THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JANUARY. 31, 1914 SEX IN EDUCATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15986, 31 January 1914, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JANUARY. 31, 1914 SEX IN EDUCATION.

We make no apology for recurring to a question of importance, which, at the instance of the Chancellor of the University of Otago, was the subject of discussion last week by the University Senate. ' We refer to the suggestion that the etteiin of working up to the University scholarship examination standard may be injuriously affecting the senior pupils attending the high schools for girls in the dominion. We have recollections of more than one animated controversy in the past in relation to -this very topic of the education of girls. Warning against modern methods of education so . far as they affect girls, who are subjected to severe examination tests, was indeed uttered many years ago by medical men, although for all the heed that has been taken of it by educational authorities it might apparently have been uttered in the wilderness. Among the doctors themselves there is presumably a lack of agreement on the subject, or else we should have had them arising in a body and denouncing a system against which some of them have been consistently tilting, until its continuance was rendered impossible. At the present moment we have before us a volume entitled " Sex in Education," not very modern, it is true, but interesting as an exposition of a view of this question from a medical standpoint which has many adherents to-day. The author, Dr Edward H. Clarke, wis at one time a professor in Harvard College, and there are passages in it that bear particularly on the question concerning - the strenuous education of girls which has been brought under the notice of tho Senate. " The growing period or formative epoch," he writes, " extends from birth to the age of 20 or 25 years. Its duration is shorter for a girl than for a boy. She ripens quicker than he. In the four years from 14 to 18 she accomplishes an amount of physiological cell change and growth which Nature does not require of a boy in less than twice that number of years. It is obvious that to

secure the best kind of growth during this period and the beet development at the end of it the waste of tissue produced by study, fashion must not be so great that repair will only equal it. It is equally obvious that a giri upon whom Nature, for a limited period and a definite purpose, imposes £o groat a physiological task, will not have as much power left for the tasks of the school, as the boy of whom Nature requires less at the corresponding epoch. A margin must be allowed for growth. The repair must be greater and better than the waste." In a subsequent chapter Dr Clarke asserts that experience has taught that while a healthy and growing boy may spend six hoiirs daily upon his studies and leave sufficient margin for physical growth, a girl cannot devote more than four hours to similar purpose and leave a sufficient margin for physical development. The denunciation offered a week ot two ago by an .American doctor of the present system of American college education for women as producing '' nervous wrecks with heads filled with fancy information" shows that the views expressed bo much earlier by Dr Clarke survive strongly, and they cannot be simply dismissed off-hand as " old-fashioned." Of course; it may be argued that while examinations are perhaps most injurious of all to girls they are also injurious to boys, and that they should therefore be abolished altogether. But it should not be necessary to go, to any extremes in the consideration of this question. So far as this oar that particular case is concerned, the possibility of harm being done by the strain of study depends to a large extent upon the individuality of the pupil. But the weight of argument seems generally to condemn & practice which makes no distinction between the sexes, in an estimate of their capacity for strenuous study. Our educational system might at least be freed frota the Teproach that it actually encourages girls to submit themselves to severe educational pressure at a critical period of their life.