BOYS AND GIRLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18494, 3 September 1923, Page 12

BOYS AND GIRLS.

"We hold \ that, as education is , the preparation \ for the full life of a citizen, boys and girls should be ; prepared for common citizenship ;in , surroundings common to both. There is ;; no : justification for a system of education which aims at' training boys to live the • life of men only, and girls that of. women, apart from each other's society." This extract from the report of the Sidcot school is interesting in view of the recently published conclusion of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on the differentiation of curricula between the sexes, states an English Exchange. The evidence there was all supported the theory that the point of physical and mental fatigue is sooner reached by girls than boys. • s < ~'"', " We find this an argument for teaching boys and girls together," say the headmaster and headmistress of the Sidcot School (Dr. Bevan Lean and Miss Lydia Graham). "The Consultative Committee state that a boy is less suggestible, more rebel-minded, less industrious arid conscientious, and that he has a healthier and quicker resistance to attempts at overpressure 'by the teacher. These excellent qualities in boys help the girls taught with them."

Probably never before in any school report has a boy received praise for yawning and looking out of the window. But he comes into his own here. Says the "Fatigue-point in a lesson is reached— yawn, look undisguisedly out of the window. Girls in ■ the same class who have reached their fatigue-point, say five minutes before, are still keeping themselves to attention and thus greatly increasing fatigue and reducing their power of rebound. . . . In this way two or three boys in whom spontaneous self-defence is well developed help a wise teacher to detect the first signs of fatifrue." . The report suggests a further subject for inquiry.* The Consultative Committee considered that there was really very little difference between the mentality of boys and that of girls. Yet we still have a certain feeling that this is not really the case," says the Sidcot Committee. -.■-■■'•• " There is in some intangible respect a very great difference in mental make-up."