Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/756

732 almost identical studies. The effort to cram mathematics, for instance, into the female mind almost always results in failure. It is true that there have been a few women distinguished as mathematicians, but they have been so from natural predilection, and are exceptions to the general rule. I have seen many cases of girls whose nervous systems have been wofully disturbed in the endeavor to master algebra, geometry, spherical trigonometry, and other mathematical branches of knowledge that could not by any possibility be of use to them. And how many women, notwithstanding all the efforts made, have even a smattering of these subjects? Their minds revolt at the idea. Nevertheless, not only are the higher branches of mathematics kept in the curricula of many of our schools for girls, but even civil-engineering and other applied mathematical studies are pursued. I do not think that absurdity can go much further than this. They might as well include navigation; and as a woman was a short time ago licensed as captain of a Mississippi steamboat, I shall expect to hear the fact used as an argument in favor of this extension of the educational facilities for girls.

Doubtless in time the evils that I have endeavored to point out this evening will be done away with. The craze for giving every child a smattering of every branch of knowledge will disappear, but it will probably not be in our day. All the world professes to be opposed to cramming, but the system nevertheless goes on, not only unchecked, but to a greater extent year after year. The days when children really knew something well will doubtless come back, and the future teachers in medical schools will not be disgusted as I have been with the badly trained minds of many medical students who sit with gaping mouths scarcely comprehending a word of a lecture, though put in the simplest diction of the language. Pupils will then be taught to think, and not as at present to absorb without understanding.

One word more, and I have done. For the teachers, men and women, in our public and private schools, I have the most profound respect. They simply follow the system that is laid down for them, and they do it, I verily believe, with a consciousness that it is faulty in the extreme. They are, however, powerless to effect a change. At the least suggestion toward a deviation from the beaten track, school committees and commissioners of education, and, above all, blind and ignorant parents, would insist upon "the pound of flesh," "the worth of their money," and the cramming process would have to go on. To these latter our efforts at reform must be addressed. A body such as is the Nineteenth Century Club can do much toward the spread of proper ideas in regard to this important matter, and, if it sees things as I have endeavored to set them forth to-night, a mighty impulse will be brought to bear in support of a righteous cause.