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On Secondary Instruction, as relating to Girls.
By Emily Davies.
In the great controversy, which having been begun by the debates on the Report of the Public Schools' Commission, is now extending itself over almost the whole department of secondary instruction, there is an omission which seems to call for remark. Throughout the discussion, voluminous as it has been, the question has hitherto been treated exclusively in reference to boys, it having been tacitly assumed that male education only is a matter of concern to the general community. This feature is the more remarkable, inasmuch as it is peculiar to the present agitation. In the effort made some years ago for the improvement of primary education, ignorant boys and ignorant girls were recognised as having similar needs and similar claims. National and British Schools for girls are inspected, mistresses are trained, female pupil-teachers are apprenticed, and speaking generally, the education of the daughters of the labouring classes is as carefully watched over as that of their sons. Why is the case altered when we advance a few steps higher in the social scale? With regard to the public schools, the reason is obvious enough. As there are no Etons for girls in existence, they could not be made the subject of investigation. Probably the sisters of public school boys are, for the most part, taught by governesses at home. Their education is therefore clearly beyond the scope of a commission of inquiry, and though it does not follow that it is a matter in which the nation has no interest, it is natural enough that it should not appear in the discussion called forth by the Commissioners' Report. But this consideration does not apply to the daughters of the middle-class, and it is difficult to understand why their early training should be regarded as a matter of less importance than that of their brothers. That it is so regarded appears to be implied by the almost total silence of the thinkers and writers to whom the nation looks for guidance. It is needless to bring proofs of what no one will deny. It is a simple fact, that in the mass of speeches, articles, reviews, pamphlets and volumes which have lately been before the public on the subject of secondary instruction for boys, there is scarcely so much as a passing allusion to that of girls. This side of the question has been, by general consent, completely ignored.
There is no reason for attributing this silence to ungenerous motives. It no doubt arises in a great degree from a sort of inadvertence. Public writers are occupied with the busy world around them, in which men only are to be seen, and it is perhaps not much to be wondered at, if they think only of training the boys, who are hereafter to do the more conspicuous part of the world's work. Some, and those the men most worth listening to, are unwilling to speak of what they imperfectly know, and it is difficult for them to know much about girls or women. When they speak of boys, they have at any rate their own experience to go upon, and it is not unnatural that
