Education for Women

It is the height of selfishness for men, who fully appreciate in their own case the great advantages of a good education, to deny these advantages to women. There is no valid argument by which the, exclusion of the female sex form the privilege of education can be defended. It is argued that women have their domestic duties to perform, and" that if they were educated, they would bury themselves in their books and have little time for attending to the management of their households. Of course, it is possible for women, as it is for men, to neglect necessary work in order to spare more time for reading sensational novels. But women are no more liable to this temptation than men, and most women would be able to do their household work all the better for being able to refresh their minds in the intervals of leisure with a little reading. Nay, education would even help them in the performance of the narrowest sphere of womanly duty. For education involves knowledge of the means by which health may be preserved and improved, and enables a mother to consult such modern books as will tell her how to rear up her children into healthy men and women, and skilfully nurse them and her husband when disease attacks her household. Without education, she will be not unlikely to listen with fatal results to the advice of superstitious quacks, who pretend to work wonders by charms and magic.