Personal Relationships in the Coeducational School
The chief argument for coeducation must obviously be based on the nature of the personal relationships that it makes possible. If it can be shown that in coeducation those relationships are sounder and more wholesome than in a single-sex schools, that they set free energy for constructive purposes and deliver people from crippling inhibition, what more need be said? It may be, however, that not every reader is convinced that personal relationships are of paramount importance in education, and perhaps a little should be said first on this point.
A school may be looked at in three ways: first as an institution where instruction is carried out, secondly as a society where each individual learns what he owes to the whole group - what his function and duty should be, and thirdly as a community in which creative impulses and a comprehensive sort of wisdom spring from the contact of one personality with another. If we think of a school solely in the first way we shall be concerned only with syllabuses and the testing of efficiency by examinations. If we think of the second we shall want to know if each individual pupil learns his functional relationship to the whole group, whether he develops his particular capacities in such a way as to serve best the needs of the whole. But to attempt to think in either of these ways without admitting the third is to fall into illusion. The extent and quality of a child’s learning are profoundly affected by the nature of the personal relationship with the teacher, and the social attitudes are obviously so affected. The relationship of teacher with child is, however, only part of the large pattern of personal relationships in the whole school community; the rest is made up of the relationships between the adults, between the assistant staff and the Head, and between child and child.
To those who are in the habit of looking at the educational process as a whole and who are concerned with the development of a child’s whole personality, the foregoing must be obvious. It would, I expect, receive general assent from all who regard themselves as educators rather than mere instructors. But it is much less often put into practice or regarded as a principle to be used in the planning of education. How far in educational administrative work is the pattern of human relationships in schools really studied? To what extent is the method of appointment of teachers or the degree of autonomy granted to a school adjusted to encourage the growth of understanding and cooperation, and friendship, among the staff of a school? It is not just a question of knowing what we want, but of discovering the conditions under which it can be achieved, of knowing what it is that frustrates its achievement. With the great increase in secondary education and the growing complexity and magnitude of the administrator’s task it becomes more than ever necessary to study the conditions under which schools are run and the relations of these conditions to the social and personal life in the school.
The argument for coeducation is in the main an argument for conditions that make a better personal life possible for both staff and children. It is not based on a claim that coeducation will solve the major problems of education, not even the sex problem. The major problems of education are the major problems of life – and they are not solved at school. At school the stage is set for the study of problems. By ‘study’ I do not mean anything academic – but daily observation and reflection and the gradual assimilation of experience. Coeducation provides a background of reality which a single-sex school cannot. It provides both boys and girls, both men and women, with conditions that are reasonably representative of life itself.
It is a significant fact that nearly all adults engaged in coeducation enjoy the human environment it provides, and indeed they tend to believe in it because they enjoy it. I once heard a psychoanalyst charge the headmaster of a coeducational school with believing in coeducation because unconsciously it provided him with the means to work out his own infantile sex frustrations. Hardly a fair argument to use – but even if it were true, doesn’t it rather support coeducation than otherwise? The enjoyment of the presence of the opposite sex is surely a relatively healthy way of satisfying the needs of the unconscious – and indeed the conscious! What is the alternative – to allow infantile repression to release them-selves in a homosexual society? All that the argument succeeds in doing is to establish that the adult cannot be wholly objective or “scientific” in making judgments about coeducation. But that is true of all judgments about human situations. We are in the situation and therefore cannot judge it as though we were wholly outside it, acting as detached observers. But even this matter of our own enjoyment can be to some extent a subject for observation and reflection. Those who have had the experience of moving out of a single-sex school into a coeducational one will perhaps agree that there is a lightening of the atmosphere, a freeing of the spirit, a release from the curious tensions and irritations that seem common in single-sex schools. I have just come from a conference of representatives of coeducational boarding schools. In their discussions and personal exchanges there was a gaiety, a sense of humour and perspective, a very evident courage and renewal of faith in the face of serious difficulties – and not a trace of cynicism. In comparison there is something a little dim and unreal about a conference wholly of men teachers, and a noticeable tendency to give way to destructive criticism and cynical attitudes. I feel certain that a mixed community is the more productive of courage, faith and enjoyment. Incidentally, this question of enjoyment is of far greater importance than is commonly realised. It is more important that teachers should have conditions in which they can enjoy their work - and feel that it is a significant part of an enjoyable life – than that they should be infused with noble concepts of duty and social service. Not that the latter are unimportant, but they are useless without the fundamental basis of enjoyment. In fact without it they may do harm, because they will degrade life from the personal to the organic level – the level on which the individual is assessed only according to the discharge of his duties and the fulfilment of his function.
It may be argued that experience does not show that, in general, organisations in which men and women work together are necessarily happier because of it; it might even be said that there are instances in which men find the presence of women a disturbing factor. I think it might be found that such instances as these – perhaps in business life – are those in which women are regarded as husband-hunters, the conventional objects of flirtations and illicit interest (the film attitude to the typist). By being so regarded they cannot but detract from a serious attitude to work. But in education those attitudes are less likely to appear, because in education the work itself is concerned with persons, not business, and this to some extent acts as a corrective to triviality. It need hardly be added that the conditions that have been argued as possible in coeducation will not be achieved if either sex is resentful of the presence of the other. There is no room in coeducation for the man who is full of gallantry and solicitous attentions when he takes a women to the theatre in the evening, but during his working hours says that he doesn’t want “those damned women in our common room.”
Where there is willing and equal partnership between the sexes on a school staff, when there is equal-sided respect for each other’s mental qualities, both where those qualities are similar and where they are different, there is, I am convinced, a more true and creative concept of education than can exist in a single-sex school. It needs both a man and a woment to meet the needs of any child, whether girl or boy. No boy is ever wholly masculine, no girl wholly feminine, and there needs cannot be met by adults of one sex only, not only in their personal relationships but in their studies – where the different contributions and points of view of men and women are stimulating and often complementary. I remember shortly after coming into coeducational teaching being struck by statements made to me by some sixth-formers about the interesting differences they found in their history teachers – one a man, the other a woman. The difference provided a healthy corrective to a one-sided view of history.
Turning now more definitely to the relations between the adults and the children we meet far greater complications – and a disparity between the man-girl and the woman-boy situation during the pupil’s adolescence. At the primary stage – up to the age of eleven – the woman is accepted readily by both sexes, and the junior school is greatly enlivened by the presence of men teachers if they are properly trained to meet he needs of that age of child. But we have to remember that in the ordinary family pattern during adolescence the mother becomes less significant to both son and daughter, while the father grows in significance and authority. There remains a certain amount of dependence on the mother where food and clothing are concerned, but she loses authority and her attempts to exert it are often productive of resentment. With the boy this pattern tends to be reproduced in the school, where he accepts the matron or “dame” with affection but tends to reject the class-mistress, who is not concerned with his socks but his work. I am inclined to think that girls would not suffer much if they were taught largely by men, but that to have boys taught largely by women would be disastrous. What then is to be the place of the woman teacher in a coeducational secondary school? During the early “tough” stage of adolescence boys will more or less accept a young woman teacher who is “boyish” without being masculine. There must be something in her in which the boy can identify himself. And they will accept a woman of a generous maternal type who is downright, competent and practical. They will not accept the very feminine type, whether the feminity (sic) expresses a fear of the male or is a bait to catch him.
In late adolescence, when boys become more objectively sensitive and reflective, a woman who is a good scholar may be accepted in spite of the temperamental difficulties that would be serious at earlier stages. Feeling of chivalry may help the disciplinary situation at this late stage, but cannot be appealed to in early adolescence.
What, satisfactions, then, can reasonably come to a woman working in a coeducational school? She cannot expect to be the object of a “grand passion” such as appears so often in a girls’ school, for they hardly ever happen in coeducation. If she tries to be possessive – as many mothers mistakenly try to be – she will fail to establish authority or good feeling. Her satisfaction must be the satisfaction that comes to the wise mother – the mother who is content to see her children standing on their own feet, independent of her.
The man’s position is different in this – that he is not only the object of admiration (in so far as he is worthy of it) from the boys, but he is in the place of the father where the girls’ affection is concerned. This may not be very evident but it should affect his attitude in this way, he should recognise that he will not succeed in getting a good relationship with girls if he is not interested in them as persons. The impersonal outwardly-directed interest that draws men and boys together is not enough to establish an equivalent relationship with a girl. This seems to hold right through a girl’s adolescence, and this fact makes a trap for the man teacher and calls for wisdom on his part. Whereas, as I have pointed out, coeducation does not provide subjective satisfaction for the woman teacher, it may do so for the man teacher. In the relationship between a man teacher and a girl pupil there can be something of great value, but there is also a danger; and it needs but a little unwisdom or mismanagement for good to tumble into evil. The direction that the girl finds in the mind of a mature man is good and it may meet a fundamental need in her at this stage. The danger lies in the great physical attractiveness that a girl in the late teens may have for a man, together with the spontaneity and trust that she may bring to the relationship. The situation calls for maturity, wisdom and control on the man’s part, lest he should attempt to enlarge the pleasure he finds in the relationship, to sophisticate her, and begin to make demands on her. The man’s impulse may have a profoundly disturbing effect upon the school community if their expression is not wisely controlled. The intrusion of the adult into the pattern of emotional relationships between the pupils of a school is bewildering to them. It must be remembered that in any school community, however good and friendly the relationship between staff and pupils may be, the adults are “other”, they do not belong to the adolescent’s world, and it is right that they should not.
The man teacher in a coeducational school, therefore, should expect no more than the woman. He should be capable of giving affection but should expect nothing more than a casual expression of friendship in return. He should seek satisfaction of his own needs wholly in the adult world.
Now something should be said about the relationships within the children’s own world. Looking on the whole group of children in such coeducational schools as I have known they seem more excitable and irresponsible than do children in single-sex schools and this is a fact that worries us a little, especially when we are considering the problem of how to provide peace and quiet for boys and girls when they need it. This condition may, however, be a product not of coeducation but of the lighter disciplinary control that is practised in many coeducational schools. The children are less suppressed and seem to have much more energy. This ebullient energy is not as a rule directed destructively but it nevertheless sets us a problem. It is a reassuring fact that this is, in my experience, accompanied by a high standard of physical health and resistance to epidemics.
Relationships in the early teens follow the usual pattern, the boys and girls tending to form gangs with their own sex, with a good deal of sparring and teasing between the boy’s gang and the girl’s gang. The girls pass more quickly out of this stage and become socially responsible sooner than the boys. They begin to take on duties and to think about the welfare of the school while the boys remain thoughtless, accepting what the school provides in a casual way and looking cheerfully uncomprehending when feelings of responsibility are appealed to. Boys do not seem to pass wholly out of this stage until they reach the Sixth Form, and this, it seems to me, makes it important that a coeducational school should take its pupils right up to 18. This may seem an absurd request to those working in secondary modern schools, but possibly the problem is not so important in a day school as in a boarding school. In a boarding school, where every activity of children’s life comes within the purview of the school, unless the boys are retained to an age where responsibility appears there is a tendency for a matriarchal community to develop. The girls are concerned about conduct and try to shape the pattern of behaviour, while the boys treat them as they treat their mothers at home – getting out of doors into the back yard or street as quickly as possible. It should be noted that this is just what happens in a large mixed family. The eldest daughter tends to share her mother’s responsibilities, while her brothers, even if they are older, keep as far as possible out of the way or off the premises The pattern often continues into adult life – where the father, though he may like to appear lord of creation, in fact takes little responsibility within the home and smokes his pipe, reads the newspaper or goes fishing, leaving his wife to carry the burden of housework and discipline.
The problem is not to be solved by educating the sexes apart. Coeducation not only makes one aware of the problem – but it also provides the means of dealing with it. In the Sixth Form, between the ages of 16 and 18, the social development of the boys can draw level with that of the girls and a most valuable working partnership is established. It is a partnership in which the difference between the sexes is apparent and the need for cooperation emphasised. Often one has seen the girl’s passion for organisation and efficiency moderated by the better perspective and grasp of principle shown by the boy – who, without the girl’s insistence, would never have anything done in time.
To those who have worked for a long time in coeducation there is nothing more absurd than the contention that it makes boys and girls alike. The differences are so startlingly apparent that it makes it imperative for us to give them conditions in which they can get to know each other, not in order to smooth out the difference, but to understand and accept them as facts. On the other hand, it must be emphasised that, certainly among white European peoples, there are exaggerated differences between the sexes that are undesirable and destructive and that are based upon a false concept of the nature of men. The worst manifestation is in what Suttie calls the “taboo of tenderness”[1]. This taboo is built upon the supposition that feeling of tenderness are proper only to woman and that a real man should have no feminine component in his nature. When men do express tender feelings – as during courtship – it is regarded as a malady by which they have been attacked temporarily and which will pass when its objective – physical sexual fulfilment – is achieved. The political expression of the taboo on tenderness reached its culmination in Nazism, with its explicit condemnation of the “softness” of Christianity. In boy’s schools almost everywhere it this taboo receives encouragement, and sadistic sentiments, applied either to personal, or to political situations, are allowed to pass unexamined, because they seem manly.
Coeducation can do something to moderate this evil, especially if within the community there are families in which the expression of tenderness and loving care is uninhibited, and fathers are seen sharing fully the responsibilities and delights of parenthood.
There is one curious anomaly to be admitted. One would expect coeducational schools to excel in the arts, for reasons associated with the above: the release and expression of feeling. Perhaps it can be claimed that they do in the graphic and dramatic arts and in music. But the large majority of poets still come from the long established boys’ Public Schools. The leading coeducational schools have not, as far as I know, produced a single one. Why?
Most people that have not thought in anything more than a casual way about coeducation before, will probably be affected by the popular idea that it provides unusual sexual opportunities of a specific but unnameable kind. I remember clearly how when I was at a boys day school and we had regular fixtures with a certain coeducational boarding school (which incidentally had a strong rugger tradition) our team came back highly excited by the glimpses of girls mixing freely with boys in school. The absurd thing in this excitement was the fact that the boys in our team, being at a day school, had plenty of opportunities of consorting with girls in their leisure time, and used those opportunities freely. Their conversation about girls was largely in anatomical terms. One can only suppose that the reason for their excitement was the supposition that in a coeducational school their very narrow interest in sex could be indulged all day long instead of only in the evenings. How different are the facts!
In a coeducational boarding school the relations between a boy and girl are set within the school community. Both persons are known to the adults, who can therefore advise and control. The relations between boys and girls from single-sex schools are very often clandestine and furtive, so that most parents and teachers simply do not know what their young people are doing. Investigations in Continental cities, reported by Allendy and Lobstein in their book “Sex Problems in School”, show that an alarming proportion of young people has very many have experienced complete sexual intercourse before leaving day schools. There are probably no corresponding data for British schools, but although the proportion would be certainly less it would be sufficient to startle most people. In the single-sex day school, or the boys’ public school, this problem can be evaded. The authorities can, if they wish, shut their eyes to what happens out of school hours or during the holidays, and even if they keep their eyes wide open they will not see much. In the coeducational boarding schools the authorities are fully responsible for everything in the conduct of their pupils and may even be expected to bear the responsibility for the standard of behaviour of any of their pupils who meet during holidays. They have to maintain therefore a higher standard of responsibility in relation to their pupils’ attitude to sex matters. Serious irresponsibility, such as might leave a single-sex day school unaffected, would ruin a coeducational boarding school. This is true in a smaller measure of the coeducational day school. The opportunities for guidance and control will be less, but the school knows that nevertheless it will be held responsible in a stricter sense than will be a single-sex school for what happens.
I should add that when I refer to the relatively high standard of responsibility taken by the coeducational schools, I am referring to Britain only. The situation in the States is profoundly altered by the differences in social culture in certain strata of American life, which can be understood from Margaret Mead’s writings.
The responsibility that coeducational schools have to accept should recommend them to parents, but it should not be supposed that there is anything in coeducation that automatically solves the major problems of sex. Many of the lesser problems are solved, but the sex impulses are still there awaiting fulfilment and they have always to be reckoned with. Fear drives some schools into an attempt to create a “high moral tone” which nearly always involves a persistent distrust of the children. Such attempts will associate sex with fear and guilt in the minds of the children – an injury to their growth as persons, and a wretched preparation for marriage. To give any adequate idea of how a coeducational school should deal with the sex problem would require the space of another article, and more. Putting it very briefly, it requires a direct personal relationship between pupil and teacher in which there is as little fear as possible, so that sex matters can be discussed without embarrassment and in perfectly clear language. It requires a high degree of awareness on the part of at least some of the staff of the attractions that develop between pupils. A general feeling of confidence must be created in which the boys and girls do not mind the adult knowing about them. The adult’s attitude to sex must be such that he or she can help young people to limit the expression of sex feeling without making them feel that the impulses should be regarded as in any way shameful. The understanding of sex on the part of the pupil himself is part of his development in personal and social responsibility; he must eventually come to recognise that of all human impulses the sex impulse can be the most creative or the most destructive, both in the relationship between two people and in society as a whole. Many pupils, however, will not possess the intellectual capacity to hold this clearly in their minds, and more important, therefore, is the sort of objective sensitiveness which should be developed in any family or community, that restrains destructive action without the need for a logical process of reasoning to intervene. Our attempts to develop this brings us right up against the wide individual differences between our pupils, depending on their earlier school and home experiences. Whatever level of society they come from, there will be many whose sensitiveness in personal matters has been injured and whose attitudes to sex have been coarsened.
Whatever our system of education we have to recognise that the system itself, the group instruction and general attitudes sought, will not always meet the individual need or heal the injuries of earlier days. But what I think may be reasonably claimed is that a group in which both sexes are fully represented is the one more likely to produce healing conditions. If it has failures, it must be remembered that no system of education can be expected to undo the evil that is being done all the time to children by corrupt influences in society.
Archive reference PP/KCB 6/6/2 document 13