No Sex in Education/Chapter 2

THE admirers of "Sex in Education" claim for it a sterling scientific value which they are solemnly convinced ought to turn the balance against a like education of boys and girls. But the statements of the book are far too inexact and unreliable to substantiate this claim. The author's researches, if we are to judge by results, are too narrow in their scope, and his arguments partake too much of the nature of special pleading, to have, in fact, any real value whatever.

When any matter worthy of investigation is brought to a scientific test, the scientist does not dare to impose upon the public loose statements ​backed by no authority or proof save his own opinions and professional standing. Everything is accurately stated; the facts with all their bearings brought in support; every relative fact is searched out and tested, and its exact influence discussed and determined. Evidence is weighed and sifted with the utmost care, and everything which cannot stand the test of the most searching scrutiny is rejected without hesitation. It would never do to dispose of them wholesale under the general phrases "much else," "many more things," leaving them indefinite in their nature and their results unknown or at best guessed at. The importance of figures is not overlooked, and statistics should play a prominent part in any statement which they may affect. If a single fact or set of figures bearing upon the matter is overlooked, the whole decision is invalidated, and the discussion begins anew.

It seems as though in a matter of so much importance as the education of one-half the human race we have a right to demand a like care. We should not be content with the ex​pression of private opinions backed by loosely stated and one-sided testimony, and conclusions drawn from an experiment only which the doctor himself admits has not yet been tried. How can we judge of a thing fairly by imagining what it will be and then deciding upon the fiction of our own brain?

Now, what does Dr. Clarke do in this scientific book of his? He gives us an elaborate description of the physical economy of men and women, finely worded, and for the most part accurate. The statements in the chapter headed "Chiefly Physiological" will be, in the main, when they do not degenerate into theories and opinions, accepted as facts by admirers and adversaries alike. There is one point upon which there is a divided opinion among medical men, and in view of this difference in opinion it can hardly be considered impertinent in a woman to dare to differ from the doctor. He says:

"The principal organs of elimination common to both sexes are the bowels, kidneys, lungs and skin. ​A neglect of their functions is punished in each alike. To women is entrusted the exclusive management of another process of elimination, viz., the catamenial. This, using the blood for its channel of operation, performs, like the blood, double duty. It is necessary to ovulation and to the integrity of every part of the reproductive apparatus; it also serves as a means of elimination for the blood itself."

It seems hardly possible that in the economy of nature that material which is held in reserve within the female system for the purpose of maternity, and which, there being no draft upon it in this direction, passes away as waste, should be in itself of the nature of an elimination, carrying off the poisonous and effete matter of the system. If this is the case, the infant which is nourished by this waste is poisoned in its blood and bone from its earliest existence.

"This, by closing an avenue of elimination, poisons the blood and depraves the organization."

It is true that the retention of this waste works sad havoc in the female organism; but it is not because it is in its nature poison​ous, but because its retention at all is a violation of nature and cannot but do harm.

Dr. Clarke is himself unconsciously guilty of the very error of which he accuses the friends of co-education when he quotes a writer who says:

"Woman must be regarded as woman, not as a nondescript animal, with greater or less capacity for assimilation to man."

This is the very thing our author does. He does not comprehend her as a woman at all. She is to him a "nondescript animal," with points of similarity to and points of difference from man. He admits her similarity in the matter of stomach and brain—in fact, of actual identity; but when he comes to take her reproductive system into account, he is in despair. His reasoning is something after this manner: "A man with such a drain upon him, and with only a man's capacity for endurance, would surely succumb unless counteracting measures were taken. His mental powers could be uninterruptedly educated only at the expense of his physical. Therefore a woman, who is like man in other particulars, stands in need of these ​counteracting measures." He does not comprehend—he seems never to have realized—the full sense of that which he tries to impress upon his readers, that a woman is not a man in any sense. Accompanying the demand upon her system which nature makes, nature has kindly and wisely—nay, more than that, justly—provided such supplies of strength, vigor and endurance as, if not wasted and frittered away by idle, pernicious habits, are equal to all feminine emergencies.

In his plea for periodicity he does not recognize the fact that there is no periodicity of brain action in a woman. That is ever active and eager, and never calls for periodic rest. So that nature would be very unjust to impose a necessity for restraint upon it which is not seconded by its own needs. When the brain craves rest, it calls for sleep. That denied, thebrain suffers. And a rightly balanced body and brain always act harmoniously.

Dr. Clarke is hardly true to his own theories when he admits:

"No organ or function in plant, animal or human ​kind can be properly regarded as a disability or source of weakness. Through ignorance or misdirection it may limit or enfeeble the animal or being that misguides it; but, rightly guided and developed, it is either in itself a source of power and grace to its parent stock or a necessary stage in the development of larger grace and power. The female organization is no exception to this law, nor are the particular set of organs and their functions with which this essay has to deal an exception to it. The periodical movements which characterize and influence woman's structure for more than half her terrestrial life, and which, in their ebb and flow, sway every fibre and thrill every nerve of her body a dozen times a year, and the occasional pregnancies which test her material resources and cradle the race, are, or are evidently intended to be, fountains of power, not hindrances to her."

How true this is only a woman can know. Dr. Clarke does not even guess it. They are not weaknesses nor hindrances in any sense of the words, nor should they be so considered or treated. Regarded as weaknesses, they will soon develop into weaknesses, and will remain so to the end of the chapter, weighing their victims down with a burden which neither God nor nature intended. Inaction is not the ​normal state of either manhood or womanhood even for a limited and ever-returning period. Inaction is the parent of weakness and the grandparent of disease. "She girdeth her loins with strength"—not weakness; and in this strength is found a woman's fullest, most harmonious womanliness.

There is another point upon which the doctor is grievously at fault:

"Corsets that embrace the waist with a tighter and steadier grip than any lover's arm, and skirts that weigh the hips with heavier than maternal burdens, have often caused grievous maladies and imposed a needless invalidism. Yet, recognizing all this, it must not be forgotten that breeches do not make a man nor the want of them unmake a woman."

The want of "breeches"—that is to say, the want of a sufficient amount of clothing for her legs, which to afford proper protection can be only of the bifurcate pattern—does unmake many a woman; and when corsets and heavy skirts are added, the unmaking is so complete that all the separate systems of education which a whole dynasty of Dr. Clarkes could invent ​would never be able to make her again. All the evils from study alone which the doctor can conjure up would dwindle into mere nothingness beside those terrible and terribly common ones which result from the improper modes of dress the doctor has described. Remedy the dress of young women, and the doctor will find his occupation nearly gone, so far as fighting the bugbear of co-education is concerned.

How easy it is to make out a case when one has the whole ordering of testimony, with no adverse lawyer to scan evidence, and a credulous and deferential public for judge and jury! Says Dr. Clarke:

"Circumstances have repeatedly carried me to Europe, where I am always surprised by the red blood that fills and colors the faces of ladies and peasant-girls, reminding one of the canvas of Rubens and Murillo, and am always equally surprised on my return by the crowds of pale, bloodless female faces, that suggest consumption, scrofula, anæmia and neuralgia. To a large extent, our present system of educating girls is the cause of this pallor and weakness."

​Not one word of the difference in climate; not even a hint of the active out-of-door life led by those ruddy European girls, who, in truth, think nothing of a five- or ten-mile walk for a constitutional. This is the real secret of their robust health and flushing beauty. When American women shall learn that out-of-door life means life indeed, and in-door existence a death in life, we may hope to see fuller and more rounded forms, stronger pulsating veins and more glowing cheeks.

Only do not let my readers suppose that I am going to fall into the doctor's mistake and imagine that any one of the reforms which I suggest is going to work the salvation of the race of girls. The whole system of our training of girls—physically, mentally, morally and socially—is worthless, rotten to its core and diseased in all its branches and ramifications. I will agree with the doctor there. I will do more than agree with him; I will go farther in this admission than he has ever thought of going. We cannot hope to restore the tree to healthful life by snipping off a single branch, ​any more than by forcing it to rest by fits and to proceed in its growth by starts.

I do not say whether our present system of education for boys is much better; that is not the question under debate just now. But we may feel assured that when we perfect a system which shall be found to exactly meet the needs of boys—in which their physical, their mental, their moral and their social development shall be equally considered and provided for in the truest and surest manner—which will provide for the average boy; shall not drag the one quick and ready of intellect, and at the same time shall be elastic enough to hold within its embrace the one slow and dull of thought—which will give the fullest opportunities for the boy in perfect health, and at the same time not bear too heavily upon the weakling (and we mothers know there are such among boys as well as among girls),—we shall have found exactly the system which will equally embrace girls in its provisions and which will as perfectly meet their needs as those of boys.

But, it will be argued, such a system cannot ​exist out of Utopia. Then, if that be true, let me prophesy that the whole system of public education is an egregious failure, and has in it the seeds of ultimate and sure decay. And if that be true, the age will come when it will be looked upon as a relic of barbarism. If it be true, then not only should most girls be excluded from its privileges, but most boys as well; for boys owe quite as much to the world as their sisters, and must cancel their obligations to posterity in as honorable a manner. But it is not of impossible attainment, as I have faith to believe the future will show.

It is a curious idea which seems to have got into a great many minds at the present time besides that of our author that upon woman alone rest the responsibilities of the coming race. It is only after the child is fairly brought into the world, and has been cared for by its mother through its period of helplessness, that its father suddenly wakes to a sense of his rights in the matter—rights which seem to involve no duties—and claims all title to its ownership. If we are going to take special ​pains to serve the girls, and at the same time allow the boys to overwork themselves mentally and deteriorate physically and morally, I cannot see that the future generations will stand so much better chance, after all, viewing the matter in the light of strict physiological facts.

Then we are reminded of the words of Horace, which I somewhat freely translate—

when we hear this terrible ado about the physical degeneracy of the present generation of women. Do not two sentences from "Sex in Education" read like a literal rendering of the ancient poet, with the sex changed?

"Each succeeding generation, obedient to the, law of hereditary transmission, has become feebler than its predecessor. Our great-grandmothers are pointed at as types of female physical excellence, their great-granddaughters as illustrations of female physical degeneracy."

It is something worthy of comment that in ​the history of mankind each new generation, viewing the evils which surround and characterize it, is inclined to look backward, and lamenting the degeneracy of the day, sigh for the good old times when such things were not.

But what is the truth in the matter? Mortuary tables and statistics of all sorts show that the average length of life has been steadily increasing for many generations back. The men and women of to-day are healthier and longer lived than any of their progenitors. In those good old days of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers there were a great many more second, third and fourth wives than there are to-day—that is to say, more women broke down and died from hard physical labor and over-bearing of children and lack of intellectual development than in this age of machinery and female colleges.

Forty years ago an English writer said:

"The Athenæum is fond of bringing out great mouthing articles against modern female education, but the huge mountain of denunciation brings forth but a mouse of instruction in the better way. The weakliness ​and imperfect forms of modern ladies are all laid to ignorance and want of sense in their governors, pastors and masters. This seems to me by far too unqualified a charge. . . . The Athenæum writer is like a clumsy fencer; he knows that something is to be hit, but he hits far too hard, and hits only half the right place."

The very words might have been written today; and if the last sentence had been written of Dr. Clarke himself, nothing would have been truer. He knows something is to be hit, but he hits too hard, and hits only half the right place. It is comical to remember that these very ladies whose "weakliness and imperfections" are commented upon are the mothers and grandmothers whom we are called upon to admire, and "were the very women," comments T. W. Higginson, "whose undue amplitude and superabundant vigor were satirized by Hawthorne."

Dr. Clarke is not the first one to find out that women are educated too much in a masculine manner. A writer of forty-five years ago, in a letter from Philadelphia addressed to the Ladies' Magazine, then published in Boston by ​Mrs. Sarah J. Hale (now editor of Godey's Lady's Book), gives the following facts concerning the schools of our grandmothers and mothers, who Dr. Clarke assures us excelled us in physical and mental vigor:

"At the girls' schools kept by gentlemen (with the exception of the academy of Mr. F.) the studies are so multiplied, so abstruse, and I will add so unfeminine, that the minds of the pupils are worn out before they arrive at maturity, and frequently their bodies also."

Yet these girls actually survived and came in course of time to deserve the admiration of the doctor. In view of this fact, there is hope for their descendants yet.

It may be well to test a little the science which finds its way into the pages of "Sex in Education." Take, for instance, the author's illustration of the women who have unsexed themselves by any false mode of life. After describing the physical changes which such perverted females undergo, he proceeds to say:

"There is a corresponding change in the intellectual and physical condition—a dropping out of maternal ​instincts and an appearance of Amazonian coarseness and force. Such persons are analogous to the sexless class of termites. Naturalists tell us that these insects are divided into males and females, and a third class, called workers and soldiers, who have no reproductive apparatus, and who, in their structure and instincts, are unlike the fertile individuals."

It is unfortunate to spoil the similitude in this instance, but every person familiar with the facts of natural history is aware that the females of the termites, and of all other species of insects which have a third or working class, display no maternal instincts whatever. Their duty and care end when they have deposited their eggs, and these among some of the tri-sexual species are frequently left in most careless and exposed situations. The workers are the true mothers of the race. They carefully search for and bring to places of safety the scattered eggs, watch over the larvæ, feed and tend them carefully, protect them in danger and defend them from their enemies. These workers monopolize all the maternal instincts of the species, so Dr. Clarke is most unfortunate in his comparison.