November 26, 1836.] 



SCIEIsrcE. 



489 



THE ASSIMILATION OF COURSES OF 



STUDY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS.' 



Mrs. Fawcett lias lately said that it had 

 been reserved for the nineteenth century to dis- 

 cover that a woman was a human being. This is 

 indeed a somewhat epigrammatic statement ; but 

 it exjiresses a fact which, in education as in other 

 matters, has been too frequently overlooked. 

 Boys and girls — for witli them at present we have 

 to deal — are both human beings, and as such 

 have far more points of likeness than of differ- 

 ence, and possess many faculties in common. 

 This sounds a truism ; but nevertheless, in spite of 

 this obvious fact, education in earlier days was 

 conducted on the principle that boys had one set 

 of powers, needing certain studies, and girls an- 

 other set, needing quite other subjects in their 

 sohool-work ; and that, for instance, boys should 

 learn Latin, while for their sisters there was, so 

 to speak, the softer feminine of the Roman 

 speech, Italian. This theory is somewhat as if, 

 for pbysical development, boys were to be fed 

 always on beef and mutton, and girls on ices and 

 sugar candy. The common sense of mankind, 

 however, overlooking the manifest physical differ- 

 ence as irrelevant in the matter of nutrition, has 

 always considered that boys and girls need the 

 same kind of bodily food, at all events ; and in 

 the present day, when the laws of health ai'e 

 more widely known, we all agree that these apply 

 equally to both sexes, who alike need, for perfect 

 growth, fresh air, cold water, and exercise. 

 "When, however, mental training and mental 

 food are considered, a different opinion obtains, 

 or, rather, has obtained. This is the more re- 

 markable, for there is in this case no proved or 

 manifest difference psychologically, and the scien- 

 tific study of the mind has not given any reason 

 to suppose that any such difference does exist. 

 The error has arisen, jierhaps, from an imperfect 

 ideal of what education ought to be. If it is 

 merely a sort of technical training for the practi- 

 cal work of adult life, then, obviously, as men 

 and women will in general occupy different 

 spheres of w^ork, boys and girls should study dif- 

 ferent subjects, — boys, let us say, arithmetic, 

 physics, geography, etc.; and girls, needlework, 

 music, and household management. This narrow 

 ideal of education has. we hope, few adherents 

 among teachers. They recognize a noble end, — 

 that of training all faculties of our nature to their 

 highest degree, and of producing, not an engineer 

 or an accountant, a nurse or a dressmaker, but a 

 fully developed human being, with all powers so 

 cultivated as to be able to act and to enjoy, to 



1 From Educational times, November, 1886. 



labor and endure, — in a word, to live, — as com- 

 pletely and perfectly as the allotted place given to 

 tlie individual, man or woman, may permit. It 

 would therefore seem to follow that any study 

 which has been marked out for boys because of 

 its value as framing, would be equally valuable 

 for girls, as the intellectual powers are common 

 to both sexes, and there is no prima facie evi- 

 dence that the mind is male or female, but rather 

 a presumption in the other direction. Now, 

 classics and mathematics have in modern times 

 justified their i^lace in the curriculum of our boys' 

 schools by their value as training, either of the 

 reasoning powers or the literary taste. Whether 

 they, exclusively, induce such effects, is a ques- 

 tion to which we shall return later. Granting 

 that they do, they should be taught equally to 

 boys and girls, and the ideal curriculum should 

 be in most points the same. 



Having discussed the theoretical considerations, 

 we may now proceed to examine piactical results, 

 and see whether these bear out our theory. The 

 first fact to be mentioned, and perhaps the most 

 convincing, is, that an examiner of considerable 

 experience has informed us that he does not notice 

 any differences in papers submitted to him (which 

 he, of course, knows only by their numbers) from 

 which he can form any opinion as to the sex of 

 the writer. The reports of the Cambridge local 

 examiners, in which the work of boys and girls is 

 separately mentioned, afford no definite evidence- 

 of any difference. We remember one report on 

 English composition w-hich did show such, but not 

 at all what the average reader would expect. The 

 girls' work showed much more accuracy and care- 

 ful thought, and far less absolute nonsense ; but 

 the boys showed greater imagination. Again, 

 boys and girls are prepared for the Matriculation 

 examination of t!ie University of London, and 

 pass it eqU'iily well : we imagine, indeed, that the 

 percentage of passes for girls is considerably 

 higher. Whatever the positive meaning of this 

 may be, it negatively confirms the theory. The 

 results of the degree examinations are too well 

 known to need remark. Other data come to us 

 from Cambridge. It would ha\e been said fifteen 

 years ago, from those imagined inclinations of the 

 feminine mind to the softer studies, that the 

 mathematical tripos would have been the last to 

 attract many of' the students of Girton or Newn- 

 ham. The facts are exactly opposed to this fore- 

 cast. Up to the year 1883, a greater proportion of 

 Girton students entered for the mathematical 

 tripos than for any other ; and, further, pupil after 

 pupil from one of our girls' public schools went 

 up to Cambridge to study mathematics ; so much 

 so, that it was found nece.«sary to warn those who 



