The Beecher Sisters on Education

Here are two thoughts on education from Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Catharine, from the textbook they co-authored, The American Woman's Home, first published in 1869, and apparently widely read at the time.

I. A Caution on Classroom Management
(Actually, they're addressing parents, not teachers; but this is how I read it.)

"In regard to forming habits of obedience, there have been two extremes, both of which need to be shunned. One is, a stern and uncompromising maintenance of parental authority, demanding perfect and constant obedience, without any attempt to convince a child of the propriety and benevolence of the requisitions, and without any manifestation of sympathy and tenderness for the pain and difficulties which are to be met. Under such discipline, children grow up to fear their parents, rather than to love and trust them; while some of the most valuable principles of character are chilled, or forever blasted.
"In shunning this danger, other parents pass to the opposite extreme. They put themselves too much on the footing of equals with their children, as if little were due to superiority of relation, age, and experience. Nothing is exacted, without the implied concession that the child is to be a judge of the propriety of the requisition; and reason and persuasion are employed, where simple command and obedience would be far better. This system produces a most pernicious influence. Children soon perceive the position thus allowed them, and take every advantage of it. They soon learn to dispute parental requirements, acquire habits of forwardness and conceit, assume disrespectful manners and address, maintain their views with pertinacity, and yield to authority with ill-humor and resentment, as if their rights were infringed upon."

II. A Lament on Curriculum
"The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up on country places, and made the bright, neat, New-England kitchens of old times---the girls that could wash, iron, brew, bake, harness a horse and drive him, no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and read innumerable books---this race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily-fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things."