BEHAVING LIKE A GIRL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16749, 2 June 1922, Page 11

BEHAVING LIKE A GIRL.

I asked a schoolboy the other day what ho despised most in the world. Ho said : ‘‘ Girls.” There were several men in tho room and they all laughed, Aud when the schoolboy had gone away tliey said that was “ the right spirit.” Unless I. do them an injustice, they all believe that contempt for girls is a sign of a healthy boyish nature. In fhe course of subsequent investigation 1 found, as i had e.xported to find, that the school boy w&s not expressing liis own opinions at all. He was expressing the opinion of his teachers, which seemed to have been most carefully inculcated. 1 gathered that it is customary in tho school -he attends to describe every lapse from pluck or decision of character as “ behaving like, a girl.” No doubt the custom is an old one. and no doubt something can be said for it. Boys do not expect giris to look at life as* they look at it, and so do not realise that they arc offering insults j But on tho other hand there does not sefem to be any special advantage in acquiring, at the most impressionable age, a contempt for those whom, later on, it is important that one should respect and reverence. Moreover this attitude of schoolboy superiority is ineffably silly. It, puts those who have adopted it. or had it thrust on theip. in a false position from which they havo difficulty, later, in escaping. The awkwardness of the older* hoy in tlie presence of his sisters’ friends. Is a. first-fruit- of ths bad teaching. Its more remote fruits is the tendency never to take a woman seriously,” which characterises *onie men throughout their lives, and which very often goes far to spoil their happiness. Has nob the time come to abandon the. use of our girls as “ awful examples ” for our boys ? It is quite possible to convince a schoolboy that being a coward is shameful , without attributing this unenviable quality to his sisters and his sisters’ friends. Tt might even be possible to tell him that very many girls arc exceedingly brave, and that all girls will, in tlie world to which lie is gong, expect him to show bravery as a, matter of course. That would be a. first lesson n chivalry. It might have even more satisfactory results than the lessons in boorish ness now so freely and frequently administered. IV.M. in the “-Daily Moil.”