330 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The former founded tlie Universal Association for Women in Ger- 

 many, and through this society both these women worked for thirty 

 years and did much toward preparing the way for the broader 

 efforts of the present time. 



It is a fact granted by all the educational world that scholar- 

 ship attains a depth and thoroughness in Germany not found in 

 other lands, and this very perfection has been in part the cause of 

 the backwardness of the educational movement among the women, 

 for a high degree of scholarship has often been acquired by the men 

 at the expense of the devoted service of the women connected with 

 them. Yet when the women of Germany demand their educational 

 rights it will be to share also in the rich intellectual inheritance 

 of their land. 



The majority of the men thus far regard the movement with 

 distrust and suspicion, but are powerless to crush it out. An amus- 

 ing instance occurred last year in the family of an official in one 

 of the large university towns. He was a conservative man who 

 had his immediate family in a proper state of subjection, but his 

 mother-in-law, alas! he could not control, and to his dismay she 

 enrolled herself at the university as a Bospitant, and, in spite of 

 the protestations of her son-in-law, she was a regular attendant 

 upon the courses of lectures that she had elected. 



The regular schools for girls in Germany, above the common 

 schools attended by girls and boys together, are of two grades — 

 the middle schools and the high schools. The avowed object of 

 these schools is to fit girls for society and for the position of 

 housewife, as Ilerr Dr. Bosse, the Minister of Public Instruction 

 for the German Empire, states in his report on the condition 

 of girls' schools in Germany, and as he publicly declared before 

 the German Parliament in the discussion regarding the establish- 

 ment of a girls' gjannasium in Brcslau, referred to later on in 

 this paper. 



''Jlie girls' schools established by the Government provide well 

 for the study of the modern languages, and it is the exception to 

 find women in the upper classes who do not speak French and Eng- 

 lish. Literature, religion, gymnastics, and needlework are also 

 well taught. The course of study in the high school includes a 

 little mathematics, offered under the name of reckoning, and suffi- 

 cient to enable a woman to keep the accounts of a household, and 

 also a little science of the kind that can be learned without a knowl- 

 edge of mathematics. Let me quote a paragraph from the report 

 of the ]\Iinister of Public Instruction for the year 1898 in regard 

 to the aim of the mathematical course in the girls' high schools: 

 " Accuracv in reckoning with numbers and the ability to use num- 



