Long gone are the days when girls were barred from obtaining an education and confined to doing house chores, right?
Blanche Girouard, a religious education teacher at St. Paul’s Girl’s School in the U.K., praised the days when “everything seemed to be geared towards marriage” and education was not a priority for women. Her article, which appeared in The Oldie Magazine, was titled “Not so long ago parents didn’t bother to educate their daughters – who had much more fun as a result,” reported the Independent.
Girouard is an instructor at a private school that costs parents $34,500 in tuition per year to enroll their daughters. She suggests in her article that women were happier when they were simply expected to marry rather than to earn a degree at a university. Girouard goes on to complain that “today’s girls aren’t going on nature walks or learning poetry off by heart – they’re cramming their heads full of facts”.
While Girouard acknowledges that parents placed some unreasonable limits on their children, she says that certain aspects of the era were enviable. She also argues that the education system of today is too focused on test results and advises:
“It’s time we backed off and gave today’s girls the time and space to work out what they actually want … Happiness and success don’t turn on A*s and a place at Oxford.”
Her article has received criticism from concerned parents of the daughters in her class. One mother spoke to the Daily Mail and explained:
“I don’t worry about my daughter having too much pressure in a school situation. My girl loves being in that environment.”
Other parents believe Girouard is simply old-fashioned.
