their lot. From six to eleven or twelve, the number who find their ideals among
their acquaintances falls off rapidly, and historical characters rise to a maximum
at or before the earliest teens. From eleven or twelve on into the middle teens
contemporary ideals increase steadily. London children are more backward in
this expansion of ideals than Americans, while girls choose more acquaintance
ideals at all ages than do boys. The expansion, these authors also trace largely to
the study of history. The George Washington ideal, which leads all the rest by
far and is greatly overworked, in contrast with the many heroes of equal rank
found in England, pales soon, as imperfections are seen and those now making
history loom up. This is the normal age to free from bondage to the immediate
present, and this freedom is one measure of education. Bible heroes are chosen
as ideals by only a very small percentage, mostly girls, far more characters being
from fiction and mythology; where Jesus is chosen, His human is preferred to
His divine side. Again, it would seem that teachers would be ideals, especially as
many girls intend to teach, but they are generally unpopular as choices. In an
ideal system they would be the first step in expansion from home ideals. Military
heroes and inventors play leading rôles in the choices of pubescent boys.
Girls at all school ages and increasingly up the grades prefer foreign ideals, to be
the wife of a man of title, as aristocracies offer special opportunities for woman
to shine, and life near the source of fashion is very attractive, at least up to
sixteen. The saddest fact in these studies is that nearly half our American
pubescent girls, or nearly three times as many as in England, choose male ideals,
or would be men. Girls, too, have from six to fifteen times as many ideals as
boys. In this significant fact we realize how modern woman has cut loose from
all old moorings and is drifting with no destination and no anchor aboard. While
her sex has multiplied in all lower and high school grades, its ideals are still too
masculine. Text-books teach little about women. When a woman's Bible, history,
course of study, etc., is proposed, her sex fears it may reduce her to the old
servitude. While boys rarely, and then only when very young, choose female
ideals, girls' preference for the life of the other sex sometimes reaches sixty and
seventy per cent. The divorce between the life preferred and that demanded by
the interests of the race is often absolute. Saddest and most unnatural of all is the
fact that this state of things increases most rapidly during just those years when
ideals of womanhood should be developed and become most dominant, till it
seems as if the female character was threatened with disintegration. While
statistics are not yet sufficient to be reliable on the subject, there is some
indication that woman later slowly reverts toward ideals not only from her own
sex but also from the circle of her own acquaintances.