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
environment 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 adequate 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 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,[3] in view of this fact, states that
"unless there is a change of trend, we 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 encourage 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
remain 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 discipline and moral regimen and
atmosphere. They also need a different method of work. Girls excel them in
learning and memorization, accepting studies upon suggestion 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 custom 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