The Mistaken Principle of Separating the Boys' and Girls' Curricula

I was reading some articles on the subject of "the reform of education in France," and it became clear to me that for ten years now this problem has occupied French minds, and that the pens of their writers — professors, teachers, journalists, administrators, and specialists in the art of education — have been taking it up for study. To this day articles are still being published about it, built on experience on the one hand and on statistical inquiry on the other. And they have not yet reached decisive conclusions, because for them the matter carries such a degree of gravity as obliges them to wait until the interplay of opinions on the subject is complete, and until the largest possible number of proposals and recommendations has been gathered before them.

Here, however, where the same subject has been occupying us for some time, and where it is dealt with in talk without sufficient study and inquiry, it was decided between one night and the next morning to draw up a new secondary curriculum for girls; and in a short space of time two different curricula appeared to that end, each with its own tendency and its own subjects.

What preliminary studies preceded the proposal and the curricula it begot? And on what do they rely, those who want to separate the girls' curriculum from the boys' in the secondary classes? Did they rely on the baccalaureate results? These do not show us that the rate of success among girls is any lower than among boys.

Or did they rely on statistics showing them a decline in the number of girls entering the universities? The case is exactly the reverse: women students in the university specializations are in continuous growth, even if their number is still small. Or did they draw on the experience of the peoples who have preceded us in the field of education? There is not one among those peoples that sees any use in distinguishing between girls and boys in the secondary curriculum — since there are no fundamental mental differences between the two sexes requiring such a separation, except in the matter of physical exercises, of which girls practice kinds less rough than those the boys practice.

And further: if those in authority were to take their inspiration from the resolutions of the United Nations, they would find that it insists that "the general education received by girls be equal in value and level to that received by boys."

As for those who deplore the great number of failures in the baccalaureate examinations, and who are pained that not all the candidates, men and women alike, obtain it, to them we say: it is not necessary that all students, boys and girls, should reach the baccalaureate. It is necessary, rather, that a large part of them should stop at the end of the upper primary stage, to prepare for a trade or for the study of one of the crafts.

Education in our schools is still for the most part theoretical, as it was at its first beginnings. And the country is in rapid development, which compels us to give increased attention to vocational (technical) education. That education still meets with great neglect in the guidance of boys, and with even greater neglect in the guidance of girls. Let me mention, by way of example, our need for nurses and for trained women teachers in the kindergartens and elementary classes, that we may know how sorely we lack vocational guidance.

If, among the girls who fail in secondary education, there are some who wish to add to their theoretical culture, the school may be enabled to open a special branch for them, its lessons suited to their level. But it is not permissible to call that a completion of secondary study, or a curriculum leading to some certificate; it would rather be in the nature of private lessons in particular subjects.

If we abandon the motives that suggested to us the idea of separation, and study the subject in the light of science, experience, and scrutiny, it will be easy for us to be convinced of the error of the idea — and we shall then be among the fair-minded.