grade of public schools. The mother, then, can. exercise a great influence if she knows the value of economical and scientific processes of education.

To the question, “ What were the various mistakes of my life due to ? ” most men and women will answer, if they have considered the subject, “To deficiency in judgment ; to a want of concentration of effort ; to an ignorance of the economy of nature and of the doctrine of the conservation of force.” Most men, as well as women, are perplexed by the question, “ How much weight shall I give to this or that consideration, or in mathematical language, what will be the probable error of my results ? ”

Having lately had charge of a physical laboratory, the writer has been struck by the effect of scientific methods of work upon certain types of students. A young man with an undue excess of imagination, and with an extensive acquaintance with books, enters the laboratory and takes his place at the laboratory table with apparatus before him. He has read about the subject of physics all his school life, it may be; and he is now told to perform an experiment. Face to face with the thing itself, lie stands aghast. lie realizes in a dim way that life and the actual duties of a profession will confront him as this battery or that spectroscope now does. He finds that all his knowledge on the subject before him is of no practical value, simply because it is not definite. In that moment he learns, or is firmly impressed with, the value of definite ideas ; and a feeling arises that perhaps his knowledge of other things, out of the domain of physics, may fail him when he comes to the point of applying it.

He can readily be pardoned, however, for a want of technical knowledge—how this screw or that slide may affect his instrument. He goes more confidently to work, and at last brings forth a result which he characterizes as “ about right. He is very much dejected when he is informed that no margin is allowable, and that results which are not exact are useless. He goes away much dispirited by his day’s experience; his observations are useless because they have been taken at random, without method; and he relapses with a sigh of relief into studies which allow his imagination free play, and in which he is not bound by rigid, inexorable limits. His next essay may be more successful; but it will require weeks and months of patient labor to overcome slovenly habits of thought. Let us stand at his table after experience has had its more or less perfect work. He is told to perform a certain experiment which will test the truth or falsity of a law. His questions are to the point; he sees what is necessary to accomplish his object, and his manner of handling his instruments shows that, having grasped the salient points of the idea, he has the power of working it out. He has got an insight into a new manner of using his mind, substantially different from that which he has used in the study of the languages.

Waiving the question of physical disabilities, which have been perhaps too strongly insisted upon as a bar to improvement, the education of women is more defective in the cultivation of definite ideas, and in the training of the judgment, than that of men. They have studied chemistry and physics at school, and perhaps remember one or two experiments with Leyden jars and with philosophers’ wool, and do not know whether the furnace at home is a Fahrenheit or a Centigrade. Their romantic sensibilities have been cultivated by a purely literary training to almost a morbid pitch. Yet in the administration of the household, questions involving a certain amount of scientific knowledge and a scientific habit of judgment are of constant occurrence — questions of ventilation, of humidity and temperature, of the proper distribution of light and of color; and of economic processes. The ever-increasing attention paid by women to drawing and painting suggests strongly the need of scientific judgment. At the very outset they often receive instruction which is radically unscientific. Hours are spent in fine work, in stippling, without any exercise of the judgment to determine what should be the proper method of work. Instruction in art is supposed by many to be radically different from that in other subjects. A certain reliance is placed upon indefinite and mystical feelings, Yet the same methods which are of value in scientific investigation are here also especially applicable. In no pursuit can there be found a more blind obedience to wrong methods than in the study of drawing. Judgment seems to be thrown aside. Contrast the darkness of mind prevailing in the mind of a feminine art student at the end even of a long course of instruction, in regard to the economy of processes, with the clearness of aim of a student in science.

“ At one time we have to study the errors of our instruments, with a view to their diminution, or, where they cannot be removed, to compass their detrimental influence ; while at other times we have to watch for the moment when an organism presents itself under circumstances most favorable for research. Again, in the course of our investigation we learn for the first time of possible errors which vitiate the result, or perhaps merely raise a suspicion that it may be vitiated, and we find ourselves compelled to begin the work anew, till every shadow of doubt is removed. And it is only when the observer takes such a grip of the subject, so fixes all his thoughts and all his interests upon it, that he cannot separate himself from it for weeks, for months, even for years, cannot force himself away from it, in short, till he has mastered every detail, and feels assured of all those results which must come in time, that a perfect and valuable piece of work is done¹

It will perhaps be readily granted that a knowledge of botany, zoölogy, and physiology is greatly to be desired in young ladies ; nor do they need to be incited to a study of the first two sciences. A natural love for flowers is implanted in their nature. A visit to the sea-shore easily excites in their minds curiosity in regard to star-fishes, seaanemones, and other inhabitants of the seafloor. In most cases the love for the thing itself is greater than the desire to know its species. The curious appearance of the seaurchin excites more interest than the homology between it and the star-fish. The love of nature for its own sake is greatly to be desired ; the ability to refer a plant at sight to its order and genus does not increase, necessarily, our love for flowers; but a more intimate acquaintance with the relationship between plants must increase our interest in them. The fact that most women, if they study botany or zoölogy, rarely advance to the point of observing homologies, and of using their powers of analysis and judgment, speaks volumes in favor of a more intelligent scientific training. The fruit of their education in these sciences has been mainly a stock of names. That the powers of observation have been quickened even by collecting specimens is not to be denied. A woman in whom this taste is implanted will the more readily direct the attention of her children to natural objects, and thus give them the means of passing many a fascinating and profitable hour in the fields and at the sea-shore. Education of the judgment does not result from the study of natural history as it is now pursued in young ladies’ schools. It may be because the teachers themselves have not been brought face to face with the things concerning which they teach.

The science of chemistry in its earlier steps is also attractive to many women. Their powers of observation are quickened, and certain instincts and fondness for delicate processes are gratified to a greater or less extent by their study of this science. In the short time during which the majority of women receive their preliminary education, the study of the natural sciences and chemistry can be said to exercise the powers of observation more than literary studies. If a severe training of the reflective powers of the mind is to be sought in the minimum amount of time, — and it is not yet proved that this concentrated rigid training would be desirable, — the subjects of natural history and chemistry, in so far as they are and can be pursued by young ladies, do not afford it. The subject of physics, embracing light, heat, electricity, and the conservation of force, certainly calls into play the maximum amount of reflection in the minimum of time. This is shown by the greater need of mathematical knowledge at the outset. Theoretically it would appear that the study of physics, except in a descriptive way, in which respect it possesses no advantage over chemistry in the power of training the reflective faculties, would be undesirable, if “ Delectando part ter que monendo” is the spirit, alone, of our scientific education of women. Does our scientific education as it is now opened, and as it is now pursued by women, do more than cultivate the powers of observation, — powers with which women are liberally endowed by nature? The establishment of local examinations for women by Harvard University makes it obligatory, to a certain extent, upon those establishing the tests, to decide upon a proper course of study in the preparatory schools. The teachers of the high and normal schools assert that their courses of instruction cannot bear any increase in the direction of a particular study. The time allotted is already too short for the proper prosecution of the studies pursued in it. Natural philosophy has an equal chance with chemistry, and both receive a fair amount of attention. In many of the high schools there are recitations in these subjects every day. In some schools there are even practical exercises in small chemical laboratories. How can more be required 1 One is tempted to criticise, at first, the text-books in science and the manner of using them. Most treatises on physics are filled with description of pieces of apparatus which the student never sees or has the opportunity of using. The recitations are conducted on the principle of cramming with uncorrelated facts. The result of the use of such text-books, illustrated by such teaching, is to create a disgust in the minds of the pupils. Their time might have been better employed upon history, political economy, or sociology ; for in these subjects the mind is certainly led to reflect and to notice a logical order of events. Must we then wait for a new text-book ? The truth is, no text-book in physics can ever be written which shall cover the ground. Competent instructors are needed. The aim of scientific teaching in schools should be to simplify, to interest, and to present in a logical order, not a multitude of isolated facts, but a few from which broad deductions result. The student should be led to rediscover, by well-directed habits of thought, facts already known to exist in the literature of the subject. Experimental lectures should be given ; and, above all, opportunities should be presented to earnest students, of handling the instruments and repeating the experiments themselves. The elective system should be introduced even in high schools, so far as to offer an advanced course to those young ladies who are fitted to receive higher instruction in science. Even in such higher instruction, technical instruction and the mere accumulation of facts should be avoided. In chemistry Eliot and Scorer’s manual leaves little to be desired. In physics the most available books are Faraday’s Lectures to Children, Balfour Stewart’s Elementary Physics, Tyndall’s Heat as a Mode of Motion, Helmholtz' Popular Lectures, Pickering’s Physical Manipulations.

In regard to the practical use of instruments, it will be urged that this is impossible in large schools, where the numbers of pupils form an insuperable bar. We can only answer that one experiment thoroughly performed by a student would teach him more than weeks of instruction in the class room ; and the apparatus needed may be of the simplest character. In view of this great good, thus obtainable, the time certainly could be set apart some time during the week for a practical exercise by each capable young lady. In order to obtain the best results, teachers who have a living interest in the science which they teach are needed. It is probable that the examinations offered by Harvard University will be attended by two classes of women : one class comprising those who intend to become teachers or are teachers; and the other including those young ladies who have a strong desire for a university education. For these applicants, in our opinion, there should be experimental lectures, —• lectures on methods of study in science and laboratory practice. The ways and means for affording instruction to women in laboratories are not yet apparent; yet the obstacles are not insuperable. Scientific education for women would therefore seem to be brought about most speedily by the higher education, in true scientific methods, of those women who have a strong desire to elevate the standard of education of their own sex.

Sanguine spirits can hope to see women occupied in original investigations, when a proper scientific training shall have been added to their alleged superior quickness of mind. Long-continued observations are much needed at the present time on many phenomena, such as periodical changes of temperature, of humidity, observations on atmospheric electricity, on the growth and behavior of plants. Many of the observations can be conducted as easily by women as by men. Men occupied with original work in science are comparatively rare in our community. There are very few who are willing to devote their lives to an idea, and live as workers do in Germany in comparative poverty and seclusion, occupied in investigations. Cannot the vacuity of many feminine lives be filled by the prosecution of some scientific work, to the advantage of science and society ?