Life — March 16, 1911 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ISS GILDERSLEEVE, the new dean of Barnard, cannot under- stand why excessive learning should be imputed to girls who go to college any more than to boys who do the same. She assures parents and others who are afraid to send their girls to college for fear they will become over-addicted to learning, that college education does not make the average girl a profound scholar. No doubt that is true. There is a hesitation about sending likely girls to college which does not nowadays apply to boys. Perhaps, after awhile, it will pass away. Meanwhile, the reason for it is not quite the one which Dean Gildersleeve attacks. There is, to be sure, a fear of spoiling a woman ,to make a scholar, but that is not the whole story. The period be- tween eighteen and twenty-two is not quite the same thing to a girl that it is to a boy. There are hesitations about keeping a girl out of the world and more or less shut up among girls during those years, The fear is not that she will learn too much, but that she will become undomesticated, become too much com- THE BABY Clean and dress a wriggle, add a pint of nearly milk, Smother with a pillow any sneeze; Baste with talcum powder and mark’ upon its back— these.” “Don’t forget that you were one o! -LIFE.- Girls and College mitted to an independent life, miss the acquaintance and association with suit- able young males that are proper to that time of life, and fail to acquire the pleas- ant and unselfish arts of hospitality and entertainment which are so very valua- ble in women. A competent mother, who knows the game of women—so to speak—and has the means and opportu- nity to play it, can do very valuable things for a daughter between eighteen and twenty-two. Even a fairly attentive father is of some use to her. And “so- ciety,” so-called, may be a valuable school if the girl can get at it to advan- tage and under wise supervision. What the girl gets out of college in those years she gets at more or less sacrifice of what she might get out of her parents and the home they can make for her and the as- sociations that they offer her; and there, or thereabouts, is where the pinch comes about sending girls to college. The deci- sion is often hard to make. There is a balancing of what the parents can do against what the college may do, and a choice finally in which the individual and the place and circumstances are ail considered. And when the choice has been made, the parents can do no more than hope they have chosen wisely, for there is likely to be some loss either way, About boys there is usually no such indecision. There is no general uncer- tainty that it is expedient to send boys to college. The processes for training boys are accepted for better or worse, and the effort now is, not to change them altogether, but only to improve them. Boys are sent away to school, to college and to study a profession, and kept away a dozen years without serious misgiving for fear they will get to love independence too much or lose capacity for domestication. But the world does not rely on boys to become home- makers, For that enormously important service it looks to the girls, and its doubts about the value of the girls’ col- leges are related to its opinion of their value in qualifying girls to make homes, And yet for girls, as well as for boys. when one can choose, eighteen scems too soon to halt the systematic development of the mind. In college, or out, that should go on. THE WAITER Stuff a hired dress-suit case with an effort to please, Add a half-dozen stumbles and trips; Remove his right thumb from the cranberry sauce, Roll in crumbs, melted butter and tips, comicbooks.com