CHAPTER II

THE SCHOOL-GIRL AWAY FROM HOME.

Home Education. The Opening Flower. Parents unfit Teachers. Private Instruction. All need a Standard. Influence of Nunneries. Teaching a Profession. It is a Trial. On a larger Scale. A Pleasant Plan. Clothes and Shoes. Longing to turn back. Weather changed. Counting the Weeks. A Critical Point. Character developing. Best of every Thing. Back-bone Work. An Angel's Wing drooping.

THE child is committed by its Maker to its parents for training. In ordinary cases, this is a sacred and a delightful trust. For the first few years of its life, no parent thinks of putting his child out from under the influences and the care of home. And, were there not most weighty reasons, surely the child would never be sent away from home till he went out to a home of his own, and the daughter whose mind and heart just begin to expand

HOME EDUCATION.

31

would not be put into the hands of strangers to form her character, were there not some very special inducements. The argument for a home education is a very strong one. At home, we are told, there must be order and government, but it is all done through the affections. The sternness of law is not felt. The affections are so warm, that it is not felt to be obedience to obey. But in the large school it is all one unbending system of rules and regulations, cold and stern, without any play of the affections. At home, each child can be instructed according to its temperament and capacity, without coming under the regimen adopted for a great number. Plans of study, of recreation, and the like, are there adapted to the habits and the temperament of each, without overlooking any peculiarity, physical or mental. At home, there is no rivalry which urges on to efforts beyond the strength, or which creates envy and jealousy in the heart, or which ends in disappointment. There the mental powers can be developed slowly and carefully, and the bud can have time to open under the genial sun and gentle

32

PARENTS UNFIT TEACHERS.

dews. There is no forcing like the hot-bed. And there, too, at home, under the eye of love, the purity of the child can be insured, and she is shut away from contamination, and from evil associates. There, in the shades of the sweet home, may she spend her early days, and, screened from the cold world and its vices, she can be educated, and thus be prepared, at the right time, to take her place in the world, an ornament to her sex and to her station. This is the substance of the argument for a strictly home education. And I think it has strength; and yet very few attempt to do the thing; and for this there must 'be some urgent reasons. What are they? Or rather, why is the young girl sent away among strangers, when so much is at and perhaps so much is imperilled ? ply:

stake,

I re

Because but few parents are competent to educate their children themselves. Amid the cares and toils necessary to provide for a family, the parents soon forget the particulars of their own education.

And, moreover, every

thing is on the advance.

No parent expects

PRIVATE INSTRUCTION.

33

The

to send the child out into the world with only the education with which the mother began. The child lives in a day when she wears richer dresses, has better books, better food, more travelling, more intercourse with society, than her mother had. Who is to instruct her at home? The mother is incompetent, and the father probably is likewise; or if not, he is too much occupied in business to do it. She must have private teachers, then, at home. But here are two difficulties. first is, that few are able to pay the needful compensation for the best private teachers. It would cost many hundreds of dollars to obtain good teachers for a single family: but there is a greater difficulty, and that is, they could not be had. It is only by having large schools that teachers are trained up and qualified; and it is only because they here have a field so wide, that the first-rate minds can be induced to become teachers. Reduce all to home education, and you would have but few good and competent teachers. Large schools are, at any rate, necessary to raise them for their work. Parents and teachers would both

C

34

ALL NEED A STANDARD.

soon have narrow views as to the principles of education, and, I should fear, would be too indulgent and too indolent in applying them. The home education, it is said, would make them amiable children; and so it would, but the difficulty is, they would be children as long as they lived. Some, under this system, and probably the greater part, would be satisfied with a low standard, and have very little energy of mind; while the few who did study, having no standard, and no way of measuring themselves with others, would have an overweening idea of themselves. Every one wants a standard, and all need to be measured by others. And it is noticed, that those who have a strictly private education are apt to over-estimate themselves, if, in any measure, successful as students. In a large seminary, the young lady soon knows what mental application means, and what is a right standard of scholarship. She soon knows her own proportions. The blind partiality of friends does no good now. She now has a standard of study, of application, and of attainment, which is entirely new. She now sees