Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-03-01
By Alice Stone Blackwell; Boston

TDR G. STANLEY HALL asserts that boys
&1D who are taught mainly by must
"a be 'feminized" But are they? We
~ all observe American schoolboys: the
EGM streets swarm with them. Have they
NkE1N acquired meekness, good manners. and
ESJOSH 'gentlernanliness to a degree so exces-
MB@ sive as to endanger their manliness? The
E5M suggestion is laughable Whatever may
SKSHSS be the faults of the average American
N9 schoolboy, he certainly is not ehemlnate
VIVA If it is important as Dr. Hall thinks, that
W@ he should be sometimes rude, even un,
~ gentlemanly, in shockingy bad taste
he can fill the bill Indeed he is more apt to be
holy terror than sissy
Dr.. Hall says Boys in their teens need at least
as many men as women teachers. Ideally. 1T
would he desirable that boys and girls too should
come under the educational influence of first class
men as we'll as of first class women. But. unless
the country is willing to increase enormously the
arnount of money it spends for education, it can
not get large number of first class men as teachers
Practically the question is whether our boys snail
he taught by first rate by third and fourth
rate men. In such an alternative, the quality OF
the teacher is important than the sex
Dr. Hall says that education carried on largely
depends on the woman The late Miss Mary Ripley
was for twenty years at the head OF the boys de-
partment of the Buffalo high school Wherever
YOU meet her old pupils, they speak OF her Wlln
enthusiasm and one Of their most frequent sayings
is "She made of me- The pupils OF MISS IS
lane Brcwnlee and of many another born teacher
would bear similar testimony go
DR. Hall overlooks The fact that women like the
manly qualities not only in men. but in boys lhey
do not trv to make moycoddles of their boy puPils
"A coward ID and 9 bV them
DR. Hall says Women feel deeply the virtues OF
peace but did ever anyone Of them appreciate
those of war;" The tendency OF women TO admire
the military is notorious 1t is one of the recog
nized obstacles in the OF the peace propaganda
DR. Hall says With world so full OF evils 1t
is eve1y mans duty to take up against some
Of them and he intimates that women cannot train
bows to be fighters. Jane Adams. in her address
before the National Woman Suffrage Convention at
replying to 1Se1 gu no eb
out that the fighting most needed in America to-day
was not against armed enemies but against moral
social and economic evils, and that IN this warfare
women bore a distinguished part
Dr. Hall makes onslaught on his pet bugoeaI
coeducation The present identical education,
found wanting in the eyes of DR.. Hall, but not in
those of the great American public A report on
cceduca ton published by the United States Bureau
the 6as leading cities in this country, only have
separate high schools for girls and boys. and OF the
$50 OH pupils in high schools in 1902, were
ga per cent of American colleges had coeduca-
ton in 1890 $50 per cent. and in 1900 10 per
cent The report also speaks OF the spread OF the
American system of Coeducatlon IN Europe
Dr. Hall owns that most of Our experienced edu-
Gators do not agree with him: Nearly all the
veteran educators above fifty. who have been
through the thirty years Of against sex for
equal opportunities. content with things as they
are and think that the end has been reached. In
other words they do not the dire results OF CO.
education that he imagines 1t may be said in pass
ing that the fight for equal opportunities for girls
has never been a war of sex against sex, but of
progressive men and women on the one side against
conservative men and women on the other; and
the victory has been for the common good of both
sexes.
Dr. Hall argues that girls differ mentally from
bows. and therefore must need a different mental
diet Colonel T. w. Higginson says might
well argue that girls differ physically from boys and
therefore must need different physical diet boys
are fed on and potatoes; therefore girls ought