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 careful 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 as it is in the pulpit. In these
interesting oases where girl sentiment has made itself felt in school it has
generally 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 feminization of
secondary education works its subtle demoralization 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 confessed 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 increase of girls, the
percentage of which 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
institutions they were usually picked girls with superior tastes and ability, but
now the average girl of the rank and file is, despite advanced standard, 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-