27 March 1858

FRESH FERN LEAVES.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by ROBERT BONNER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

BOARDING-SCHOOLS.

"A mother" wishes me to express my views upon the expediency of sending young girls away from home, to boarding-schools.

I have already done so in the LEDGER. My voice has always been for keeping young girls under the immediate supervision of their own mothers, under the parental roof. I object to a young girl being obliged to share room, bed and washbowl with a stranger, of whom no teacher can know what is most necessary to be known. I object to a mother delegating to any person the physical and moral supervision so indispensable at an age when girls are generally sent from home to school. I object to the license allowed, or if not allowed, stealthily taken, by young girls at boarding-schools, in forming promiscuous acquaintances. I object to insufficient, huddled, close sleeping-rooms, and democratic hair brushes and closets; I object also to a formal procession of girls, headed and flanked by a teacher, taking exercise (?) at the usual funereal pace. I object to insufficient food, and stolen confectionery to make up the deficiency; and I had rather a daughter of mine would grow up a double-headed dunce, than send her spine to be crooked at any such "finishing" establishment.

There may be cases—for instance, that of a widower, who has no home for his daughter but a hotel or boarding-house, from which his business makes him, most of the time, necessarily absent—in which the choice of two evils may lean toward the boarding-school, but I never could, and never can conceive, how any good mother in her senses could willingly send away her young daughter from her side at so critical an age, whether regarded physically or morally.

I believe that there are teachers who, with the best intentions, strive consientiously to perform their duty; but I have never yet attended a boarding-school or visited one, where I should be willing to leave a daughter of mine, nor will I believe that a mother who really seeks the highest welfare of her child, will content herself with trusting to a laudatory circular, with a string of high-sounding names, packing her child's trunk, and paying the term bills when due.

There is great waste of time and money at such establishments, of which parents, by reason of culpable ignorance and carelessness, know nothing, and if they do not care, why on earth should the teachers? There is great harm done by bed-room conversations prolonged late into the night (don't talk to me of "rules"), of which the teacher knows nothing; and out of twenty girls who may be unexceptionable, the twenty-first shall be the infected sheep who shall taint the whole flock, and what teacher is to know this, if outward proprieties are observed? There are correspondences carried on with the male brothers, cousins and uncles of roommates, not down in the high-sounding circulars. There is, in all boarding-schools that I have known, great strictness in minor matters, which appeal to the public eye, and culpable laxness in points far more vital. There is great favoritism to the children of distinguished or wealthy parents, and cutting neglect to the ill-starred child of obscurity. There is a constant premium for eye-service, and bold, shallow assurance, and little or no encouragement for timid, unobtrusive conscientiousness. And lastly, the usual closing public school examination is about as true a test of scholarly ability, as the perfume of a hot-house blossom is proof of the capability of the plant to endure the variations of out-door temperature.

FANNY FERN.