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    224 ON THE EDUCATION OF GIBkS.

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    «. The It Is Female Encouraging Tion 1 T...

    many persons on this subject amounting almost to a feeling that it is wrong to teach women anything practically useful . But our

    ideas would grow clearer if we would steadily bear in mind that one-third of our female population must either work , beg , or starve .

    If whenever we meet a string of schoolgirls not belonging to the wealthy classesor see a merry group at playwe would remind

    ourselves that , one out of every three will have , to earn her own bread in future lifewe should surely feel some interest in

    ascer-, taining that their education is calculated to assist them in so doing .

    I conclude with some short extracts from a letter addressed by Mr . Harry Chester to the Editors of the _English Woman's Journal ,

    and regret that my space forbids me to give the whole . " The question you propose to deal with is I think simply a question of

    education , i . e ., if you can improve the education of females , but not otherwiseyou can improve the market for female labor ; and one

    , of the great wants of female education is , I think , the want of some external standard such as the Society of Arts now supplies . A

    woman who had obtained from the Society of Arts a certificate of the first or second class in book-keeping could scarcely fail to obtain

    _employment as a book-keeper , and one cannot see why the wives , sisters , and daughters of commercial men should not act as their

    book-keepers . '' . . . _"I regard the question you desire to solve as simply and remarkably a question of the improved education of

    women ; as shall be the education of women , so shall be the remuneration of those women who labor to live . You may think lightly

    of the objection taken by the Saturday Review , that if you increase woman ' s power of gaining her own livelihood you diminish the

    number of marriages , and so injure society , for you may rely that such a powermaking her more valuable in a pecuniary sense as a

    wife , increases , her opportunities of marriage , and it is neither for her own good nor that of society that she should marry for hunger ,

    instead of for love and esteem . " ... " You might establish classes for the special instruction of young womenwho have left

    , school , with a view of qualifying them to act as book-keepers , clerks , & c . You may be sure that well qualified women would

    immediately obtain employment . " A school and classes on this principle have been opened in

    London , but as the first quarter is not yet concluded , I cannot speak of its successthough I trust to do so next . Prospectuses can be

    , year obtained at the Office of the _English Woman ' s Journal ,

    Jessie Boxjchebett .

    224 On The Education Of Gibks.

    224 ON THE EDUCATION OF _GIBkS .

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1860, page 224, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121860/page/8/