CO-EDUCATION : WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE ?
By J. H. BADLEY (Headmaster of Bedates).
MR. J. L. PATON, in a recent review in these pages of L. B. Pekin's Progressive Schools, while singling out co-education as the most striking characteristic of such schools, deplored the fact that " Everybody is in the dark as to this fundamental qUestion. . . . One would imagine that it should be possible to crystallize out some definite conclusions. Not at all. . . . There is any amount of opinion on the subject, but precious little evidence." Are we quite as much in the dark as Mr. Paton thinks ? There is now a considerable amount of experience of co-education in this country on which it should be possible to form a judgement. There are, for instance, at least ten schools, in England alone, which take boys and girls from an early age right through to the age of entrance to the University, besides others with a narrower range of age. Half of them have been in existence for over twenty years, and one or two for over thirty. All but one are boarding-schools, so that there is no question as to the completeness with which the experiment has been tried out. Experience of over thirty-five years in such a school—and it would, I feel sure, be supported by that of others—leads me to offer some of the evidence that Mr. Paton asks for.
And first, as to why most of the " Progressive Schools 7 have adopted it. It is in part, no doubt, an outcome of the movement for the emancipation of women and their admission to every kind of activity, educational and other, that is open to men. The main reason, however, goes deeper than this i It is to be found in the growing conviction that education is not a matter of the class- room only, but must take account of the whole of the unfolding personality, and must provide nurture and training for every side of it, the emotional no less than the intellectual, and scope and direction for every kind of interest. This is largely a matter of environment.; and an environment which does not include the relations between the sexes, both in the influence of those in charge and in the companionship of those growing up, is narrow and one-sided. Each has much to give the other, without which part of their nature is starved or inis-grown, to their serious loss both at the time and for the needs of later life.
But even if this is admitted in theory, there may still be room for doubt whether co-education is wise in practice. There are three aspects of the problem : (1) biological considerations as to the differences between boy and girl in nature and in rate of development ; (2) the psychological aspect of the effect that each sex has on the other in their adolescent years ; (3) the practical question how much they can do together and how far they should be treated alike.
(1) That there are innate differences between boy and girl few would deny ; but except for matters of physique, it will need long continued investigation to discover which are inherent and which merely the outcome of conventional treatment. Two things, however, can be stated with certainty ; the one, that the field of similarity is far greater than that of difference ; and the other, that there are just as many„ and as great, differences between members of the same sex as between the two sixes. There is need, in fact, in any sound system of education, of so much differentiation of curriculum and treatment, even if we consider boys and girls separately, that the problem is not created, but only made more obvious, when they are together.
There is, however, a real and easily measurable difference in their rate of growth. \Up to ,fourteen a girl is, as a rule, from one to two years in advance of the boy both in physical and mental development.; after this age he picks up and passes her. While, therefore, she can easily hold her own in the earlier years—and the boy at that age is not in the least likely to be spurred to excessive effort—in the later years she might easily be stimulated to competitive effort resulting in over- strain. This danger, however, is not removed by separa- tion ; the strain can be quite as severe, under pressure of competitive examinations, in the separate school. The remedy is to allow, at this age, much specialization along the line of the particular bent, in which there need be no sense of strain, and to allow of no personal competition but only .that imposed by an external standard.
(2) The question that bulks largest in the eyes of most is whether the mixing of boys and girls in early adolescence is bound to stimulate their sexual develop- ment to an unnecessary and unwholesome extent. Experience shows that, in most cases and under reason- able conditions, this is not so. On the contrary, the subconscious satisfaction of dawning sex-feeling given by the full companionship of school life tends to slow down the development and make it steadier, and at the same time to free it from the unwholesOme results of repression, of which all who are familiar with schools for one sex are well aware. Some, no doubt, are liable to be over- stimulated by the presence of the other sex. Co-educa- tion is not advisable for all. But it is increasingly recognized that youth needs expression and training on its emotional side as on others ; and there is abundant evidence that these can best be given when the need is met with frankness and understanding, and when the sexes are not merely occasior al'y thrown together, but share all the interests and problems of school life.
But if they are brought up together is there not bound to be some assimilation of their characteristics— must not boys become girlish and girls boyish ? Here again' experience shows that the_fear is unfounded, provided, of course, that in such things as. numbers, age, and the balance of sexes on the staff, there is no excessive influence on one side or the other. There is undoubtedly, for the boy, some restraint on roughness of behaviour and language, and he has to find ways of exercising authority without resort to physical force ; but-this does not involve any lessening of manly qualities in the true sense. And if the girl claims all the freedom of the boy—most healthy girls go through a tomboy stage—she thus gets rid of harmful repressions without losing any of the qualities that are really womanly. If they have less self-consciousness and can be good com- rades, this doespot mean that they have lost their own characteristics. iThe un-sexed boy or girl is emphatically not the product of co-education. \ University records, both in class-lists and sports, are proof that co-education is not an influence that hinders the full development of the powers of either sex. \ (3) Co-education need not imply that boy and girl must do exactly the same things, or must be treated in all ways alike. In games, sports and gynnastiesihey do best apart, though thereare, of course, some games that can quite well be shared ; and it has already been said that in the later stages of school, specialization along different lines should be made possible. But even so, there is always much that can be shared with advantage to both. j In the " humanities," for example, in biology, and in th arts there is nothing but gain in any differences of interest and point of view that are thus brought together ; in music and the drama, especially, the gain is obvious. -- -- - How far is it possible to say that the aims of those who believe in co-education have been realized ? In individual cases it is, of course, possible to pick out failures—no educational system is without these. But it is a weighty fact that those who have had most experience of it are the most firmly convinced of its value, and would not wish to return to the separate school ; and that the great majority of those who have been educated together become its convinced supporters. Of its wider effect—and it is in its bearing on the problems of the future, the new world that has to be shaped and the relations between the sexes that have to be worked out by both in common, that the ultimate reasons for co-education are to be found—no judgement is yet possible. Btu those who bee the sane and practical comradeship between the sexes that it can establish feel that here at least is some ground for confidence,
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