From the PR Letterbag

Dear Editor--In the Fortnightly for March is a brightly-written dialogue by Mrs. Frederic Harrison, in which a German Professor gives his views on the subject of girls' education, from which I cut the following suggestive sentences:-"Any instructed imbecile can teach young men and women, but it requires a really gifted teach to train the very young." "I feel like a new Peter the Hermit, preaching a new crusade to a blind and deaf generation--a crusade against the sacrifice of our youth to the modern Juggernaut--the sacrifice of Education, in any true sense, to Examination." " In the ideal state, ad I conceive it, the standard for men and women should be the same, the teachers should be the same to ensure the standard, but the details and methods of teaching should be different." The Professor's view is that women should strike out a line of their own. They start with an advantage over men in not being hampered by old traditions, &e, and they should not hanker after admission to men's universities or demand the same degrees, but set up a higher standard of their own. Pressed for an outline of what he considers to be an ideal education for women, the Professor placed first a working knowledge of three or four modern languages, then "some training in the history of art, with the power to take intelligent delight in the world's great masterpieces. It may well be" he says, "to practice some art sufficiently to realize the difficulty of attaining any real excellence." Instancing as much an art the madrigal and glee singing for which England was so famous in olden days, he was met with objection that it would "never pay,"- "Not pay," fiercely retorted the Professor, "Pray that what good work is ever paid?.. Let me assure you that the best and most precious things in life are those for which there are no marks and no certificates." "Dexterity of hand and quickness of eye for household matters" must also be acquired, and then "we have before us the graver subjects of history, a knowledge of Latin or Greek-or a possibly of both languages-and a sound scientific training, beginning with mathematics."--"Impossible," cry his hearers.-"Nay, not so," replies the Professor, "George Eliot had this and more," and he proceeds to give in some detail these subjects in a course lasting to the age of 21. "But this," he says "presupposes competent home training and co-operation. My principal quarrel with the public schools is that they have done much to weaken the sense of responsibility in the parent and they have practically destroyed home teaching."

From one of the Parents Review magazines