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Democracy and Social Ethics by Jane Addams
page 56 of 162 (34%)
It is quite true that the family often resents her first attempts to be
part of a life quite outside their own, because the college woman
frequently makes these first attempts most awkwardly; her faculties have
not been trained in the line of action. She lacks the ability to apply
her knowledge and theories to life itself and to its complicated
situations. This is largely the fault of her training and of the
one-sidedness of educational methods. The colleges have long been full
of the best ethical teaching, insisting that the good of the whole must
ultimately be the measure of effort, and that the individual can only
secure his own rights as he labors to secure those of others. But while
the teaching has included an ever-broadening range of obligation and has
insisted upon the recognition of the claims of human brotherhood, the
training has been singularly individualistic; it has fostered ambitions
for personal distinction, and has trained the faculties almost
exclusively in the direction of intellectual accumulation. Doubtless,
woman's education is at fault, in that it has failed to recognize
certain needs, and has failed to cultivate and guide the larger desires
of which all generous young hearts are full.

During the most formative years of life, it gives the young girl no
contact with the feebleness of childhood, the pathos of suffering, or
the needs of old age. It gathers together crude youth in contact only
with each other and with mature men and women who are there for the
purpose of their mental direction. The tenderest promptings are bidden
to bide their time. This could only be justifiable if a definite outlet
were provided when they leave college. Doubtless the need does not
differ widely in men and women, but women not absorbed in professional
or business life, in the years immediately following college, are baldly
brought face to face with the deficiencies of their training. Apparently
every obstacle is removed, and the college woman is at last free to
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