WOMEN AND THE HUMANITIES.
[To TIIE EDITOR OF THE "3PECTATOR:1 SIR,—There is, I think, one important phase of the education question which is affected by Mr. Carnegie's magnificent gift, and which is not touched upon in your interesting article of last week. Mr. Carnegie's benefaction is to be available for women equally with men. Now in Great Britain and many other civilised countries the movement which is placing education largely in the hands of women is making rapid strides. I think I am right in saying that both here and in Germany and in France the proportion of women teachers in the Government schools is as high as 60 per cent. and is steadily increasing, while in the 'United States there are no less than four hundred and eighty thousand women teachers. If the past rate of progress be maintained, and especially if it be accelerated by such gifts as Mr. Carnegie's, it is probable that the next fifty or sixty years may see the greater part of the education of the civilised world in the hands of its women. Now statistics show that more than 90 per cent, of women students prefer the humanities as subjects of study. What a woman elects to study, she will probably elect to teach. Is education then in the future to tend in this direction, and if so, will it prove to be an effective check on the alleged materialising and hardening tendency of the study of science ?
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