The School System of Norway

by David Allen Anderson

CO-EDUCATION

Whether schools should be co-educational has been a live question among many nations for generations, and considerable time will yet elapse before unanimity of opinion is reached.

Nearly all the schools of Norway are co-educational. However, in some of the city systems boys and girls use different playgrounds, and in certain schools they are segregated also for purposes of instruction. These matters are governed according to the wishes of the inspector or the desires of the principals of the different schools. The aim is to combine the better phases represented in various methods and to adopt the plan best suited to the local situation, or the one to which the person in charge is converted and in which he can, because of his convictions, accomplish best results.

"The separation of the sexes is complete in all the schools of Germany excepting some of the primary classes. The advisability of this is a large question, but by no means a settled one.... Germany feels that she has the proper solution, while in America, with an opposite answer, we feel for the most part satisfied."[29]

In American public schools co-education is almost universally practiced. In reference to this matter we give the opinions of some prominent educators. The lamented Dr. Harris, while engaged in the St. Louis, Mo., schools, wrote: "Discipline has improved continually with the adoption of mixed schools;... the mixing of the male and female departments of a school has always been followed by improvement in discipline, not merely on the part of the boys, but on that of the girls as well. The rudeness and abandon which prevail among boys when separate at once give place to self-restraint in the presence of girls. The prurient sentimentality engendered by educating girls apart from boys... disappears almost entirely in mixed schools."[30] The Honorable John Eaton while Commissioner of Education of the United States made report concerning the co-education of the sexes in several hundred large and small cities in the Union. The tenor of the entire report is well summarized in the following sentence: "We are created male and female; all the impulses and activities of nature enforce co-education; if we must live together we must be educated to that end; to educate separately is an attempt to change the natural order of human economy."[31]

In our higher institutions of learning the situation is much the same. The Commissioner of Education, referring to the State University of Iowa, writes, "The report of the president says that the experience of the institution has uniformly been favorable to the co-education of the sexes; that their influence on each other in the acquisition of learning has been most beneficial as well as conducive to orderly habits. The presence of both sexes is considered 'an invaluable feature' in restraining indecorum and an 'inducement to every virtue.'"[32] The practice has continued with similar results throughout the entire country.

Instances favorable to co-education might be multiplied. Its adoption has become a foregone conclusion so far as our general system of education is concerned. True we do have some colleges and a few secondary schools devoting themselves exclusively to the education of one or the other of the sexes. Not many of them are state institutions. They are usually private schools and they answer a certain demand whether well founded or not.

There are certain questions in connection with the education of the sexes which are fundamental and need considerable attention. However, no attempt can be made here to solve the many important problems suggested. It is the intent only to emphasize the necessity of being awake to real conditions and to indicate the fact that herein lies a field for the educator's most careful consideration.

The questions arise: Are the natural functions of man and woman enough alike to justify making their education identical, and will the adoption of such a plan of education result in the advancement or deterioration of the race? A recent article referring "to the endeavor to use women industrially, socially, and politically on the same footing as men" sounds a warning note, crying out against the present tendencies which are taking from the flower of womankind thousands who are eminently fitted for motherhood, "woman's essential function on the globe," and diverting their lives to other and less noble pursuits. "It is therefore essential to the race," say the authors, "that the ablest, healthiest, and finest women should be encouraged, tempted, compelled, if necessary, by circumstances to devote themselves to family life by becoming wives and mothers, and it is doubtful how far it is expedient to draw them off, even for a time to other occupations."[33]