If a teacher could only excel in one high quality for training girls,
probably the best in which she could excel would be a great sincerity,
which would train them in frankness, and in the knowledge that to be
entirely frank means to lay down a great price for that costly
attainment, a perfectly honourable and fearless life. [1--"A woman,
if it be once known that she is deficient in truth, has no resource.
Have, by a misuse of language, injured or lost her only means of
persuasion, nothing can preserve her from falling into contempt of
nonentity. When she is no longer to be believed no on will take the
trouble to listen to her...no one can depend on her, no on rests
any hope on her, the words of which she makes use have no meaning."
--Madame Necker de Saussure, "Progressive Education."]
It sometimes happens that the realization of this truth comes
comparatively late in life to those who ought to have recognized it
years before. Thinking along the surface of things, and in particular
repeating catchwords and platitudes and trite maxims on the subject of
sincerity, is apt to make us believe that we possess the quality we
talk about, and as it is impossible to have anything to do with the
education of children without treating of sincerity and truthfulness,
it is comparatively easy to slip into the happy assumption that one is
truthful, because one would not deliberately be otherwise.
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