Roundabout
The Playing Fields of Roedean
By KATHARINE WHITEHORN
Tim editor of the .British Medical Journal has pub- lished, and the editor of the Spectator feels I should write about, an article by Dr. Katharina Dalton indicating that in at least one girls' public school the girls are ap- preciably worse behaved just before, just after
and during their periods than at any other time (with the exception of girls of low intelligence and poor adjustment, who keep right on be- having badly all the time). The offences included as 'naughtiness' were mainly unpunctuality, talking, forgetfulness and avoiding games, the last two being the offences which increased the most. Increased irritability among prefects, too, resulted in their giving more punishments when the custom of women was upon them, as the Bible so charmingly puts it.
It is sometimes not clear to lay readers why expert investigations are necessary to find out what appears to be obvious to the inexpert (Pavlov made history with his dogs on a routine familiar to trainers of dancing bears for cen- turies). And what on earth psychological curiosity is presented by any girl avoiding games when she is feeling low I cannot think : it seems to me much more interesting to ask what psycho- logical curiosity is presented by women who would regard it as a misdemeanour. The fact that this survey should be considered news seems to my (not wholly unbiased) view just one more instance of the way in which girls' public schools keep forgetting that they are not boys' public schools—and I speak with feeling, having been at about three of them, including, before I finally ran away from the place, two mortal years at that potting-shed of the English rose, Roedean.
It is, I suppose, open to question whether the public school system is even the best way of bringing up boys; but at least the machine does instil qualities suitable for the soldiers, civil ser- vants and empire builders for whom it was originally designed. The girls' public schools have taken it over, and some of it—particularly all this thing about games—is quite inappropriate for the creation of balanced and likeable women. The emerging male animal has a desire to bash some of his fellow human beings and lay others, and it makes good sense to provide on the playing field some alternative outlet of low nuisance value. But girls have to flog round the lacrosse field working off a whole lot of physical urges which they do not in fact have—even at a time of the month when they do have an urge to crawl away into a quiet corner. The power of conditioning being what it is, many girls do emerge from the system believing that the best use for the female physique is playing tennis and swinging between the horizontal bars; and although it demonstrably isn't, many still main- tam n that the training in the team spirit has be' worth it all—even the full horror of cricketi practice on the wet grass before breakfast. But even the team spirit itself, with its gen° tendency to make girls keep each other uP the mark and condemn as bad sports those 01:' fall below, seems to me of questionable valt!i For example, it is generally held to be a gr thing if women are sensitive and sympatbel" towards the sufferings of mankind. Yet 0413' example is set in boarding schools? The same in the Army : the first implication is that are malingering, and if you haven't got a telt perature, you aren't ill. (At Roedean, there two matrons in operation, one of whom shoo' traces of humanity, and was regarded by the girli not in her care as 'soft') Perhaps the really odd thing is not only Ill311 battleaxes of the old school should think 10 the lip must be equally stiff whether it is grow a moustache one day or not (though c°111c, to think of it—no, let us not be unkind), but ths' this extraordinary illusion that girls are like be, crops up in all sorts of forward-looking tYP`', who make exactly the same mistake the way round. The old school ignore a 015 physical problems in a way found appropriate for boys; the new concentrate on them in 3 manner equally remote from what actually ga`; on. I cannot be the only girl who is absolute unable to persuade advanced friends that I through six schools without ever finding out eveli the meaning of Lesbianism or what the cleric! call solitary vice; or even having heard anY the serious swear, words. No boy could Ftt through school in such ignorance, and I dare 0 in mixed schools girls couldn't either; but manner in which girls are 'difficult' is far le`; directly physical than the way boys arc. course, there are occasional physical incidents' but they arelar more rare, far less an inescapabliie stage of development than the same thing witj boys. Girls are moony and sentimental anl emotional and giggly and stupid instead. Eyed' their cruelty—which is as bad as a boy's or Wee a ferret's—is mental cruelty : teasing, instill.' leaving a girl out of things. They rarely g° in for what Molesworth calls 'tuoghing up.' Ob`,1,,. ously a girl's adolescent troubles are physical !"0 origin, but they are not particularly physical I manifestation. The only trouble with urging that girls' schoi+ realise that what they have on their hands is girl' is that one is apt to find oneself in the with the people who believe that one should te3ct the dear things to cook and sew—than \N nothing could be farther from my thought. Anne Scott-James says, domestic education is technical education, and open to exactly tli` same objections as any other premature voe3" tional schooling. Intellectually, boys and girls C311 be treated the same : it is emotionally and physic ally that they cannot. It is a pity that so often ill' only way to treat girls like people seems to bc to treat them like boys.
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