Sunday, March 1, 2015

What are the boys and girls of noble family taught?

In Lilliput, children are educated in large public nurseries where they are taught the skills and knowledge appropriate to their social standing. Boys and girls of the Lilliputian nobility are taught honor, justice, modesty, clemency, religion, and love of country. Life's pretty hard in the nursery for both sexes: they are never allowed out of the sight of their professors and must never talk to the servants; they only get to see their parents twice a year, and, even then, they're not allowed presents. Public displays of affection between parents and children are also not permitted.
Girls of the nobility are taught family life, to prepare them for their future lives as wives and mothers. Their education is almost identical to that of the boys, except that their exercises aren't quite as robust. The most important principle in a girl's education is that she should one day become a wife who will always be a reasonable and agreeable companion to her husband.
Upper-class boys remain in the public nursery until they're fifteen, which corresponds to twenty-one, in our years. The girls leave when they're twelve years old, which would be the equivalent of marriageable age in Gulliver's England.

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