GROWING GIRLS.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 May 1924, Page 9

GROWING GIRLS.

ARE SCHOOL GIRLS RIGHT? DANGER OF OVERSTRAIN, PROBLEM OF FEEBLE-MINDED. The president of the New Zealand Edcuational Institute (Mr. C. T. Aschrnan) delivered an address before the annual meeting of the institute on itihe adolescent tehild, with special reference to the adolescent girl. oAifitea* dealing with the phases iof growth from childhood into adolescence the speaker emphasised the radical readjustment required of the child to a change of environment from open-air activity to seDdentary work inside four walls. Excessive burdens were laid upon functions and organs never intended by nature to endure them. The child was subjected to an unnatural regimen. Later in adolescence through physical and physiological disabilities as well as a greate/’ liability to fatigue and a tendency to emotion, girls were far more liable to neurotic disturbances and mental breakdown from over work. As the feelings of girls -were easily moved they could be persuaded to over work themselves for their Own credit, for that of their form, their side, or their school. Most people were strongly of the opinion that pressure on girls be avoided during this period, siniee it might involve undue demands on girls physical and nervous force, thus possibly entailing serious results in later life. A NATIONAL FOLLY. “Here,” said Mr. Ashman, “rests the whole of the question of the education of the adolescent girl. Secondary schools of the academic type are duplicates of those for boys—the same curriculum practically, and t/he same methods of instruction at the end. The question must be frankly faced as to whether this type of education serves any useful purpose other than preparing girls for a University career, and whether it may not do violence to the most important of all factors —woman’s health and her own feminine nature. To ignore the differences between the sexes and in a system of education to reduce, in some cases to an alarming degree, the nervous energy of the mothers of the next generation is a national folly.” The speaker quoted a number of extracts of auithorative reports to indicate the dangers to the girls of the present secondary school system. To attempt to suggest alteration in the 'curriculum of the girls secondary education, continued '.Mr. Ashman, but the establishment of the junior high school in New Zealand was a recent attempt on a limited scale to solve the problem of the particular needs of the child for the first three years of adolescence. From a psychological standpoint the division of school into 6-3-3 is undoubtedly sound. If. however. the junior high school was not founded primarily on the psychology of early adolescence as to aim, curriculum, methods, and administration, if its development was almost exclusively towards the goal of external animation, then it ceased to have any distinct function and forfeited its claim to exist as a separate educational unit; it became a pious educational fraud.

SEX-EDUCATION. On the delicate question of sex-educa-tion, the speaker pointed out that there were grave dangers in an extreme policy of the sex enlightenment in early youth. The natural teacher was. no doubt, the parent — the father for the boy and the mother for the girl. The opinion was vigorously and -widely held that the problem could not be solved by direct group teaching. Knowledge might be more dangerous than ignorance. Two solutions were suggested by Mr. Ashman, who said that in one of the New Zealand cities certain medical men and) highly-intellec.tual social wtorkers had made use of the general sympathy of teachers towards the subject, and arranged meetings of parents in the different schools of the city. The danger of adolescent ignorance, the need for sex enlightenment, and the best methods of approach were fully explained. Such a plan was worthy of imitation. The other line of approach Was development through education of wide intellectual, aesthetic, and social interests that would effectually transmit the energy’ of the sex impulse into other channels. Too much energy could not be laid upon the intrinsic value of the arts in life, especially for ado-lescent girls, as a channel for the issue of emotional instincts. while expression might be found in folk dances, eurythmics, and appropriate games. Draining the waves of sex emotion into channels of interest was likely to be a surer basis for the protection of the adolescent than the explanation to youth the mere facts of sex. MENACE TO THE RACE. Finally, Mr. Ashman dwelt most emphatically on the problem of the feebleminded girl, the criminal neglect of whom in the Dominion was a national disgrace. New Zealand was showing a placid indi|fferencp -apparently to the rapidly increasing number of the unfortunate and undesirable class of the feeble-minded girl. It was an accepted fact that the mental deficiency was emiinejntly transmissible, and, further, the animal of the defective’* nature was abnormally and congentially disproportionate to the intellectual. Th? State to-day wa* caring for poor human beings scarcely in the likeness of human kind, each of whom, probably cost the country an amount that would he sufficient to put the most brilliant mind through a University career, the gravest danger lay with the feeble-minded girls, who were exceedingly prolific. The speaker gave instances of feepie-minded women, one of whom had had nine illegitimate children and another five, while a family of four girls had 18 illegitimate children between them.