GOING VICTORIAN

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 April 1937, Page 14

GOING VICTORIAN

YOUNG AMERICA’S TREND

LONDON, March 24

Professor William McDougall, the distinguished psychologist, who for the last 20 years has made his home in America, is back in England on one of his periodical holidays. And to-day, in his hotel, Professor McDougall, who has come 'from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, told me what he thought of the younger generation in America. ‘The most noticeable thing,” he said, “is the growing tendency towards Victorianism. It’s the inevitable swing of the pendulum, after the hectic times of a few years ago. “In another few years the pendulum may have swung too far over to Victorianism, but afterwards people will settle down to more normal lives. “Disillusion is the keynote of American youth. The modern young woman once thought it was fun to have a career, with her own money in her own pocket. And then she found she was being left without a husband.

“And if she has a college education —as so many girls have in the States —she is finding that another handicap. A great many men definitely don’t want clever wives!” TAUGHT BY WOMEN As for co-education, Professor McDougall would like to see a compromise between the systems of England and America.

“Up to high school, that is until the age of fourteen, boys and girls should be educated together. After that, from fourteen to eighteen, they should go to separate schools. “The average American boy or girl of eighteen, as a result of the coeducation system, is to my mind too free and easy.

“When they get to universities they should have the opportunities of mixing while keeping to their separate men’s and women’s colleges. This is done at my own university in North Carolina, but not in most of the big city universities. “Did you know that in America only two per cent, of school-teachers are men? Boys and girls alike are taught entirely by women. When men go in for school-teaching they turn to the administrative or executive side.

“I have one other criticism of American schools. They carry the social side too far. A school will have as many as five dances a week, with the other two evenings perhaps devoted to movies. That is absurd. “A fashionable diversion is the sitdown strike. The other day a school sat down in its chapel as a protest against being deprived of its Easter holiday. Yes, it got the holiday.