5o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a question of nourishment; the queen has an abundance of the best 

 food; the worker has a limited supply of inferior quality. The result 

 is a stunting of the reproductive system of the worker bee. 



May it not be possible that a similar effect comes in some degree to 

 our women from our school system? The grammar school girl is a 

 larva, if you please, at the age when she should develop a new system 

 of her being, vital both to herself and to her race. To perfect these 

 organs she needs all her rich red blood, all her nervous force. If the 

 brain claims her whole vitality, how can there be any proper develop- 

 ment? Just as very young children should give all their strength for 

 some years solely to physical growth before the brain is allowed to 

 make any considerable demands, so at this critical period in the life 

 of the woman nothing should obstruct the right of way of this impor- 

 tant system. A year at the least should be made especially easy for 

 her, with neither mental nor nervous strain; and throughout the rest 

 of her school days she should have her periodical day of rest, free from 

 any study or overexertion. Most school girls have many unhygienic 

 habits, all of which tend toward checking her development. Exactly 

 these points were suggested in an editorial note in this magazine some 

 months ago, I remember. The physical conditions and irregularities 

 general among high school girls are appalling, in reference both to 

 their own enjoyment and to the larger interests of the race. 



But this is not an argument against our system of education in 

 itself; the matter is not one for school boards to regulate. The intel- 

 ligent fathers and mothers of our little girls of to-day are the only 

 ones who can remedy these conditions. They can make the girl take 

 one easy year, even though it means 'losing a grade,' that bug-a-boo 

 of school girls; and they can keep for her her needed days of rest 

 throughout her course. Even a year's delay in graduation is not so 

 bad as a dwarfing of development. To hear a school girl speak to the 

 question of her waiting a year, one would judge that existence out of 

 her own particular class would necessarily separate her from all the 

 desirable pupils in school. But those arguments — have you ever 

 noticed ? — are never employed when a girl is given a double promotion 

 and advanced a class. 



Losing a grade would not often be necessary, however. Ideal con- 

 ditions would permit a mother to take her daughter to herself for that 

 one year — to teach her the school work and all the other things in 

 which she needs wise and loving instruction especially at this time, 

 welding a companionship which will be the greatest possible barrier 

 against future mistake and sorrow for the young woman in shaping 

 her life. 



That it is not always possible for a mother to follow this course I 

 recognize, though it might be arranged much more often than it is if 



