SOCIETY TODAY

Public School Co-education

With prayer and the pill?

Lugie Bruce Lockhart

For some time now, the most determinedly male chauvinist headmasters of the most obstinately traditional public schools have Periodically ventured out from the fog of pipe smoke in their common rooms to peep nervously at the unfamiliar world of co-ed. One had got used to the idea that Bedales was a brave experiment suitable for that fringe of the squirearchy Which had preserved a nostalgia for Chelsea, and that Dartington Hall was, well ... Dartington Hall. It was not altogether unexpected at Marlborough under John Dancy or even at Gordonstoun ... but suddenly safe strongholds, Previous eschewers of gimmick, began to fall. Even if few plunged at the deep end, all kinds of unexpected figures clustered round the shallows, jostling each Other into hazarding a timorous toe into strange and uncharted waters. Felsted, Oakham, Stowe, Gresham's — did even the Scottish border aff-rd security?

What has happened? Have the tough minds of men, whose direct Predecessors would have summoned a masters' meeting if they had seen an unidentified female between ten and sixty on the school premises, finally softened under the strain? Or is it just that they are afraid of running short of boys? Neither one nor the other: the headmasters are probably margii ally less eccentric than formerly, and their lists have never been so full.

The first and most obvious reason is the sudden and spectacular growth of demand. In the last few years — perhaps ten — prospective parents have started, at first occasionally and now usually, to ask if you are going co-ed, and, if so, whether you will consider their daughters. Anxious to test the strength of this demand among my present parents, I circularised them recently to find out Whether they supported the idea of a small sixth-form boarding house for girls, and, in the event of their having a daughter of appropriate age, whether they would seriously consider sending her. Well over 90 per cent of the answers were favourable in both cases.

Why? In the first place there is a flight from the sixth forms of all

but the very best single-sex sixth forms at girls' schools. The pressures of the permissive society, the

high wages paid to trained secretaries and other non-academic teenage girls, the contrast between life within school bonds and outside: these are some of the factors. Perhaps too, the modern girl is battered by the media into a restless and critical frame of mind. She is less willing to accept restrictive rules and traditional sixth form education from a high proportion of what she regards as narrow-minded spinsters. She is keenly aware that only a few of the best girls' schools are without difficulties in providing first class equipment, facilities and tuition, especially on the science side. Many of the sixth forms are not large enough to be truly viable. Parents are beginning to sense that, however much a part of them may long to have their daughters locked up safe and sound with other nice girls, the shock of transition when they finally are let loose upon the world may present alarming problems. Many of the girls therefore leave after '0' levels for secretarial training or the local technical college. Some of their parents fear that this can occasionally introduce their carefully brought up fifteen-year-olds to a wildly swinging, drug ridden society, which they will not tolerate. Not surprisingly they look for an alternative solution.

The public schools are by no means all reluctant to help find this alternative solution. Some will continue to uphold the splendid isolation of the male, and it is certain that some parents will continue to support them. In the variety it offers lies the greatest merit of independence. But most public schools have been indulging in the new national passion for introspective soul-searching. Unshakeable though their faith in their basic principles has been, many of them admit to a few vulnerable points. They remember with dismay the cocktail parties of the 'fifties, when young men discussed games at one end of the room, while their female counterparts gossiped and tittered at the other. When they plucked up courage for brief embarrassed encounters, they found themselves equally incapable of talking to each other at any level except that of nervous physical flirtation.

Public schoolboys were often launched on the world with a missing dimension. It seemed possible, therefore, that an influx of intelligent girls into these male strongholds might bring positive advantages as well as problems. Art and music would become more popular, more doors would be politely opened, bad language might be modified, turn out would be more soign6. The male analytical powers of literary sixth forms would be complemented by intuition, more mature emotional understanding and that feeling for the fundamentals of life which seems to blossom in the more perceptive girls so much sooner than among boys. A few of the tensions and rough edges of boarding school life might disappear.

So far, so good. The girls, in spite of their disillusioning tendency to prefer the oddest and messiest boys to our ideal prefect type (for which adult life should really by now have prepared us), have on the whole exerted a beneficial influence. Nevertheless, the problems remain. We can give a better preparation for university to our new charges than most of them would otherwise have had, but are we any better equipped than schoolma'ams, mums and dads when 'the worst' happens?

Incompetent and puzzled as all parties are, I believe that the answer must be, marginally, yes. More of us are married than is usually the case among teachers in single-sex girls' schools, and we shall soon have built up a greater experience than mum and dad: and if we have the disadvantage of less love, we have just as much determination to do our best for our charges and the advantage of more objectivity.

So we are going to face the problems. Barbed wire and machine guns to reduce the spare-time contacts to blameless encounters over flutes and oboes, easels or potters' wheels? Or complete mix, prayer and the pill? Domestic science, dancing classes, mothercraft? Or squash, tennis and hockey at times when the boys do not require the courts or pitches? Sixth form co-ed only, or mixed boarding throughout? Are day girls a safer and simpler alternative in a school designed primarily for boy boarders?

Candidly, these are still experimental days, and we are learning fast. I hope that few of us will repeat the mistake of that very famous school which had twothirds boy sixth formers to onethird girls. They were housed ini individual bed sitters strategically placed in opposite wings of a palatial residence. Visits were allowed at certain hours, provided the hosts signalled them by trundling their beds out into the corridor: presumably in accordance with the old British tradition that whatever takes place shall take place in conditions of the maximum possible discomfort. I think that most of us would agree that there should be no permission to visit private rooms, but that plenty of common rooms should be available to both sexes within limited hours, and every opportunity encouraged for integration over plays, music, hob bies and art.

Most of us would take a strong line against sexual intercourse or any near approach to it at school. We also know that love laughs at .locksmiths and that the chaperone's role is the most distasteful in the world. We believe that, with a full life and constant support for what is mannerly and kindly and first rate, these problems will arise far less often than the cynics would have us believe. Some barbed wire, no machine guns, much prayer and no pill. There will be occasional disasters, and we shall have to face the fact that our detractors will seize upon these and inflate them to the dimensions of major scandals if they can. Writers, like the one who advertised at the end of March in the Times for "horror stories about the prep schools," guaranteeing anonymity to all contributors, will doubtless be on the warpath again. On the whole we are finding that the atmosphere has improved and that the benefit to the majority has greatly outweighed any troubles of the minority.

Early difficulties may largely be conditioned by numbers: in the first years a very small minority of girls will risk some unhappiness either through isolation or the reverse, depending on the accident of temperament and/or good looks. Although domestic science, dancing classes and mothercraft should figure at some stage, it is doubtful whether they should play such a large role after '0' level. There is no reason why as much first rate games coaching should not be available for the girls as for the boys; if squash, tennis, athletics and swimming can benefit more easily than team games from mixing the sexes, so much the better. In hockey, mixed play is dangerous and beneficial to neither; in rugby it is impossible, and football and cricket virtually so.

In theory, there is a strong case for complete fifty-fifty co-education from eight to eighteen in purpose-built schools. It is not, however, a possible enterprise for the vast majority of public schools. Only a few have junior schools attached, and hardly any could face the huge scale of extra expenditure involved. It could only be done by replacing boys, for whom places have been promised many years ahead, by girls, and by adapting existing boys' houses at great expense, or by adding accommodation at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Both are unacceptable to most of us.

Some schools favour a mushroom intake of a small number of thirteen-year-olds with a much larger intake after '0' levels. It is, however, questionable whether a thirteen-year-old intake from single sex girls' schools is a good form of co-education, unless the numbers are substantial. The girls are at their most vulnerable, giggly and complex stage: to throw them into such an un familiar setting among equally uncontrolled, spotty and often unkind boys in bewilderingly unfamiliar circumstances could be a mistake for those who are not of cheerful extrovert temperament, or either too good looking or not good looking enough. There is a case, at this stage, for letting girls have the comfort and support of their homes, or at least of predominantly female companionship; a place of refuge where their femininity can define itself away from excessive pressures, where their emotions and their spirit can grow at their own pace without being warped through over exposure.

By the time they have reached the sixth forms, most girls have come to terms with themselves and resolved many of the conflicts within and without. They are far further ahead from almost every point of view than males of the same age. If, by then, love is going to get between them and their studies, it is more likely to focus on a young master than on the boys. Most of the girls applying are, however, ambitious for university entry: the schools can afford (dirty word!) to be selective, in that they can try to ensure that the girls and their parents are suited to the kind of atmosphere, conditions and aims in which and towards which they and the school will be working. At this age it is probably easier to supervise and to integrate them successfully as bcarders than as day girls.

The greatest advantage is that neither party regards the other as sex objects from outer space any longer, but as human beings. If that is gained, and if the girls get a first-class academic education, the risks will be worthwhile. The terribly difficult decisions will also be worthwhile with which the schoolmasters and mistresses will have to grapple in the early days, together with the constant criticisms of parents who think them either too permissive or too square. What is the psychological explanation of the strange paradox which ensures that the most lax parents demand the strictest standards — and vice versa?

Most of us will err on the side of being too square. If our conceptions of what is acceptable in, for example, school dances are deemed unfashionable, it is too bad. Ultimately our charges, both male and female, are grateful for our tendency to be old fashioned, in customs if not in teaching. In most ways co-education is not likely to change that.

Logie Bruce Lockhart is headmaster of Gresham's School. This is the first of three articles.