448 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mr. Woodward here recognizes the popular feeling that the schools 

 are impractical. He has not noted the preponderance of women 

 teachers as a contributary cause. 



Women, as we have seen, are interested in the esthetic rather than 

 the practical or the industrial side of life. In the hoy's mind the 

 grammar school with its corps of women teachers comes to associate 

 education with the interests of women only. This I believe is one 

 reason why so few take the step from grammar to high school. At this 

 age boys begin to notice differences of sex. They are proud of their 

 masculinity. The voice changes; they are conscious of superior 

 strength, and they love to show their muscle. They cultivate the 

 gruffer ways of men, and often learn to smoke and chew, not because 

 they want to be vicious, but because men use tobacco and women do 

 not, and they want to emphasize the fact that they are men. From 

 fourteen to twenty they love football. It is a game that calls for 

 masculine strength and masculine courage. So everything that is 

 distinctly masculine is admired and imitated; everything womanish is 

 despised. Few boys at this age are ready to admit that women are 

 the equals of men. Even the mother's influence wanes. Her word is 

 not final in everything. She is only a woman and can not understand 

 all that men should do. 



So it is in school. The woman teacher is at a disadvantage with 

 high school boys. She must be of a decidedly strong personality to 

 appeal to him. He sees intuitively that the tastes and preferences of 

 women are different from those of men, and he is not at all ready to 

 take a woman teacher's advice in choosing a course of action for himself. 



We believe thoroughly in coeducation; but coeducation does not 

 exist when both sexes are educated by one. The living teacher and the 

 ideal his personality presents is more effective than anything else in 

 holding students in school. The lady teacher can not present such an 

 ideal to young people of the opposite sex. With all the growth in 

 number of schools and teachers during the last half century, there are 

 fewer men teaching to-day than there were in 1860. In spite of our 

 boasted progress in education, there are fewer school children enrolled 

 to-day in proportion to the number of school age than there were in 

 1860. If we would hold boys in school between the ages of 12 and 

 15, we must appeal to the more practical bent of a boy's mind, and 

 the ideals of manhood which attract him. We must have more men 

 teachers. 



It was noticed above that women by their choice of studies in the 

 university evidence very slight interest in political matters as compared 

 with the interest exhibited by men. And yet they teach civics in a 

 majority of schools. It will be interesting to endeavor to learn what 

 the effect of this teaching is. 



