‘Distractions’ From Girls’ Education

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30623, 14 December 1964, Page 9

‘Distractions’ From Girls’ Education

1 hough a school should not he isolated from the community, it appeared that the community made too great a demand on girls at a time when they were more or less committed to the business of acquiring an education. said Miss M. I. Mullan, headmistress of St. Margaret’s College, at the college prizegiving ceremony.

“The community inflict upon the girls pressures which no adult would tolerate,” she said. “I am not sure that we are fair when we write on reports, ‘She must concentrate upon her work.’ ” Possibly because of these distractions girls, and also the staff and parents, seemed to her to spend a disproportionate amount of time on minor matters. “For example, I think it is unjustifiable that we have to spend so much time and energy struggling about the length and colour of a girl’s hair, when literally millions

of girls do not go to school at all, and do not have enough to eat,” said Miss Mullan. Some girls had become immersed in their struggle to balance on the edge of resistance to authority. “Their intense preoccupation with material details tends to make these girls rather uninteresting. They are so anxious to conform to the correct degree of lack of enthusiasm about ordinary activities, and the right shade of opinion, that by a curious inversion of the usual roles they have become quite school-mistressy,” Miss Mullan said. “It would be a tragedy if this time-consuming concern with boring conformity chokes their spontaneity and originality. It would be a tragedy if their struggle to be only just within the letter of the law robs them of the ability to accept the discipline which |is essential to any kind of achievement. “I cannot guess whether the responsibility for all this | lies with the community. If so, we adults have much to answer for.”