CELIBATE EDUCATION TO-DAY 423 



CELIBATE EDUCATION TO-DAY 



By E. S. 



IN" our public schools are half a million teachers, of whom about 

 four hundred thousand are women. Of these latter over half are 

 spinsters or, according to official investigation and correspondence, have 

 taught eight years and upwards. They have crossed the female dead 

 line of matrimony, having reached the age of thirty. 



The proportion of " old maids " is even more striking according to 

 the estimate of school officials in some of our larger cities. In San 

 Francisco, Pittsburg, Boston, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Denver, New 

 Orleans, Nashville, Chicago and Cincinnati the figures run from 50 to 

 as high as 80 per cent, with a general average of about 70 per cent. 



These pedagogic conditions have grown upon us so gradually that 

 we have not stopped to consider their significance. It is, however, an 

 entirely modern development, really of the last fifty years. Less than 

 half a century ago men formed nearly 40 per cent, of the teachers ; they 

 are now hardly 20 per cent. Some of the largest cities show still 

 greater disparity between the sexes. In Boston and St. Louis, each, men 

 are only 10 per cent, of the teachers; in New York and Indianapolis, 9 

 per cent. ; in Cleveland, 7 per cent. ; in Philadelphia, 6 per cent. ; in 

 Chicago, Detroit and Eichmond, 5 per cent. ; in Minneapolis, 4 per cent. ; 

 in Omaha, 3 per cent. ; in New Orleans, 2 per cent., while Youngstown, 

 O., has not even one man in her 188 teachers. Our centers of population 

 are usually the most advanced in any social tendency and the small 

 number of men employed in them may be taken as an indication of 

 the drift of the whole country. 



Throughout this paper it is to be remembered that to all general 

 statements there are exceptions, both numerous and brilliant, and 

 further that these theories of what is best to be done rest upon the 

 interpretation that one investigator places on the data of the past, and 

 the phenomena of the present, including testimony in the printed utter- 

 ances of other workers in the same field. 



The era of celibate education is on us and it behooves us to take our 

 bearing to see whether we follow a safe course. For the male, we no 

 longer have any doubt, he has been tried and found wanting. He 

 dominated teaching for centuries as a celibate and now he is nearly 

 displaced. It can not be said that he was superseded, because there 

 were two sexes in the schoolroom as women were constantly engaged 



