Education for Motherhood : Part 2

Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
by C. W. Saleeby, M.D.

(Page 12 of 23)

Perhaps the only necessary qualification of the foregoing is that, though it refers specially to the child, yet the need of education does not end with childhood, becoming indeed preeminent when childhood ends. So we may apply what has been said in the case of the girl, and we should find it a sure guide to the highest education of women.

First, education being the provision of an environment in the widest sense of that very wide word, always misused when it is used less widely, we must be sure that in our scheme we avoid the errors of past or passing schemes which concern themselves only with some aspect of the environment, and so in effect prepare for something much less than complete living. It is not sufficient to provide an environment which regards the girl as simply a muscular machine, as is the tendency, if not actually the case, in some of the "best" girls' schools today; it is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as merely an intellectual machine, as in the higher education of women; it is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as a sideboard ornament, in Ruskin's phrase, such as was provided in the earlier Victorian days. In all these cases we are providing only part of the environment, and providing it in excess. None of them, therefore, satisfies our definition of education, which conceives of environment as the sum-total of all the influences to which the whole organism is subjected - influences dietetic, dogmatic, material, maternal, and all other.

Who will question that, according to this conception of education, such a thing as the higher education of women must be condemned as inadequate? No more than a man is woman a mere intellect incarnate. Her emotional nature is all-important; it is indeed the highest thing in the Universe so far as we know. The scheme of education which ignores its existence, and much more than fails to provide the best environment for it, is condemnable. But the scheme of education which derides and despises the emotional nature of woman, looking upon it as a weakness and seeking to suppress it, is damnable, and has led to the damnation - or loss, if the reader prefers the English term - of this most precious of all precious things in countless cases.

The only right education of women must be that which rightly provides the whole environment. The simpler our conception of woman, the more we underrate her complexity and the manifoldness of her needs, the more certainly should we repeat in one form or another the errors of our predecessors.

Complete living is a great phrase; perhaps not for a lizard or a mushroom, but assuredly for men and women. Perhaps it involves more for women even than for men; indeed it must do so if we are to adhere to our conception of women as more complex than men, having all the possibilities of men in less or greater measure, and also certain supreme possibilities of their own. Whatever complete living may mean for men, it cannot mean for women anything less than all that is implied in Wordsworth's great line - "Wisdom doth live with children round her knees."

That line was written in reference to the not wisdom of a man, Napoleon, the greatest murderer in recorded time, and I believe it to be true of men, but it is preeminently true of women. There needs no excuse for quoting from Herbert Spencer, since we have already accepted his definition of the subject of education, a notable passage which is perhaps at the present time the most needed of all the wisdom with which that great thinker's book on education is filled: -

"The greatest defect in our programs of education is entirely overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed improvement of our systems in respect both of matter and manner, the most pressing desideratum, to prepare the young for the duties of life, is tacitly admitted to be the end which parents and schoolmasters should have in view; and, happily, the value of the things taught, and the goodness of the methods followed in teaching them, are now ostensibly judged by their fitness to this end. The propriety of substituting for an exclusively classical training, a training in which the modern languages should have a share, is argued on this ground. The necessity of increasing the amount of science is urged for like reasons. But though some care is taken to fit youth of both genders for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the position of parents.

While it is seen that, for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value is that it constitutes the education of a gentleman; and while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties, not an hour is spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all responsibilities - the management of a family. Is it that the discharge of it is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not; of all functions which the adult has to fulfill, this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No; not only is the need for such self-instruction unrecognized, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of all others in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed."

If we were wise enough, therefore, we should recognize all education, in the great sense of that word, to be as for parenthood. That ideal will yet be recognized and followed for both genders, as it has for long been followed, consciously as well as unconsciously, by that astonishing race which has survived all its oppressors, and is in the van of civilization today as it was when it produced the Mosaic legislation. The time is not yet when one could accept with a light heart an invitation to lecture on fatherhood to the boys at Eton. Boys today are taught by each other, and by those who give them what they call "smut jaws," that what exists for fatherhood, an. Therefore for the whole destiny of mankind, is "smut." When such blasphemies pass for the best pedagogic wisdom, to preach parenthood as the goal of all worthy education is to run the risk of being looked upon as ridiculous. But the time will come when the hideous Empire-wrecking Imperialisms of the present are forgotten, and when we have a new Patriotism - which suggests, first and foremost, as that word well may, the duty of fatherhood; and then, perhaps, "smut jaws" will not be the phrase at Eton for discussion of those instincts which determine the future of mankind.

But girls are our present concern, and we may indeed hope that, though the day is still far when the motto of Eton will be education as for fatherhood, yet the ideal of education as for motherhood may yet triumph wherever girls are taught within even a few years to come. On all sides today we see the aberrations of womanhood in a hundred forms, and the consequences thereof. Wrong education is partly, beyond a doubt, to be indicted for this state of things, and the right direction is so clearly indicated by nature and by the deepest intuitions of both genders that we cannot much longer delay to take it.

Perhaps the reader will have patience while for a little we discuss the facts upon which right education for motherhood must be based. Some may suppose that by education for womanhood is meant simply one form or other of instruction; say, for instance, in the certainly important matter of infant feeding. At present, however, I am not thinking of instruction at all, but of education - the leading forth, that is to say, in right proportion and in right direction of the natural constituents of the girl. If we are to be right in our methods we must have some clear understanding of what those constituents are, and we must therefore address ourselves now to getting, if possible, clear and accurate notions of the material with which we have to deal; in other words, we must discuss the psychology of parenthood. We should perhaps realize then that though the instruction of mothers in being is very necessary and very important, that comes in at the end of our duty, and that we should never achieve what we might achieve unless we begin at the beginning.

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York.
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley.