The Case Against 'Head-Binding'

The magazines and periodicals that are printed for the 'carriage trade' have a new subject up for discussion: 'Resolved that the young girls in our set should not go to college.' The main points made are that college coincides with the time a girl should enter society, that it creates a conflict with social success, that it makes her unsympathetic to women of her class, and that it makes eligible men of her class uninteresting. One periodical notes that while mothers appreciate the advantages of education, they fear it kills a daughter's ambition for social preferment and ruins her chances at a 'good marriage.' Over in China, to signify wealth, girls' feet are bound so they can scarcely walk. Our missionaries correctly call this cruel. Yet, here in America, magazines are advocating 'head-binding'—keeping girls from an education because they might gain a new point of view. A college-educated girl might find young men who chatter only of cotillions and cigarettes to be a bore. She might prefer a man with brains instead of money. If she cannot be both an intellectual and a social success, society suggests she be 'simple and stunning.' When the Chinese are converted from their heathen ways, perhaps the veteran missionaries can come back and tackle the head-binders of Manhattan.