What is a practical education for a girl? Whatever will fit her for life. The question and answer are trite. What will best fit a girl for life? First of all a well-balanced character. I knew a girl who was a good cook before she was ten years old; she had a genius for sewing; she was an excellent scholar in school, and had musical talent, and yet because of her capriciousness she never filled any place she was called upon to fill in life, and her home was a place of discomfort to her husband and children. Another girl, one of the noblest I ever knew, also found the practical details of life easy, but she was always tossed about from one occupation to another, and from one home to another, because when she found every reality fall short of her ideal she had not the good sense to work quietly to improve the matter, but went about proclaiming her disgust. The first thing we all need is to have our wills so trained that when we see the right, we may instantly do it, and after that we need to be taught to see clearly what is right.

But as character may be formed in many ways why not form it by teaching practical things? What, then, does a girl most need to learn?

To read, to cook, and to sew.

I put reading first, for though no civilized beings can live without cooking and sewing, and we occasionally find good and gentle women who cannot read, yet a woman of real character who can read can teach herself any branch of housekeeping which she is convinced she ought to know, while a cook cannot teach herself to read in any broad sense; for by reading I do not mean pronouncing words. I want a girl to have a taste for good reading. She may study the whole circle of the sciences without reaching this end, or she may not have more than half a dozen books in her library and yet learn the lesson. The practical advantage of most of her studies in school depends on whether or no they lead to this result. How many girls ever use chemistry, or physics, or geology, or zoÖlogy in any practical way? Yet what a difference the study of all these things makes in the kind of reading women enjoy! Who can learn enough history in school to be equipped even to teach history? Every teacher knows that to be impossible. But a girl who has studied history properly in school, who has been taught to think about the influence of men on nations and of nations on men, has open to her a vast treasure-house of books which will add both to her usefulness and happiness.Some of you may think it is artful in me to propose this broad education under the pretense of requiring that one learn to read, but it is not so. I do believe in a very broad education for girls; but if I had to choose between a broad education which had crammed a girl with knowledge, yet left her without a love for good reading, and a very narrow one which had awakened that thirst, I should choose the second.

But why do I call this a practical education? Before I answer the question, I must say more on the subject of reading. A girl may enjoy biography, history, travels, and science and yet not have a taste for the best reading, that is, for true literature. She needs essays, novels, and especially poetry. She needs to be able to decide what is best and what is not; she must learn to respond to beauty and truth, and to repel what is false and ugly. This is the practical education, because it bears upon both happiness and character. It is practical as it makes the most of life not only for the woman herself, but for those about her. Bear in mind always that we have supposed her to have a high character and a perfectly trained will. Such reading will develop her judgment as to what is right.

But some women like to read too well. Their will is not perfectly trained, and they would rather think out a domestic problem than act it out. The education of books alone is so one-sided that we cannot consider it practical; it must be supplemented by cooking and sewing.

At our present stage of progress cooking is more important than sewing. Sewing can be more easily put out of the house than cooking; and in any emergency sewing may be neglected from week to week without serious consequences, while cooking must go on every day. Moreover, cooking is by far the more healthful occupation, and one of the aims of a practical education is to make healthy women.

I do not glorify cooking. I do not think a good cook is the highest type of woman. I do not even think it is the duty of every woman to cook. But cooking is certainly practical, ninety-nine women in a hundred have occasion some time in their lives for this accomplishment, and if they are married it is nearly indispensable for them to have a knowledge of it for the comfort of their families.

Few women are born to be cooks, but most intelligent women can learn to cook. It saves immense labor, however, if as girls they learn the art. It is singular that so many who fancy they want to be chemists hate the idea of going into their own kitchens to work. It is possibly because they cannot choose their own hours for cooking. Cooking certainly develops the mind as much as chemical experiments, and at the end of the process you have something of direct service to mankind, which may or may not be the case with work done in the laboratory.

Cooking, sewing, and housekeeping are essential for any woman, married or unmarried, who wishes to make a home, and a home is the practical goal of the majority of women. A woman who is neat and intelligent generally proves to be a good housekeeper without special instruction; but with cooking and sewing, "Who wishes to be a master must begin betimes."

Arithmetic is a science which a girl needs to understand thoroughly—not necessarily business arithmetic, which she can learn if occasion requires, but the principles of arithmetic, and she should be able to work in numbers quickly and accurately.

The tide of opinion is against me here. A boy must know arithmetic of course, or how can he fulfill his destiny and make money? But a girl! Nevertheless, no woman can manage a household properly, or even guide her own affairs as a single woman, without a good knowledge of arithmetic. Her money will be wasted, her servants will cheat her, tradespeople will be demoralized by her. There may be so much money at her command that she goes on serenely unaware of harm. She may perform feats of charity, but what was meant to be a blessing becomes a curse through her ignorance.

A millionaire who meant to give his daughter every advantage began as usual with a French nurse and a German maid and a music master who could command a fabulous price, while he engaged an artist of distinction to oversee her untidy attempts at drawing. At last he remembered that she ought to have a teacher in English, and a lady was engaged to teach grammar and literature and history. "And arithmetic?" she asked. "A little, perhaps. Girls need very little."

The millionaire's daughter came to take her lesson—a bright, handsome girl, full of good nature. "I hate arithmetic, you know," she said confidingly, shrugging her shoulders and puckering her brows. "And then, what's the good of it for a girl?"

The teacher did not argue the question, but began her task. "If thirteen yards of ribbon cost $3.25, how much will one yard cost?" As doing this problem in her mind was quite out of Miss Malvina's power, she was allowed paper and pencil. She wrinkled her forehead, curled her lip, looked up and laughed, "I haven't the faintest idea, don't you know?" A few judicious questions led her to see the necessity of dividing $3.25 by 13, and she went to work. After a season of struggle her countenance cleared. "Upon my word, I've got the answer—25!" "Twenty-five what?" "Twenty-five—why—twenty-five dollars!" "Wouldn't that be rather high for ribbon?" asked the teacher. "Oh, I don't know," replied Miss Malvina carelessly. "I'll tell you," she added triumphantly; "I should tell them to give me the best, and I suppose they would know what I ought to pay." This is hardly an extreme case. In the public schools the girls still learn arithmetic,—perhaps they spend too much strength upon it for the practical mastery they get; but in private schools the best of teachers find it almost impossible to give girls a working knowledge of the subject, because the tide of feeling is so strong against it.

By and by Miss Malvina's father found himself having trouble with his workmen. There were strikes. The family received threatening letters. Malvina's rosy cheeks grew pale. "I don't know what they want," she said forlornly. "They say we are all so extravagant. I don't know what difference that makes to them if we pay for what we buy. We never hurt them. I wish we were not rich at all. It would be much nicer to be poor. I should like to be a—what is it?—a commoner—or a communist or something. Then nobody would be envious."

Now there was not a more generous girl in the world than Malvina. If she had been afloat on a raft after a shipwreck she would have been the one to give up her last ration of water to any one who needed it more. She was ready to pour out money in any case of distress, but she had no idea of its value, and none of her charities prospered, except so far as her rosy, good-natured face could be seen, for that, to be sure, did good like a medicine.

And she was not a stupid girl, though certainly not brilliant in mathematics. If she had been taught that arithmetic is positively needed by every girl, rich or poor, she could have learned all she needed to know of figures to make her life a blessing to hundreds of people whom she only injured for lack of such knowledge.

A vast amount of the daily comfort of people of narrow means depends on the understanding the mother of a family has of accounts, so that the real needs and pleasures may be provided for without the contraction of debt. In a rich family the burden of the mother's incapacity for figures does not fall directly on those dearest to her, but it has unconsciously a far greater weight in the world at large, and is one of the chief among the unrecognized elements causing the increasing bitterness between the rich and the poor.

Let every girl, rich or poor, be required to keep her own accounts accurately from the time she is old enough to have an allowance of even ten cents a month, and there would be a perceptible amelioration in some of the hardest of present conditions.

I believe that some music should be included in a practical education,—certainly if a girl has a taste for it. The ability to sing hymns and ballads, and to play accompaniments well, adds so much to the happiness of a woman herself, and usually to that of her family, that it ought to be considered as something more than an accomplishment. I should not wish to be understood as limiting a musical education to these requirements. I should like to have every girl carry her education as far as she can without neglecting duties she feels more important. Even when she has no musical talent, but merely a love for music, though she cannot give much pleasure to others, I think she may get an elevation of mind from stumbling through Beethoven and Wagner which is worth the time she spends. Still, I think singing is of more practical use than instrumental music, and the power to play simple things well which is so rare is in most cases more to the purpose than to stumble through Beethoven and Wagner.

Drawing is practical as it trains the eye and hand, but unpractical if it leads a girl to think her commonplace pictures are works of art. It seems to me that a good way for girls to study art is for them to look at good pictures with older people who have taste and judgment, because this gives them new resources of enjoyment. Of course when a girl has special talent she needs the training which will give her the power to produce, but this chapter is devoted to the general education of girls.Every girl should study at least one science. Science trains the mind in a different way from other studies. And one science sheds light on all the rest. Then, anything which puts cheap pleasures within our reach is a safeguard and a blessing. The happiness of life is no light thing, and those who have tested it know how much simple happiness comes from the pursuit of botany or ornithology or mineralogy.

It would be a great thing if every woman could be so well educated that she could teach her own children, at least the main branches, up to the time when they are twelve years old. This is by no means saying that it is not well for many children to be sent to school, but it is calling attention to a great privilege which some mothers and some children may enjoy. What ought a woman to be able to teach her children? To read, in the broad sense, to write a legible hand, and to speak correctly. She ought to be able to teach them arithmetic, and also the rudiments of one science, to give them in early life the right outlook upon the world around them. She ought particularly to be able to give them fine manners, but these belong to the moral training which was spoken of at the beginning of the chapter. They do bear, however, on that part of the social life which may not be distinctly moral, but which is of high practical importance to one's success in life, as well as to one's happiness. Many of the noblest women are shy and awkward except with their special friends, and so are unfitted for practical life. Mothers should remember this and make a determined effort to give children the practice of meeting many people, though, of course, the kind of people and the conditions under which they are to be met require careful consideration.

As for the entirely moral qualities which contribute most to what is usually called success in the world, they are probably courage, good temper, thoughtfulness for others, perseverance, and trustworthiness.

And all this time I have said nothing of any use to be made of education in earning a living. Yet is not that just what our education must do if it is to be practical? I do not ignore this, and shall have more to say of self-support elsewhere. But on the principle that we eat to live rather than live to eat, I think even from a practical standpoint the full development of a woman is of more consequence than the amount of money she can earn. As far as the mere living goes, a practical woman can live better on a little money than an unpractical one on much. When her practicality comes from the high quality of her character, she will lead the best possible life whether she be rich or poor, and I believe the kind of culture I have outlined in this chapter will do something to add happiness to goodness and usefulness.