Sunday, February 11th 1951
Coeducation
Now from that story some of you may have guessed that what I am going to talk about is coeducation. There is some suggestion of equality between the sexes in that story, and coeducation is based on the belief that there is very much more equality between boys and girls than the Victorians used to think. On Friday night I had to talk to parents of children in a preparatory school in Leeds - parents who were thinking of what sort of school they would send their boys and girls to. They wanted to know something about coeducation, as it is still rather rare, even in Yorkshire. When I talk about coeducation I of course praise it up. I tell them the best that I believe about it, though sometimes I have to tell them that you cannot do everything by putting boys and girls together and you have a certain amount of wisdom to run a coeducational school. A great deal depends on how we run a coeducational school. The coeducational school could be very bad if one were careless or unwise. I also think that it is not just myself and the staff that can make coeducation good – it is you who can make it good. I am going to try to deal with a few things which will help you to make it good.
First a few of the things on which it is based. I sometimes tend to think that I believe in coeducation because I enjoy it – then I also believe in it because it has a good sound basis. I believe that boys and girls can be equal in some respects and I don’t mean exactly alike, but equal. Boys and girls are very different in some respects, and they can be regarded as equals and they can share a very great deal of their experience and benefit from it enormously. Since we have had to life (sic) in a world where there are both sexes, it is as well to find our as much as you can about the other sort. I just said that equality does not mean identity, it does not mean boys and girls are exactly alike. I sometimes feel that although most of you say you expect equality quite a lot of you are affected by the ........... What do I mean by that? We men used to think of women as being rather inferior in some respects – that was accompanied by a way of thinking them superior and pure, which is a mighty poor compensation for the other sort. Many men still think women incapable of running the world – they think them emotional when they should be logical and they say they talk a lot of nonsense. They are not capable of being in charge of undertakings which require a lot of common sense. Men have at the same time impressed upon women how wonderful and pure and holy they are. If you really think you are capable of running a business as a man, it is rotten to be told you are beautiful and charming. That is what men have done. Well I wonder if any of you boys have got a little of that feeling in you. I think you do show you have got some of it, because you will be very nice and tender to a girl standing half way up the stairs, and then you will talk to a girl as though she were almost beneath you. I think the way in which it tends to come out is rather like this.
A girl counsellor may have to tell a boy off, to make a criticism he would expect from another boy. His reply is sometimes rude in the extreme – so rude as to make the girl feel she is inferior. That happens a fair amount. You cannot cherish a lovely picture in your heart and at the same time treat a girl like that without being a hypocrite. You do not realise that girls should have equal authority with boys. The problem occurs in the outside world too. A number of people become very loyal to coeducation, but one of the chief obstacles is that the vast majority of men would not serve a headmistress. Therefore a lot of women are against it because they would never get an opportunity for being heads. Sex prejudices are so deep that men will not accept the authority of women. Don’t let that happen here, and if there is any prejudice against girls in your homes, just turn it out.
Then there is another way in which I think coeducation tends to go a little astray and that is unless you know a lot of critics say that it makes boys soft, drooping and damp. Several of us watching you have decided exactly the opposite – it seems to make them more tough. Boys like to exaggerate their qualities in the presence of girls. They do so to stress their masculinity – they tend to overdo it, and they are more apt than boys in a boys’ school to turn down ideas and thoughts and feelings as soft when in point of fact they are sensitive and tender. One of the things that tends to make us think this is true is that many of our tough boys’ public schools have turned out some of the best writers and poets in our country, perhaps in the world. Not a single one has come from a coeducational school. This is a thing to beware of. There is nothing to be ashamed off (sic) in a boy being interested in tender things – things that are expressive. The greatest men have been those capable of expressing deep feeling.
There is one other thing. I have always to believe that coeducation improves people’s work, and I have seen instances of that definitely happening, of an association between a boy and a girl making their work better because a friendship has stimulated the desire to work as they have never done before. Friendship often does that – it illuminates life. I wonder whether that is the result – whether we do get that result from the friendships that grow here. I am a little doubtful about it , and I think it is one of the things you can take in hand. I am inclined to think many friendships absorb energy rather than produce it. I see people standing around in a sort of dopy condition, not seeming to exchange much in the way of thoughts and ideas, not doing much of value together. I think it is because they are not getting so much a genuine experience as following a fashion. It is a fashion to ‘have’ a girl or ‘have’ a boy, so let’s have one and stand around! And if you don’t succeed in ‘having’ one and standing around you are not a success. It is a tragic idea to think that. It is very hard on those who get a friend and also on those who don’t. It makes that person feel inferior because of it. If a friendship is formed in the right spirit of stimulating experience, it has no need to absorb your energy. I think all of you have got to beware of this idea, which is common among people generally, that you must ‘have’ someone. Having someone is a denial of love, because loving is giving. A friendship is not a creative thing unless it involves giving. One has to say this perhaps more to girls than to boys. Boys and men are always a little more detached. A man can confess his love for a woman one moment and talk about motor bikes the next. A woman can’t do that. The man can get them into two different departments. So that is a good bit more of an urge on the part of the female of the species to want to have and hold. And as I look round the school I am inclined to blame the girls more than the boys, but because of their feeling something more creative can come of it.
I want to emphasise that what we make of coeducation depends upon what you bring to it. It depends whether we are going to make our friendships possessive, whether we can still have our friends and yet be interested in other people. We can still be with a friend and yet have friends. You may be preparing better in that way for the world than by getting closely attached to one person. We cannot order you about and manage your lives, but we can ask as you grow up together, that you understand more and more of each other and understand what makes for something that is creative, something that makes something bigger than itself, something that grows out into the community and enriches it.
Archive reference PP/KCB 3/7/3 document 30