" I have seen young girls
suffer and grow sensibly lowered in vitality in the first years
after they leave school. In our attempt then to give a girl
pleasure and freedom from care we succeed, for the most part, in
making her pitifully miserable. She finds "life" so different
from what she expected it to be. She is besotted with innocent
little ambitions, and does not understand this apparent waste of
herself, this elaborate preparation, if no work is provided for
her. There is a heritage of noble obligation which young people
accept and long to perpetuate. The desire for action, the wish
to right wrong and alleviate suffering haunts them daily. Society
smiles at it indulgently instead of making it of value to itself.
The wrong to them begins even farther back, when we restrain the
first childish desires for "doing good", and tell them that they
must wait until they are older and better fitted. We intimate
that social obligation begins at a fixed date, forgetting that it
begins at birth itself. We treat them as children who, with
strong-growing limbs, are allowed to use their legs but not their
arms, or whose legs are daily carefully exercised that after a
while their arms may be put to high use. We do this in spite of
the protest of the best educators, Locke and Pestalozzi.
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