Divergence is most marked and sudden in the pu- bescent period — in the early teens. At this age, by almost world-wide consent, boys and girls separate for a time, and lead their lives during this most critical period more or less apart, at least for a few years, until the ferment of mind and body which results in maturity of functions then born and culminating in nubility, has done its work. The family and the home abundantly recognize this tendency. At twelve or fourteen, brothers and sisters develop a life more independent of each other than before. Their home occupations differ as do their plays, games, tastes. History, anthropology, and sociology, as well as home life, abundantly illustrate this. This is normal and biological. What our schools and other institutions should do, is not to obliterate these differences but to make boys more manly and girls more womanly. We should respect the law of sexual differences, and not forget that motherhood is a very different thing from fatherhood. Neither sex should copy nor set patterns to the other, but all parts should be played harmoniously and clearly in the great sex symphony.
I have here less to say against coeducation in college, still less in university grades after the maturity which comes at eighteen or twenty has been achieved; but it is high time to ask ourselves whether the theory and practise of identical coeducation, especially in the high school, which has lately been carried to a greater ex- treme in this country than the rest of the world recog- nizes, has not brought certain grave dangers, and THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS whether it does not interfere with the natural differ- entiations seen everywhere else. I recognize, of course, the great argument of economy. Indeed, we should save money and effort could we unite churches of not too diverse creeds. We could thus give better preaching, music, improve the edifice, etc. I am by no means ready to advocate the radical abolition of coeducation, but we can already sum up in a rough, brief way our ac- count of profit and loss with it. On the one hand, no doubt each sex develops some of its own best qualities best in the presence of the other, but the question still remains, how much, when, and in what way, identical coeducation secures this end?
As has been said, girls and boys are often interested in different aspects of the same topic, and this may have a tendency to broaden the view-point of both and bring it into sympathy with that of the other, but the question still remains whether one be not too much attracted to the sphere of the other, especially girls to that of boys. No doubt some girls become a little less gushy, their con- duct more thoughtful, and their sense of responsibility greater; for one of woman's great functions, which is that of bestowing praise aright, is increased. There is also much evidence that certain boys' vices are miti- gated; they are made more urbane and their thoughts of sex made more healthful. In some respects boys are stimulated to good scholarship by girls, who in many schools and topics excel them. We should ask, however. What is nature's way at this stage of life? Whether boys, in order to be well virified later, ought not to be so boisterous and even rough as to be at times unfit companions for girls; or whether, on the other hand, girls to be best matured ought not to have their senti- jnental periods of instability, especially when we venture YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE to raise the question, whether for a girl in the early teens, when her health for her whole life depends upon normalizing the lunar month, there is not something un- hygienic, unnatural, not to say a little monstrous, in school associations with boys when she must suppress and conceal her feelings and instinctive promptings at those times which suggest withdrawing, to let nature do its beautiful work of inflorescence. It is a sacred time of reverent exemption from the hard struggle of existence in the world and from mental effort in the school. Medical specialists, many of the best of whom now insist that through this period she should be, as it were, '' turned out to grass," or should lie fallow, so far as intellectual efforts go, one-fourth the time, no doubt often go too far, but their unanimous voice should not entirely be disregarded.
It is not this, however, that I have chiefly in mind here, but the effects of too familiar relations and, especially, of the identical work, treatment, and environ- ment of the modern school.
We have now at least eight good and independent statistical studies which show that the ideals of boys from ten years on are almost always those of their own sex, while girls' ideals are increasingly of the opposite sex, or those of men. That the ideals of pubescent girls are not found in the great and noble women of the world or in their literature, but more and more in men, suggests a divorce between the ideals adopted and the line of life best suited to the interests of the race. We are not furnished in our public schools with ade- quate womanly ideals in history or literature. The new love of freedom which women have lately felt inclines girls to abandon the home for the office. " It surely can hardly be called an ideal education for women that THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS permits eighteen out of one hundred college girls to state boldly that they would rather be men than women. ' ' More than one-half of the schoolgirls in these censuses choose male ideals, as if those of femininity are disintegrating. A recent writer/ in view of this fact, states that " unless there is a change of trend, wt shall soon have a female sex without a female character." In the progressive numerical feminization of our schools most teachers, perhaps naturally and necessarily, have more or less masculine ideals, and this does not en- courage the development of those that constitute the glory of womanhood. " At every age from eight to sixteen, girls named from three to twenty more ideals than boys." '' These facts indicate a condition of diffused interests and lack of clear-cut purposes and a need of integration."
When we turn to boys the case is different. In most public high schools girls preponderate, especially in the upper classes, and in many of them the boys that re- main are practically in a girls' school, sometimes taught chiefly, if not solely, by women teachers at an age when strong men should be in control more than at any other period of life. Boys need a different dis- cipline and moral regimen and atmosphere. They also need a different method of work. Girls excel them in learning and memorization, accepting studies upon sug- gestion or authority, but are often quite at sea when set to make tests and experiments that give individuality and a chance for self-expression, which is one of the best things in boyhood. Girls preponderate in our overgrown high school Latin and algebra, because cus- 1 The Evolution of Ideals. W. G. Chambers, Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1903, vol. 10, pp. 101-143. Also, B. E. Warner: The Yotmg Woman in Modern Life. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1903, p. 218.
YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE torn and tradition and, perhaps, advice incline them to it. They preponderate in English and history classes more often, let us hope, from inner inclination. The boy sooner grows restless in a curriculum where form takes precedence over content. He revolts at much method with meager matter. He craves utility, and when all these instincts are denied, without knowing what is the matter, he drops out of school, when with robust tone and with a truly boy life, such as prevails at Harrow, Eton, and Rugby, he would have fought it through and have done well. This feminization of the school spirit, discipline, and personnel is bad for boys. Of course, on the whole, perhaps, they are made more gentlemanly, more at ease, their manners improved, and all this to a woman teacher seems excellent, but something is the mat- ter with the boy in early teens who can be truly called ' ' a perfect gentleman." That should come later, V'hen the brute and animal element have had opportunity to work themselves off in a healthful normal way. They still have football to themselves, and are the majority per- haps in chemistry, and sometimes in physics, but there is danger of a settled eviration. The segregation, which even some of our schools are now attempting, is always in some degree necessary for full and complete develop- ment. Just as the boys' language is apt to creep into that of the girl, so girls' interests, ways, standards and tastes, which are crude at this age, sometimes attract boys out of their orbit. While some differences are emphasized by contact, others are compromised. Boys tend to grow content with mechanical, memorized work and, excelling on the lines of girls' qualities, fail to de- velop those of their own. There is a little charm and bloom rubbed off the ideal of girlhood by close con- tact, and boyhood seems less ideal to girls at close range.
J THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS In place of the mystic attraction of the other sex that has inspired so much that is best in the world, familiar comradeship brings a little disenchantment. The im- pulse to be at one's best in the presence of the other sex grows lax and sex tension remits, and each comes to feel itself seen through, so that there is less motive to indulge in the ideal conduct which such motives in- spire, because the call for it is incessant. This disillu- sioning weakens the motivation to marriage sometimes on both sides, when girls grow careless in their dress and too negligent in their manners, one of the best schools of woman's morals; and when boys lose all restraints which the presence of girls usually enforces, there is a subtle deterioration. Thus, I believe, although of course it is impossible to prove, that this is one of the factors of a decreasing percentage of marriage among educated young men and women.
At eighteen or twenty the girl normally reaches a stage of first maturity when her ideas of life are amaz- ingly keen and true; when, if her body is developed, she can endure a great deal; when she is nearest, per- haps, the ideal of feminine beauty and perfection. Of this we saw illustrations in Chapter VIII. In our en- vironment, however, there is a little danger that this age once well past there will slowly arise a slight sense of aimlessness or lassitude, unrest, uneasiness, as if one weve almost unconsciously feeling along the wall for a door to which the key was not at hand. Thus some lose their bloom and, yielding to the great danger of young womanhood, slowly lapse to an anxious state of expectancy, or desire something not within their reach, and so the diathesis of restlessness slowly super- venes. The best thing about college life for girls is, perhaps, that it postpones this incipient disappoint- YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE ment; but it is a little pathetic to me to read, as I have lately done, the class letters of hundreds of girl graduates, out of college one, two, or three years, turn- ing a little to art, music, travel, teaching, charity work, one after the other, or trying to find something to which they can devote themselves, some cause, movement, occupation, where their capacity for altruism and self- sacrifice can find a field. The tension is almost im- perceptible, perhaps quite unconscious. It is every- where overborne by a keen interest in life, by a desire to know the world at first hand, while susceptibilities are at their height. The apple of intelligence has been plucked at perhaps a little too great cost of health. The purely mental has not been quite sufficiently kept back. The girl wishes to know a good deal more of the world and perfect her own personality, and would not marry, although every cell of her body and every unconscious impulse points to just that end. Soon, it may be in five or ten years or more, the complexion of ill health is seen in these notes, or else life has been adjusted to independence and self-support. Many of these bachelor women are magnificent in mind and body, but they lack wifehood and yet more — motherhood.
In fine, we should use these facts as a stimulus to ask more searchingly the question whether the present system of higher education for both sexes is not lacking in some very essential elements, and if so what these are. Indeed, considering the facts that in our social system man makes the advances and that woman is by nature more prone than man to domesticity and parent- hood, it is not impossible that men's colleges do more to unfit for these than do those for women. One cause may be moral. Ethics used to be taught as a practical power for life and reenforced by religious motives. Now THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS it is theoretical and speculative and too often led cap- tive by metaphysical and epistemological speculations. Sometimes girls work or worry more over studies and ideals than is good for their constitution, and boys grow idle and indifferent, and this proverbially tends to bad habits. Perhaps fitting for college has been too hard at the critical age of about eighteen, and requirements of honest, persevering work during college years too little enforced, or grown irksome by physiological reaction of lassitude from the strain of fitting and entering. Again, girls mature earlier than boys; and the latter who have been educated with them tend to certain elements of maturity and completeness too early in life, and their growth period is shortened or its momentum lessened by an atmosphere of femininity. Something is clearly wrong, and more so here than we have at present any reason to think is the case among the academic male or female youth of other lands. To see and admit that there is an evil very real, deep, exceedingly difficult and complex in its causes, but grave and demanding a care- ful reconsideration of current educational ideas and practises, is the first step; and this every thoughtful and well-informed mind, I believe, must now take.
It is utterly impossible without injury to hold girls to the same standards of conduct, regularity, severe moral accountability, and strenuous mental work that boys need. The privileges and immunities of her sex are inveterate, and with these the American girl in the middle teens fairly tingles with a new-born consciousness. Already she occasionally asserts herself in the public high school against a male teacher or principal who seeks to enforce discipline by methods boys respect, in a way that suggests that the time is at hand when popularity with her sex will be as necessary in a successful teacher YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE as it is in the pulpit. In these interesting cases where girl sentiment has made itself felt in school it has gen- erally carried parents, committeemen, the press, and public sentiment before it, and has already made a precious little list of martyrs whom, were I an educational pope, I would promptly canonize. The progressive fem- inization of secondary education works its subtle demor- alization on the male teachers who remain. Public sentiment would sustain them in many parental exactions with boys which it disallows in mixed classes. It is hard, too, for male principals of schools with only female teachers not to suffer some deterioration in the moral tone of their virility and to lose in the power to cope successfully with men. Not only is this often con- fessed and deplored, but the incessant compromises the best male teachers of mixed classes must make with their pedagogic convictions in both teaching and discipline make the profession less attractive to manly men of large caliber and of sound fiber. Again, the recent rapid in- crease of girls, the percentage of w^hich to population in high schools has in many communities doubled in but little more than a decade, almost necessarily involves a decline in the average quality of girls, perhaps as much greater for them as compared with boys as their increase has been greater. When but few were found in these in- stitutions they wTre usually picked girls with superior tastes and ability, but now the average girl of the rank and file is, despite advanced standards of admission, of an order natively lower. From this deterioration both boys and teachers suffer, even though the greatest good for the greatest number may be enhanced. Once more, it is generally admitted that girls in good boarding-schools, where evenings, food, and regimen are controlled, are in better health than day pupils with social, church, and THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS domestic duties and perhaps worries to which boys are less subject. This is the nascent stage of periodicity to the slow normalization of which, during these few critical years, everything that interferes should yield. Some kind of tacit recognition of this is indispensable, but in mixed classes every form of such concession is baffling and demoralizing to boys.
The women who really achieve the higher culture should make it their " cause " or " mission " to work out the new humanistic or liberal education which the old college claimed to stand for and which now needs radical reconstruction to meet the demands of modern life. In science they should aim to restore the humanistic elements of its history, biography, its popular features at their best, and its applications in all the more non- technical fields, as described in Chapter XII, and feel responsibility not to let the moral, religious, and poetic aspects of nature be lost in utilities. Woman should be true to her generic nature and take her stand against all premature specialization, and when the Zeitgeist ^ in- sists on specialized training for occupative pursuits with- out waiting for broad foundations to be laid, she should resist all these influences that make for psychological pre- cocity. Das Eivig-Weihliche ^ is no iridescent fiction but a very definable reality, and means perennial youth. It means that woman at her best never outgrows ado- lescence as man does, but lingers in, magnifies and glori- fies this culminating stage of life with its all-sided inter- ests, its convertibility of emotions, its enthusiasm, and zest for all that is good, beautiful, true, and heroic. This constitutes her freshness and charm, even in age, and makes her by nature more humanistic than man, more Spirit of the Times. 2 The eternal womanly.
YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE sympathetic and appreciative. It is not chiefly the 70,000 superfluous Massachusetts women of the last cen- sus, but representatives of every class and age in the 4,000 women's clubs of this country that now find some leis- ure for general culture in all fields, and in which most of them no doubt surpass their husbands. Those who still say that men do not like women to be their mental superiors and that no man was ever won by the attraction of intellect, on the one hand, and those who urge that women really want husbands to be their intellectual su- periors, both misapprehend. The male in all the orders of life is the agent of variation and tends by nature to expertness and specialization, without which his individu- ality is incomplete. In his chosen line he would lead and be authoritative, and he rarely seeks partnership in it in marriage. This is no subjection, but woman instinctively respects and even reveres, and perhaps educated woman is coming to demand, it in the man of her whole-hearted choice. This granted, man was never more plastic to woman's great work of creating in him all the wide range of secondary sex qualities which constitute his es- sential manhood. In all this, the pedagogic fathers we teach in the history of education are most of them about as luminous and obsolete as is patristics for the religious teacher, or as methods of other countries are coming to be in solving our own peculiar pedagogic problems. The relation of the academically trained sexes is faintly typified by that of the ideal college to the ideal university, professional or technical school. This is the harmony of counterparts and constitutes the best basis of psychic amphimixis. For the reinstallation of the humanistic college, the time has come when cultivated woman ought to come forward and render vital aid. If she does so and helps to evolve a high school and an A. B. course that THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS is truly liberal, it will not only fit her nature and needs far better than anything now existing, but young men at the humanistic stage of their own education will seek to profit by it, and she will thus repay her debt to man in the past by aiding him to de-universitize the college and to rescue secondary education from its gravest dangers.
But even should all this be done, coeducation would by no means be thus justified. If adolescent boys normally pass through a generalized or even feminized stage of psychic development in which they are peculiarly plastic to the guidance of older women w^ho have such rare in- sight into their nature, such infinite sympathy and patience with all the symptoms of their storm and stress metamorphosis, when they seek everything by turns and nothing long, and if young men will forever afterward understand woman's nature better for living out more fully this stage of their lives and will fail to do so if it is abridged or dwarfed, it by no means follows that inti- mate daily and class-room association with girls of their own age is necessary or best. The danger of this is that the boy 's instinct to assert his own manhood will thus be made premature and excessive, that he will react against general culture, in the capacity for which girls, who are older than boys at the same age, naturally excel them. Companionship and comparisons incline him to take pre- mature refuge in some one talent that emphasizes his psy- cho-sexual difference too soon. Again, he is farther from nubile maturity than the girl classmate of his own age, and coeducation and marriage between them are prone to violate the important physiological law of disparity that requires the husband to be some years the wife's senior, both in their own interests, as maturity begins to decline to age, and in those of their offspring. Thus the young man with his years of restraint and probation YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE ahead, and his inflammable desires, is best removed from the half-conscious cerebrations about wedlock, inevitably more insistent with constant girl companionship. If he resists this during all the years of his apprenticeship, he grows more immune and inhibitive of it when its proper hour arrives, and perhaps becomes in soul a bachelor before his time. In this side of his nature he is forever incommensurate with and unintelligible to woman, be she even teacher, sister, or mother. Better some risk of gross thoughts and even acts, to which phylogeny and recapit- ulation so strongly incline him, than this subtle eviration. Bat if the boy is unduly repelled from the sphere of girls' interests, the girl is in some danger of being un- duly drawn to his, and, as we saw above, of forgetting some of the ideals of her own sex. Riper in mind and body than her male classmate, and often excelling him in the capacity of acquisition, nearer the age of her full maturity than he to his, he seems a little too crude and callow to fulfil the ideals of manhood normal to her age which point to older and riper men. In all that makes sexual attraction best, a classmate of her own age is too undeveloped, and so she often suffers mute disenchantment, and even if engagement be dreamed of, it would be, on her part, with unconscious reservations if not with some conscious renunciation of ideals. Thus the boy is correct in feeling himself understood and seen through by his girl classmates to a degree that is sometimes quite distasteful to him, while the girl finds herself misunder- stood by and disappointed in men. Boys arrive at the humanistic stage of culture later than girls and pass it sooner; and to find them already there and with their greater aptitude excelling him, is not an inviting situa- tion, and so he is tempted to abridge or cut it out and to hasten on and be mature and professional before his time, THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS for thus he gravitates toward his normal relation to her sex of expert mastership on some bread- or fame-winning line. Of course, these influences are not patent, demon- strable by experiment, or measurable by statistics; but I have come to believe that, like many other facts and laws, they have a reality and a dominance that is all-pervasive and inescapable, and that they will ultimately prevail over economic motives and traditions.