On this day in ...... 1849 (160 years ago today), Ellen Key (right) was born in Sweden. An advocate of child-center education, women's suffrage, and feminism, she began writing in her 30s. Her "advanced ideas on sex, love and marriage, and moral conduct had wide influence." Works available in English --on the availability of which The New York Times reported as early as 1913 -- include War, Peace, and the Future: A Consideration of Nationalism and Internationalism, and of the Relation of Women to War (1916). (credit for portrait of Key by Hannah Hirsch-Pauli) Among Key's many notable quotes, here's one exemplifying her views on teaching; another, her views on war:
Education can give you a skill, but a liberal education can give you dignity.
Everything, everything in war is barbaric.... But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.
