CO-EDUCATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 117, 19 May 1937, Page 12

CO-EDUCATION

A CONDEMNATION

HEADMISTRESS SPL-.AKS OUT

Whether or not it was mi the best interests of adolescent children to extend co-educational facilities, w&s one of the subjects discussed at .yesterday's annual meeting of the he ads .of registered secondary schools. ■ Miss A. L. Loudon, headmistress of the Epsom Girls' Grammar School (Auckland), said that the findings of tile section of the New Education Fellow tship Conference at Cheltenham in 1.V36 (led by Professor Schwarz of Vienna, one of the leading psychologists ,of the world) were in the direction t bat, during the adolescent period, separation of the sexes was desirable. lUiis was due largely to the lack of an.v parallel in the rate of development pf girls and boys at the adolescent stage.-. Also, at that stage, boys should be :.h\ contact solely with men, and girls'; with women. ■ ,

"How many heads of schocßs are there overwhelmingly in favour \oi coeducation, >and do they mean co-f Education or merely a dual school system?" asked Miss E. R. Edwards, of th'p Diocesan School, Auckland. "The opinionsof. half a dozen people, . who in some cases may never have had experience in a first-rate school for one sex, cannot be made the basis for an educational polticy, while others with different conclusibns remains silent. "We hear a good deal about co-education schools in England, but it is the amount that we h ear that is great, not the number of Coeducation schools. These are of two types, the few, very few, really go pd ones, such as Bedales, St. George's, aijd some Quaker schools, run by exceptional people, and the very bad ones, that continue as an economic expedient and that are condemned by educational bodies.

"Where have we any in New Zesvland to compare with the few gooci ones mentioned? It is absurd to pretend that we have any. How many* men believe that their sons are bettein in mixed schools, whether dual as inlj the case of mixed high schools, or co-< educational as in the case of smaller! district high schools and some technical schools, than in boys' schools? What -women think any girl better off in the mixed school than in a girls' school? Do the men who, support coeducation when voting send their sons to mixed schools and like them to be taught by women even as low down in the school.as Standard III? How many of them like their daughters to be taught by men? If co-education proper is to exist, one or other of these must Be acceptable. "Does any woman at all really approve of mixed" schools such as we have in New Zealand? It may be said, that our dislike is based on prejudice,' but the views of women teaching in primary schools are based on experience, and the rest of us judge'by th<> fruits of the mixed schools. "Enthusiasts for co-education or dual education' would' not leave these schools for the separated, type of school—yet is there not a steady current of teachers from'our New Zealand mixed schools to the one-sex schools? How many remain in the 'mixed' schools because of their enthusiasm? ' It would be interesting to know. How many masters in these schools prefer to teach classes of boys to teaching mixed classes? How many mistresses .in these schools prefer .to teach ..'.classes of ..girls to. teaching niixed classes?" '•", .