SCHOOLS FOR GIRLS.
ANOTHER participator in the correspondence on " frugal mar- riages," who signs herself " M. A. M.," explains one thing which young wives want more than the specified 300/. a year ; it is training in the management of a household. The-discovery of her own wants in that respect cost her considerable loss; and she had to make her education good by many experiments and contri- vances, to tk no small amusement of her maids in the process. This is unquestionably a substantial part of the queetion ; and economical inquirers—Mr. Henry Mayhew and the Rural Commis-
sioner of the M i orning Chronicle n former days conspicuous among them—have observed that the same want presses very hard upon the narrow households of the working classes. To the same source many moralists have traced "the great social evil "—a want of proper knowledge on the part of young womankind. Their ig- norance not only incapacitates them for distinguishing right from wrong, but deprives them of the-means of pursuing the right path even if they have learned to wish it.' A lady, who has distinguished herself by what we may call a masterly administration in this be- half, declares that Industrial Schools are the great key to the objects which are attempted through prison improvements, poor- law unions, reformatories, and Magdalen institutions; and Mr. Adderley has made the same remark with regard to the young in general. A very large proportion wander into vice partly because they know no better, but chiefly because they have not learned how to pursue an industrious course of life. The want presses more severely upon girls than upon boys, because they are weaker, more easily led astray, are less protected, less. valuable for the employer, and less fortified by early education. We have had re- formatories and schools for boys; in several countries, England, France, America, &o., there have been mixed schools, to which there are many objections; but it is rather remarkable that only at the present day is any adequate attentibn specially devoted to the rescue and education of girls simultaneously in several of those countries. We have before us the last number of the North American Review, giving an account, not very complete, of the State Industrial Schools for girls, at Lancaster in Massachusetts; an appendix to the Irish Quarterly Review, with an account of the movement to establish industrial schools in Ireland by Mrs. Ellen Woodlock ; and. a circular for a plan of education for girls in London, of a class that cannot support the expense of teaching at the present rates for the new Ladies' Colleges. The Massachusetts school was designed on the plan of a reform- atory; it -would appear to have been intended for children who were neither infirm in mind or body nor hardened criminals; it is therefore a select school. Although it has been but a short-time in operation, the combination of industrial teaching and kindness has already been proved to be very effectual. Many girls who, with the assistance of their parents, were on the high road to ruin, have been rescued for an honest and industrious life. There are schools of a similar kind, only mixed, at Boston, at Manchester in New Hampahire, &e. ; as there are at Hamburg, where the "Rough House" is a favourable specimen of the mixed school. These are all reformatories.
Mrs. Woodloek's plan takes up the child at an earlier stage, and lays the basis of teaching in the form of substantial industry, by which the school is made to pay its own way. In these few words, it will be noticed, we have described two or three striking peculiarities. Mrs. Woedlock started in her enterprise by en- deavouring to discover kinds of work which would be suitable to be executed by youn.g girls. She began with needle-work ; cabbage-nets were devised for a girl who suffered from bad sight, and they suggested hair-nets of silk ; " tommies," or, as they are called in England, "dickies,"—that is' false shirt-fronts, were suggested by Mrs. Woodlock herself. These forms of manufac- ture were very successful. Nets which were imported from Eng- land were made by Mrs. Woodlock's pupils at prices that enabled them to be exported to England, Germany, and America. The " tommies " also became an export. They gave rise to a separate trade, hitherto unknown to Ireland, in the making of flat boxes to contain them; the box-maker in turn finding employment for several girl apprentices. The factory and the workshop thus be- came the foundation of a school in which the pupil learned me- thods of working, the advantages of industry, some elements of general knowledge, and a habit of discipline in life. Mrs. Wood- lock began in 1850, with lady patronesses and other helps that dropped- off when the novelty ceased; she struggled through cold- ness and apparently insuperable difficulties ; now she sees other in- dustrial schools rising, on a foundation of manufactures in nets, shirts, mittens, polka-jackets, crochet, 61o. There can be no - doubt that the pupils whom she is thus training in the business of life as well as of the workshop will have an independence in their own industry, sufficient to prevent them from being driven by want into vice. They will learn the way from childhood to womanhood, with a power of self-defence ; and they have a chance of becoming thrifty mothers in a rising home. But the same principles apply exactly to other classes and to our own country. Already the colleges that have been establish- ed in London for young ladies have introducedto the middle class of society a species of education which at once renders the mind more independent and enables the student to take part in superior kinds of industry. These colleges have hitherto been special, and therefore perhaps not so economical as they might have been, and thus limited to a select portion of the middle class. From amongst the friends of one of these colleges emanates a proposal
to establish a day-school on the same principle in the Western Central district, but at terms so moderate—from 61. to 91. a year —that parents of much humbler means may place their daughters in the way of obtaining sound instruction in history, languages, and the knowledge requisite for educated society. Now such knowledge lies at the very root of a knowledge of the world, of a knowledge of one's own mind ; it teaches a perception of one's own ignorance, and points out the way to remedy it. Girls whose fa- culties have been trained at these schools will discover their own" wants earlier than "M. A. M. " and in most cases will not be at
finding much loss in out how to supply the deficiency.
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