[Footnote 26: See Scripture: Scientific Child Study. Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child Study, May, 1895, vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 32-37.]
[Footnote 27: Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die
Gedächtnissentwickelung bei Schulkindern. Zeits. f. Psychologie, u.
Physiologie der Sinnes-organe, November, 1900. Bd. 24. Heft 5, pp.
321-351.]
[Footnote 28: See Note 4, p. 270.]
[Footnote 29: Memory: An Inductive Study. By F.W. Colegrove. Henry
Holt and Co., New York, 1900, p. 229. See also Individual Memories.
American Journal of Psychology, January, 1899, vol. 10, pp 228-255.]
* * * * *
CHAPTER XI
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS
Equal opportunities of higher education now open—Brings new dangers to women—Ineradicable sex differences begin at puberty, when the sexes should and do diverge—Different interests—Sex tension—Girls more mature than boys at the same age—Radical psychic and physiological differences between the sexes—The bachelor women—Needed reconstruction—Food—Sleep—Regimen—Manners—Religion—Regularity—The topics for a girls' curriculum—The eternal womanly.
The long battle of woman and her friends for equal educational and other opportunities is essentially won all along the line. Her academic achievements have forced conservative minds to admit that her intellect is not inferior to that of man. The old cloistral seclusion and exclusion is forever gone and new ideals are arising. It has been a noble movement and is a necessary first stage of woman's emancipation. The caricatured maidens "as beautiful as an angel but as silly as a goose" who come from the kitchen to the husband's study to ask how much is two times two, and are told it is four for a man and three for a woman, and go back with a happy "Thank you, my dear"; those who love to be called baby, and appeal to instincts half parental in their lovers and husbands; those who find all the sphere they desire in a doll's house, like Nora's, and are content to be men's pets; whose ideal is the clinging vine, and who take no interest in the field where their husbands struggle, will perhaps soon survive only as a diminishing remainder. Marriages do still occur where woman's ignorance and helplessness seem to be the chief charm to men, and may be happy, but such cases are no farther from the present ideal and tendency on the one hand than on the other are those which consist in intellectual partnerships, in which there is no segregation of interests but which are devoted throughout to joint work or enjoyment.
A typical contemporary writer[1] thinks the question whether a girl shall receive a college education is very like the same question for boys. Even if the four K's, Kirche, Kinder, Kuchen, and Kleider (which may be translated by the four C's, Church, Children, Cooking, and Clothes), are her vocation, college may help her. The best training for a young woman is not the old college course that has proven unfit for young men. Most college men look forward to a professional training as few women do. The latter have often greater sympathy, readiness of memory, patience with technic, skill in literature and language, but lack originality, are not attracted by unsolved problems, are less motor-minded; but their training is just as serious and important as that of men. The best results are where the sexes are brought closer together, because their separation generally emphasizes for girls the technical training for the profession of womanhood. With girls, literature and language take precedence over science; expression stands higher than action; the scholarship may be superior, but is not effective; the educated woman "is likely to master technic rather than art; method, rather than substance. She may know a good deal, but she can do nothing." In most separate colleges for women, old traditions are more prevalent than in colleges for men. In the annex system, she does not get the best of the institution. By the coeducation method, "young men are more earnest, better in manners and morals, and in all ways more civilized than under monastic conditions. The women do more work in a more natural way, with better perspective and with saner incentives than when isolated from the influence of the society of men. There is less silliness and folly where a man is not a novelty. In coeducational institutions of high standards, frivolous conduct or scandals of any form are rarely known. The responsibility for decorum is thrown from the school to the woman, and the woman rises to the responsibility." The character of college work has not been lowered but raised by coeducation, despite the fact that most of the new, small, weak colleges are coeducational. Social strain, Jordan thinks, is easily regulated, and the dormitory system is on the whole best, because the college atmosphere is highly prized. The reasons for the present reaction against coeducation are ascribed partly to the dislike of the idle boy to have girls excel him and see his failures, or because rowdyish tendencies are checked by the presence of women. Some think that girls do not help athletics; that men count for most because they are more apt to be heard from later; but the most serious new argument is the fear that woman's standards and amateurishness will take the place of specialization. Women take up higher education because they like it; men because their careers depend upon it. Hence their studies are more objective and face the world as it is. In college the women do as well as men, but not in the university. The half-educated woman as a social factor has produced many soft lecture courses and cheap books. This is an argument for the higher education of the sex. Finally, Jordan insists that coeducation leads to marriage, and he believes that its best basis is common interest and intellectual friendship.