Page:Japan by the Japanese (1904).djvu/647

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN
607

and the English Literature Department. When the University was first opened we expected to take in about thirty students in each department, but the number of candidates was unexpectedly large, so that about a hundred students were received into each of the first two departments, making about 250 in all. In the Preparatory Department attached to the University were enrolled 300 pupils. Thus the University opened with 500 students the first year, while in the second year the number increased to 800, and in the third year to 1,000. These facts sufficiently show how much importance our nation puts upon the education of its daughters to-day, and how earnestly our girls desire to receive the benefits of modern education.

The problem of what the principles of women’s education in the future should be is a subject greatly under discussion.

Up to this time women’s education has been too much directed towards art, literature, music, and various other accomplishments of a similar nature, and has slighted their mental or intellectual discipline. This is a great mistake. A woman’s mind should be trained on its scientific and philosophical side. The importance of intellectual discipline for women cannot be overestimated. Women need to have their powers of observation and application cultivated. If their minds are well disciplined in these directions they will prove themselves very useful and successful in whatever work they undertake. Those responsible for women’s education in future should recognise this point, and put a due emphasis upon this intellectual training.

There is another point to which we should give attention in the education of our girls. We should conduct our schools in such a way that the school-life may never disqualify our girls for their home-life when they finish their study and return to their homes. Modern institutional education has many evils as well as advantages, and its greatest evil for girls is the danger of making them unfit for their future home duties. How to avoid this danger is a problem that remains to be solved in the future, not only in our country, but also in Western countries. The larger an institution grows, the greater the danger will become. In establishing the Women’s University I took special pains to make it as far as possible free from this danger. Although the University accommodates some 500 boarders who come from homes in far-distant parts of the country, yet it has been managed from the beginning in such a manner as to make the life in school as homelike as possible. This is a peculiarity of our University which has already been recognised by the public. Our dormitory, for instance, is made up of seventeen ‘homes,’ each containing not more than twenty-