Does any physician believe that it is
good for a growing girl to be so occupied seven or eight hours a day?
or that it is right for her to use her brains as long a time as the
mechanic employs his muscles? But this is only a part of the evil. The
multiplicity of studies, the number of teachers,--each eager to get
the most he can out of his pupil,--the severer drill of our day, and
the greater intensity of application demanded, produce effects on the
growing brain, which, in a vast number of cases, can be only
disastrous. Even in girls of from fourteen to eighteen, such as crowd
the normal school in Philadelphia, this sort of tension and this
variety of study occasion an amount of ill-health which is sadly
familiar to many physicians."[34]
Experience teaches that a healthy and growing boy may spend six hours
of force daily upon his studies, and leave sufficient margin for
physical growth. A girl cannot spend more than four, or, in
occasional instances, five hours of force daily upon her studies, and
leave sufficient margin for the general physical growth that she must
make in common with a boy, and also for constructing a reproductive
apparatus. If she puts as much force into her brain education as a
boy, the brain or the special apparatus will suffer.
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