Education Is an Art

The subject of woman is no limited subject, nor is woman's life confined to household matters alone. Woman's world is wide and spacious; anyone who wishes to speak may range through it — especially in our society, where woman is still pulled this way and that by violent and various currents, some of them opposing one another and some in accord. We have the conservative ideas and the liberated ideas; we have those who argue for woman's equality with man in education and culture and grow ardent for their idea, and those who oppose them in this, seeing no need for woman to learn more than a limited number of things to help her carry out the task nature has assigned to her, and who cling stubbornly to their view.

But I shall not knock at that door, for how many talks upon talks we have heard on it... I shall take up instead a very simple subject — simple, yes, but what moves me to discuss it is that it touches the practical side of woman's life: the daily life in which each one of us wants to do something useful and fruitful, something that grows greater with time and develops steadily until it bears its fruit. It is, besides, drawn from my personal experience in the nature of my work.

The first and most important thing that catches my eye on my way to school every morning is the crowd of maidservants dragging children by the hand to bring them to school. Here is one striding ahead of a child who cannot keep up with her, wanting him to hurry as she does, while the child trails behind her crying, trying to make her understand that he cannot run like that. There is another standing beside a child, absorbed in gazing at a motorcar whose appearance has astonished her, while the child tries to slip away from her to cross the road to the opposite sidewalk — and he does, and arrives safely, by the care of God and the help of a few passers-by. A third meets a friend of hers and stops to spin out with her an endless conversation, so that the child reaches school late.

These scenes and others like them repeat themselves every morning and every evening, as the pupils go out and as they come home. Yet there is no one who notices them, or thinks of what follows from them, or asks how far they affect the child's upbringing, the shaping of his character, and the direction of his mind and soul.

Poor things, children such as these! Their parents leave their care in the hands of the servant — a stranger, and ignorant more often than not — and from her they pick up ugly habits and a corrupted taste, until the gulf between them and their schoolmates has grown wide. On whom does the responsibility for this fall, and who is to blame in this matter of neglect? It is the mother — the mother alone. The servant cannot be held responsible for the child when she accompanies him or plays with him, because she does not feel this responsibility, and because her own upbringing is not the sort of upbringing that would qualify her to take charge of the child's affairs and care for him. I do not know how a mother can permit herself to hand over her own flesh and blood to a servant whom she brought into her house only to do the ordinary chores — sweeping, kneading, washing up, and the like — so that the child is deprived of his mother's tenderness and care just where he needs more of that tenderness and that care. The result is that the child grows attached to the servant and comes to love her more than he loves his own mother. And how many children we see who shrink from their parents, obey no one but the servant, and listen to nothing but what she tells them! Nor is this strange, so long as this servant takes charge of the child from the moment he rises: she dresses him, feeds him, takes him to

school and on his walk and even to bed, so that the child grows used to falling asleep only when his servant is at his side.

Issam once stood up in class and raised his hand, asking to speak. When I allowed him to talk, he began telling his classmates a strange story with neither meaning nor moral. I soon stopped him, and then asked him who had told him this story; he said it was the servant who had told it to him, and that she tells him new stories every day. This is one example among many that pass before me every day, and I grieve with all my heart for that mother who does not trouble herself to give her children tangible and effective care. What prevents such a mother from taking charge of every one of her child's affairs? Do not the newest theories of education advise every mother to rely on no one but herself in her child's upbringing, if she wants that child to grow up in the good and wholesome way she wishes for him? And then, what is the mother doing, if it is the servant who tends the child and does the housework alone, without her mistress's help? Would it not better become the accomplished lady to tend her young planting herself, so as to present it to society in the future as a tree strong of wood, strong of stem, and good of fruit — so that her son becomes a source of pride and honor to her and to the milieu from which he comes?

And I address this question especially to the cultured ladies of our society. Why did you get your education, madam, and in what do you employ your learning and your culture? Is it not so that you yourself may profit by them, and your society profit through you? Perhaps you will answer that you take part in a number of charitable, cultural, and educational associations; but such an answer is nothing but an excuse for the slackness of many women in giving sufficient attention to their homes and their children. What logic permits us to give away to others a medicine we possess, at the very moment when we ourselves stand in the direst need of it?

Your children have a better claim to your attention than anything else; nature has consecrated you to them and laid upon you toward them a great duty which you may not neglect. Motherhood, madam, places upon your shoulders great responsibilities that demand of you sacrifice, diligence, and the giving of yourself for the sake of your little ones. Education is an art, and art is never splendid unless it draws its wellspring from a soul brimming with devotion and sincerity.