CO-EDUCATION IN GERMANY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOIL.1 SIR,—Will you allow me a few lines to comment upon your note on co-education in the issue of August 28th P The Referendum to wh:ch the Berlin correspondent of the West- minster Gazette alludes, and on which he bases his generalisa- tions, may appear at first sight convincing ; but it must be remembered (1) that it conveys an expression of opinion only from Baden,—a comparatively small part of Germany ; (2) that it is evidently the opinion of men alone, which is shown by its strong bias against the presence of girls. The Report states that " the boys disliked the presence of the girls "; that the girls showed markedly less talent for mathematics and natural science ; and that iu certain subjects, like biology, the lessons had to be restricted in order to suit the girls. Nothing is said as to whether the girls object to the presence of boys, or as to the boys' inferiority to girls in languages and literature. This strongly marked prejudice against girls confirms the view expressed recently by a friend of mine who has just visited some German mixed schools, to the effect that in each case the staff, consisting entirely of men, appeared to be wholly out of sympathy with, and incapable of understand. ing, the girl pupils. Co-education, to be successful, must be carried out thoroughly, and must therefore have its principles applied among teachers as well as taught. In America the mistake has been to adopt the other extreme, and to staff their mixed schools entirely with women. The Danish secondary teachers (with some of the best informed of whom I have recently discussed the question) regard co-education as quite the best, because the natural, method of bringing up children and young people. Several of my friends in that country, principals of girls' private schools, while regretting on personal grounds the tendency to absorb their type of school into the public municipal mixed schools, candidly expressed their belief in the superior advantages of co-education, and many, both men and women, when thanking me for lecturing to them on " Co-education in England," emphatically awwed their entire approval of the system as carried out in their own country.
From a mass of evidence kindly supplied to me by the heads of about sixty co-educational schools in England, I find that the same unqualified approval prevails almost unanimously after years of experience. In my own school, after two years' trial, my colleagues all declare their
preference for the more natural, humanistic method, to what I venture to call the monanthropic system. I beg leave to doubt the point raised in your note as to the opinion in America. I am told on high authority that the intention in the States is decidedly to build new schools on co-educational lines. The only exception taken to the system there is in one or two centres where a large number of undesirable aliens congregate, with whose children American parents do not like their little girls to associate. This has been magnified into a universal objection. In any case, it is illogical to draw sweeping conclusions against the system from particular Reports, whether compiled in Baden or elsewhere.
It is significant that the same Berlin correspondent last week sent to the Westminster Gazette a long report on child- suicides in Germany. He attributes the remarkable prevalence of this disease (a) to overstrain in secondary schools, (b) to the peculiar psychology of the German child. No doubt the latter factor accounts for some of the objections to co- education of the good Baden folk. Possibly allowance must also be made for the "peculiar psychology" of the German teachers. One can imagine that the German spirit of militarism would not succeed, when girls were admitted to their boys' schools, in developing that healthful, clear, and natural atmosphere to be found in such co-educational schools as St. George's, Harpenden, Keswick, Bedales, and the various boarding-schools of the Society of Friends in this country. It is satisfactory to find that even in Baden " no serious evils have resulted from the system." Of course, co-education mast be conducted on right lines, and should not be confined to the classroom. If in individual instances unsuitable people are entrusted to carry out its principles and it fails, the whole system ought not on that account to be condemned.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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