732 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION L. 



Section L.— EDUCATION. 

 President of the Section: — Mrs. Henry Sidgwigk. 



WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. 

 The President delivered the following Address : — 



When I look at the names of many of my predecessors in this Presidential 

 chair, when I read their addresses, or when I consider what the work of the 

 Section ought to be, I feel that an apology is needed for my being here at all. 



Let me say at once, however, that it is not because of my being a woman 

 that I feel this. It is true that I am the first woman who has had the honour 

 of presiding over Section L. But it is obviously very fitting that a woman 

 should sometimes do so ; and this not only because women are as much con- 

 cerned with the results of Educational Science as men are — that might be said 

 about all departments of science ; nor only because the material on which 

 education works — the human material to be educated — is approximately evenly 

 divided between the sexes. A more important consideration is that women 

 have the largest share in the work of education. This is clear if we take 

 education in its widest and fullest sense, and include in it what is done in the 

 home as well as in the school, begimiing as it must with the earliest infancy. 

 But it is also true if we limit the meaning of the word education — in the way 

 that is constantly done, and is I think usually done in the discussions that take 

 place in this Section — to that part of it with which the professional educator, 

 the school or college teacher, is concerned. For the fact that the school 

 teaching, not only of girls but of the younger children of both sexes, is mainly 

 in the hands of women, results of necessity in there being a larger number of 

 professional teachers among women than among men. 



May it not be added that in some departments of education women have 

 appeared to take their profession more seriously than men so far as this can 

 be measured by the trouble taken in training for it ? For I think I am right 

 in saying that among persons proposing to teach in secondary schools more 

 women in proportion than men have hitherto availed themselves of opportuni- 

 ties for professional training. 



From another point of view, too, the education of women and girls has an 

 interest which, though not different in kind, is greater in degree than that of the 

 other sex. I mean in the rapidity of its growth and development since the 

 middle of the last century. The development of school and university education 

 and of technical education has, of course, been very great for both sexes. 

 Much attention has been devoted to improving its quality and perhaps even 

 more to increasing its quantity by making it more accessible to all classes of 

 people. But in the case of girls and women the progress has been greater 

 and more remarkable than in that of boys, for it started from a lower level, 

 and notwithstanding this it would, I think, be difficult to point out in what 

 respects the educational opportunities of women are now inferior to those of 

 men. I say this, of course, in a general sense, and without prejudice as to 

 controversial questions of detail such as the merits of the methods and curri- 

 cula deliberately adopted for different schools. 



The Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission published in 1868, in what 

 it says about girls' education at that time, gives us a standard of comparison 



