No Sex in Education/Chapter 1

THE questions of the equal and co-education of the sexes have drifted uppermost to-day, and seem forcing themselves to a solution. The present age cannot postpone action; it must take a definite and decided stand in the matter, and it remains to be seen whether it is to make an advance movement or put its seal of sanction upon the dwarfed and inefficient systems of the past.

​Edward H. Clarke, M. D., has brought the matter definitely before the public in a little work called "Sex in Education,"^[1] which has set people to thinking and to talking. Strangely enough (though not so strange either, considering the reverence we have been taught to yield to the man who speaks backed with the authority of a profession), men seem to consider his decision one against which there can be neither defence nor appeal. Women—those thoughtful women who best understand themselves and their sex—are protesting against it as incorrect in its statements and one-sided in its arguments.

"Without denying the self-evident proposition that whatever a woman can do she has a right to do, the question at once arises, 'What can she do?'"

I thank Dr. Clarke for this statement, and I will add that the further question arises, "Who shall decide what she can do?" Dr. Clarke ​says it must be the scientist—Agassiz or Huxley. But let us pause and consider. How do scientists arrive at their conclusions? By abstract reasonings based upon theories of their own invention? By no means. They delve deep for facts—for hard, incontrovertible facts—and reason from them. If these facts or the objects of these facts had intelligence and could speak, they would cut short their reasoning by an appeal at once to this intelligence, and by this means get at radical truth. They would ask the fossil of the Miocene or the Pliocene period what it was, how it lived and what it was capable of doing; and receiving an intelligent answer, they would come to far juster conclusions about the creature of a pre-historic age than they are ever likely to do with all their theories, their surmisings and their disputes. Now woman's existence is an incontrovertible fact; all the phenomena of her life are facts; their results too are facts, varying according to circumstances and in individuals. Woman, even if she does not possess an equal intelligence with man, has at least sufficient to ​carry her through the ordinary affairs of life safely, if she is not interfered with, dictated to and impressed with the idea that she knows nothing about herself. Now, why not in all matters that pertain to her—especially in that question of what she can do—ask her directly, and pay some heed to her answer? If she does not know, who does?

The question comes down then to the one point—which know most about the capabilities and disabilities of the female sex, the doctors or the women themselves?

Did the idea never suggest itself to any one that, however well informed a physician may be in all matters pertaining to disease, when he comes to treat of well people he may be decidedly at fault? He is never by any possibility brought in professional contact with health, and the world resolves itself to his view into a vast hospital, where all are suffering from the conditions, and must submit to the regimen, of invalids. This is precisely the mistake Dr. Clarke has committed in his little book, as I shall try to prove.

​Few will be inclined to dispute the author of the work referred to in his somewhat self-evident proposition—which, however, he announces as though he had discovered a new truth, and was just promulgating it to the world—that "The quæstio vexata of woman's sphere will be decided by her organization. This limits her power and reveals her divinely-appointed tasks, just as man's organization limits his power and reveals his work." The wildest "shrieker" after "rights" will not think of gainsaying this; and that brings us back to the original question, "What is the limit?" and the one growing out of it, "Who shall decide?"

Dr. Clarke has made an able and a well-deserved protest against the regulations of our schools and colleges, which encourage and in some cases compel over-study on the part of the students. Such a protest has long been needed, and it should be acted upon at once. But it is a great pity that the doctor's excessive chivalry has aroused him in behalf of girls alone, and caused him to shut his eyes to the ​equally sad consequences to the young of his own sex.

The thanks of all true friends of women are, it is true, due him for his strenuous advocacy of the fullest education for women; though it must be confessed that the reader is a little puzzled as to his exact meaning when he praises the Syrian girls, whom he saw in a Turkish harem, for their splendid physical developments; and, knowing as he must that such development of body is never attained except at the expense of the intellectual and moral nature, sighs for a like development on the part of American women; and when he quotes the praises of a well-known writer of the magnificent forms of the women of Nova Scotia, laying a stress upon the point that there have been until recently no public schools in that country. Does the doctor wish to insinuate, what he dare not openly proclaim, that after all women are far better off without education, if they would only think so?

It really seems a pity to upset the doctor's theories by taking away the very ground they ​stand upon, but in the case of the Nova Scotia women it seems strict truth compels such a proceeding. "An injured Nova Scotian," writing to the Woman's Journal, in an article entitled "Nova Scotia Vindicated," says:

"It is no unusual thing for an accurate and conscientious historian to travel many miles in order to verify the facts he states.

"In two days, or less, Dr. E. H. Clarke could have been transported by boat or car to that healthy locality, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. He could have seen for himself the blooming complexions, sturdy frames and unharassed expressions of the little provincials. In a few hours more he could have observed similar manifestations of vigor among the children of Halifax. But the question would quickly suggest itself, 'Have I not been doing these people an injustice? Was I right in attributing their unusual health to the "significant fact that until the past year there have been in Nova Scotia no public schools, and comparatively few private ones," and in insinuating that "to the Sabbath-school alone is due all the knowledge they possess"?' He would find public and private schools in successful operation all over the capital city, while the county schools are placed at no greater distance from each other than three or four miles. He would find ​ministers, lawyers, physicians, ladies and gentlemen, cultivated in every department of knowledge, the majority of whom have been educated within the borders of their own province.

"If the statement be true that these Nova Scotians had no public schools till within the past year, what a mushroom growth they have made, and what a precocious generation this must be!

"Many of the most successful professional men in Nova Scotia never went outside of the province till their education was completed, and some of them practiced years before seeing anything more of the world.

"Such discoveries as these would be suggestive if not alarming to the author of 'Sex in Education.' He might be led to suspect that his eloquent little work may contain other unreliable statements, and that these may involve equally unsound conclusions."

We may sum up the main points of "Sex in Education" by a quotation from a prominent medical review:

"The modern educational mistake, according to our author, consists in employing for girls the identical methods used for, and perhaps well adapted to, boys. Errors there are affecting the two sexes alike, but these do not come so specially within the purpose of the work before us. The facts to which Dr. Clarke ​directs attention as having been most harmfully ignored are that during her schooldays the girl is passing through the most critical changes of her life, and that in developing womanhood and establishing a new function, the vital powers are severely taxed. Notwithstanding this fact, as much, or even greater, mental labor is performed by the girl as by her brother, whose pubescence occurs with scarce any disturbance or additional expenditure of vitality. Again, the fact that for a time during each month the girl experiences a great, and at that time unaccustomed, drain upon her vitality, has not been allowed to lighten her tasks a particle. It is this total disregard of the laws of her being that renders the educational methods of the day so calamitous to the American girl and to posterity."

In support of his theory, Dr. Clarke gives his opinion as a physician, backed by clinical evidence. His conclusions we also quote from the same source:

"The precise order of school-life best adapted to favor the harmonious development of the female organism in all its parts can of course be fully settled. only by judicious experiment founded on the observation of physiological laws. Dr. Clarke thinks it would be wise to assume at the outset that four or five hours ​daily is as much study as should be required of a girl from fourteen to eighteen years old, and that absolute rest, or diminished labor, should always be enforced for a few days every month. These periodical remissions, too, should not be allowed to necessitate extra work or loss of standing."

Dr. Clarke has misstated some facts—unintentionally, I hope—suppressed others; drawn general conclusions from special premises; thrown upon modes of education the evil consequences which are just as likely to be due to other causes; and has failed to see that the very means he recommends would result in evils far greater than those he would remedy. He represents woman as normally an invalid for one-fourth of the time. Let the healthy women of America tell the doctor better than this.