No Sex in Education/Chapter 8

"One 'ud think, and hear some folks talk, as the men was 'cute enough to count the corns in a bag o' wheat wi' only smelling at it. They can see through a barn door, they can. Perhaps that's the reason they can see so little o' this side on't."—George Eliot.

DR. CLARKE cites a Boston establishment which gives each of its girl employés a three days' furlough every month, and says that its aggregate yearly amount of work is greater than when persistent attendance and labor was required. I do not doubt it, though this seems somewhat foreign to the subject of co-education, as it was not mental but physical labor they were engaged in. One of the strongest arguments of the advocates of the eight-hour system is that a man can produce better and greater ​results by an aggregate labor of eight hours a day than by ten. Yet these were men. We have heard the same argument used with regard to increasing the number of holidays in a year, yet no necessity for "periodicity" or of special benefit to women was hinted at. Yet the principle is just the same. I venture to assert that any firm allowing the same length of furlough to its male employés will derive the same satisfactory results. It is a need inherent in human nature—in woman no more than in man—the need of occasional rest and recreation.

A growing boy cannot spend six hours of each day at his studies to any better advantage than a growing girl. If four suffice for her, he needs no more, unless it be to keep up with the girl, who, each being given the same amount of time, will certainly outstrip him. Some one of our first thinkers has stated that four hours a day are all that a man ought to devote to mental labor—all that he can devote with advantage to himself and to others; and I am inclined to think he is half right. So, if four hours are enough for a man who has arrived at full ​maturity and the period of his greatest capability, we may limit the young girl to the same period without being required to make any special plea of the needs of sex.

There is one thing that ought to be insisted on more strongly than it is, and that is the need of the young and growing body of either sex to full and perfect sleep—sleep to satiety, as one might say. But we have heard the benefits of early rising so reiterated in our ears that we really think we do something meritorious when we rob ourselves of necessary sleep, or wake our children and oblige them to get up before exhausted nature has had complete time for recuperation. Hence comes the waste of brain tissue; the late hours spent at studies when one ought to be in bed; the early hours which ought to be spent in the same place until sleep ceases of itself. If there is one privilege I would beg for my sex, it is that of regular and more prolonged sleep. Girls are mentally more active than boys. If you check their activity in one way, it is sure to break out in another, and perhaps in a less desirable way. This ​physical and mental activity wastes body and brain tissue, which sleep alone can replenish. So let them sleep their sleep out if you would see them well and vigorous and able to continue in their studies.

"In order to give girls a fair chance in education, four conditions at least must be observed: first, a sufficient supply of appropriate nutriment; secondly, a normal management of the catamenial functions, including the building of the reproductive apparatus; thirdly, mental and physical work so apportioned that repair shall exceed waste and a margin be left for general and sexual development; and fourthly, sufficient sleep."

Why Dr. Clarke should specify "girls" in three of these conditions I am unable to understand, for most of them are equally applicable to boys; and if the first, third and fourth are properly attended to in the case of girls, the second will undoubtedly take care of itself.

The doctor does not furnish us any working plans of his theories. We can hardly imagine how a school is to be properly conducted after his suggestions. If there were any uniformity ​in the sex in regard to the time of the monthly tides, there might be some possibility of special and practical arrangement. But each girl has her own time; and if each were excused from attendance and study during this time, there could be neither system nor regularity in the classes. A certain number of the students would always be absent; and when they returned, the classes would be put back until they had caught up. There could be no progress, in fact; for the class would be always at a standstill waiting for absentees. Then he makes no suggestion nor provision for the poor teacher who is, or is probably to be, a woman. She too requires her regular furlough, and then what are the scholars to do? Or if, as sometimes happens, a male teacher is employed, how is a girl to account for her necessary absence at these regular periods and not do violence to her modesty and natural delicacy of feeling in the matter? And as women of all ages and all positions in every country are subject to this sexual function, and require, according to Dr. Clarke's showing, this monthly rest, does he ​propose that they should go back to the old Jewish plan of publishing their temporary disability, that all the world may become aware of the fact? Such a plan may work well in the doctor's imagination, but it is scarcely likely that he will persuade women to consent to it so long as they have a grain of modesty remaining, and so long as they feel no personal call for rest echoing the doctor's recommendations in this respect.

But this book called "Sex in Education" is more than it seems to be. It is a covert blow against the desires and ambitions of woman in every direction except a strictly domestic one. The doctor has chosen to attack co-education as a representative of them all. His plan has been a crafty one and his line of attack masterly. He knows if he succeeds in carrying the points which he attempts, and convinces the world that woman is a "sexual" creature alone, subject to and ruled by "periodic tides," the battle is won for those who oppose the advancement of woman—the doors not only of education but of labor and any kind of physical ​and intellectual advancement are closed against her. He knows that labor is valued only as it is continuous and reliable, and that if women can be persuaded to become unreliable on principle, there is an end to the competition between the sexes in every department of employment. No merchant or business man will want a clerk who may fail him at any time and at the busiest season perhaps. No teacher is available who is only able to teach three weeks in a month. The pulpit, the doctor's and the lawyer's office are equally shut against the sex; for what congregation would engage a minister who would only promise to preach three Sundays in a month? what sick person would send for a physician who one chance out of four might fail to come? what lawyer could be depended upon to conduct a case who might not be able to attend court?

I have called this book an attack, but it is rather the last, the most desperate struggle of the advocates of fogyism against the incoming new order of things. They have abandoned all their outposts, and are now defending their ​citadel, making the question of sex the stronghold upon which they place all their hopes of ultimate success. But their efforts are futile. The easily proven, or I should say the evident, fallacy of their position will awake multitudes to thought on the matter who without this book might have passed it by unnoticed.

It seems curious to find a man in this latter half of the nineteenth century comparing men to oaks and women to vines.

If Dr. Clarke wishes for a perfect simile, why did he not compare the sexes to a male and female tree of the same species? Why? Because the facts would not accord with his theories; for do they not show that the female tree has more vigor and vitality than the male?—just what he is trying to disprove.

Then, too, he calls boys roses and girls lilies. (Please do not laugh, gentle reader, it is the truth—not that they are respectively roses and lilies, but the scientific Dr. Clarke calls them so.) He seems to forget how utterly this comparison will fail him when carried out to its ultimatum. For does not the gardener plant roses ​and lilies side by side, without any fence between them? are they not watered by the same showers, warmed by the same sunshine and nourished by the same soil? And they remain roses and lilies still, requiring no special care of the gardener to make them fulfill their original destiny. So it is possible that girls would be girls still, even though we treat them after the same manner as boys. I think Nature can be trusted.