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Sex And Education: A Reply To Dr. E.H. Clarke's "Sex In Education"
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47 | It is claimed by admiring critics, in regard to Dr. Clarke's book, that "his method is purely scientific." From this I should be inclined to dissent. The method does not seem to me purely scientific, but popular; and not so much popular as clinical, -- that is, as if familiarly addressed by a physician to a circle of students or patients, among whom the personal authority or popularity of the teacher might be relied upon to fill some gaps in the argument. The purely scientific method waives all such personal prestige. Darwin offers his basis of facts as modestly and as amply as if he were an unknown man; and proceeds step by step, still fortifying himself, or stating frankly where he is unfortified. I have been a pretty careful reader of books on Natural History all my life; and I cannot help thinking that contemporary science offers a standard, both as to facts and inferences, whose demands are hardly met by the book now under discussion. | |
48 | Let us consider, first, Dr. Clarke's facts, and then his inferences. | |
49 | I. Dr. Clarke's Facts. | |
50 | I certainly am conscious of no manner of bias against Dr. Clarke, who was my townsman and college classmate; and I opened his pages, honestly hoping to find an array of facts that should be impressive both by their quality and by their quantity. To show, by citing individual instances, that the pressure of our school system injures health very often, is not enough. To take seven cases out of a physician's notebook, and then assure us that there are a good many more, is not enough. Yet this is precisely what Dr. Clarke does; and, strange to say, one of these is the case of an actress and another of a clerk, leaving only five educational instances in all. This does not seem to me what would be called, in any other branch of science, a satisfactory basis of facts. For instance, I open the last "American Naturalist," and find Professor Wilder thus criticising the new work on "The Cerebral Convolutions of Man," by Ecker: "The value of such a generalization might be estimated if the author had given us the number of individuals upon which it is based." This is precisely the criticism I should make on the generalizations of Dr. Clarke. | |
51 | That our educational system is faulty on the physiological side is an old story. The evil has been under discussion, in a general way, for years, -- by Horace Mann, Dr. Howe, Dr. Butler of Providence, and by myself, among others, in a paper called "The Murder of the Innocents," published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1859, and afterward included in "Out Door Papers." It seems to me that what is most needed is not the mere reiteration of those facts, even if more ably and convincingly stated, but rather to show by careful and discriminating statistics to what extent girls have been injured, beyond boys, by the system. Dr. Clarke does not marshal his facts in any such way as this, and in some cases almost commits direct unfairness by the omission, -- as, for instance, where he cites "Bits of Talk," to show the superior physique of the Nova Scotia children as compared with those of New England, and forgets to state that the italics he introduces are his own, and that the author of that book does not emphasize the superiority in the one sex more than in the other. | |
52 | It has been pointed out, again and again, in the "Woman's Journal" and elsewhere, that there are whole classes of facts to be had, bearing most closely on this question, which neither Dr. Clarke nor any physiologist opposed to co-education has yet attempted to obtain. Instead of shrinking from these facts, we are constantly begging for them. Until they are obtained, systematized, and displayed, the whole argument of Dr. Clarke has but an insufficient basis of facts. They are such as these: | |
53 | 1. We need facts as to the comparative physiology of American women in different localities. There are highly educated communities and very uneducated communities. Has Dr. Clarke, or any one, compared the health of women in cities and in country towns; in cities with good schools and cities with poor schools; or in highly educated States like Massachusetts and Connecticut, as compared with States where the climate is similar, but the school system less thorough? The standard of female education is not very formidably high in Pennsylvania, where they also have an equable climate, no east winds, and most comfortable living; and yet one of Dr. Clarke's severest statements as to female debility (p.113) comes from Pennsylvania. In country villages I could name, where there are only very poor district schools, kept for less than half the year, the traveller constantly observes, among the farmers' daughters, cheeks as pale and vitality as deficient as in the best educated metropolis. | |
54 | 2. Again, we need facts as to American-born women of different races. Dr. Clarke says of a century, "that length of time could not transform the sturdy German fraulein and robust. English damsel into the fragile American miss." (p. 168.) How does he know it could not? I have seen this change very nearly effected, in a single generation, among the children of English, Irish, French Canadians, and even the Nova. Scotians whom he so praises; and this in families where even reading and writing were rare accomplishments. As far as I can observe, the effect of climate, change of diet, change of living, on all these classes, is almost sure to produce the same result of delicacy, almost of fragility, in the second generation, with or without schooling; and among the boys almost as much as among the girls. A physician in a large manufacturing town once told me that the unhealthiest class of the community, in his opinion, consisted of the sons of Irish parents. |