Because the education of boys has met with
tolerable success, hitherto,--but only tolerable it must be
confessed,--in developing them into men, there are those who would
make girls grow into women by the same process. Because a gardener has
nursed an acorn till it grew into an oak, they would have him cradle a
grape in the same soil and way, and make it a vine. Identical
education, or identical co-education, of the sexes defrauds one sex or
the other, or perhaps both. It defies the Roman maxim, which
physiology has fully justified, _mens sana in corpore sano_. The
sustained regimen, regular recitation, erect posture, daily walk,
persistent exercise, and unintermitted labor that toughens a boy, and
makes a man of him, can only be partially applied to a girl. The
regimen of intermittance, periodicity of exercise and rest, work
three-fourths of each month, and remission, if not abstinence, the
other fourth, physiological interchange of the erect and reclining
posture, care of the reproductive system that is the cradle of the
race, all this, that toughens a girl and makes a woman of her, will
emasculate a lad. A combination of the two methods of education, a
compromise between them, would probably yield an average result,
excluding the best of both.
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