The Man‐Made World
VIII. EDUCATION.
The origin of education is maternal. The mother animal is seen to teach her young what she knows of life, its gains and losses; and, whether consciously done or not, this is education. In our human life, education, even in its present state, is the most important process. Without it we could not maintain ourselves, much less dominate and improve conditions as we do; and when education is
what it should be, our power will increase far beyond present hopes.
In lower animals, speaking generally, the powers of the race must be lodged in each individual. No gain of personal experience is of avail to the others. No advantages remain, save those physically
transmitted. The narrow limits of personal gain and personal inheritance rigidly hem in sub‐human progress. With us, what one learns may be taught to the others. Our life is social, collective. Our gain is for all, and profits us in proportion as we extend it to all. As the human soul develops in us, we become able to grasp more fully
our common needs and advantages; and with this growth has come
the extension of education to the people as a whole. Social functions are developed under natural laws, like physical ones, and may be studied similarly.
In the evolution of this basic social function, what has been the effect of wholly masculine influence?
The original process, instruction of individual child by individual mother, has been largely neglected in our man‐made world. That was considered as a subsidiary sex‐function of the woman, and as such, left to her “instinct.” This is the main reason why we show such great progress in education for older children, and especially for youths, and so little comparatively in that given to little ones.
We have had on the one side the natural current of maternal education, with its first assistant, the nursemaid, and its second, the
“dame‐school”; and on the other the influence of the dominant class, organized in university, college, and public school, slowly filtering downward.
Educational forces are many. The child is born into certain conditions, physical and psychic, and “educated” thereby. He grows
up into social, political and economic conditions, and is further modified by them. All these conditions, so far, have been of 59
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androcentric character; but what we call education as a special social process is what the child is deliberately taught and subjected to; and it is here we may see the same dominant influence so clearly.
This conscious education was, for long, given to boys alone, the girls being left to maternal influence, each to learn what her mother knew, and no more. This very clear instance of the masculine theory is glaring enough by itself to rest a case on. It shows how absolute was the assumption that the world was composed of men, and men alone
were to be fitted for it. Women were no part of the world, and needed no training for its uses. As females they were born and not made; as human beings they were only servants, trained as such by
their servant mothers.
This system of education we are outgrowing more swiftly with each
year. The growing humanness of women, and its recognition, is forcing an equal education for boy and girl. When this demand was
first made, by women of unusual calibre, and by men sufficiently human to overlook sex‐prejudice, how was it met? What was the attitude of woman‘s “natural protector” when she began to ask some
share in human life?
Under the universal assumption that men alone were humanity, that
the world was masculine and for men only, the efforts of the women
were met as a deliberate attempt to “unsex” themselves and become
men. To be a woman was to be ignorant, uneducated; to be wise, educated, was to be a man. Women were not men, visibly; therefore
they could not be educated, and ought not to want to be.
Under this androcentric prejudice, the equal extension of education to women was opposed at every step, and is still opposed by many.
Seeing in women only sex, and not humanness, they would confine
her exclusively to feminine interests. This is the masculine view, par excellence. In spite of it, the human development of women, which so splendidly characterizes our age, has gone on; and now both woman‘s colleges and those for both sexes offer “the higher education” to our girls, as well as the lower grades in school and kindergarten.
In the special professional training, the same opposition was experienced, even more rancorous and cruel. One would think that on the entrance of a few straggling and necessarily inferior feminine beginners into a trade or profession, those in possession would 60
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extend to them the right hand of fellowship, as comrades, extra assistance as beginners, and special courtesy as women.
The contrary occurred. Women were barred out, discriminated
against, taken advantage of, as competitors; and as women they have had to meet special danger and offence instead of special courtesy.
An unforgettable instance of this lies in the attitude of the medical colleges toward women students. The men, strong enough, one would think, in numbers, in knowledge, in established precedent, to be generous, opposed the newcomers first with absolute refusal; then, when the patient, persistent applicants did get inside, both students and teachers met them not only with unkindness and unfairness, but with a weapon ingeniously well chosen, and most discreditable—namely, obscenity. Grave professors, in lecture and clinic, as well as grinning students, used offensive language, and played offensive tricks, to drive the women out—a most
androcentric performance.
Remember that the essential masculine attitude is one of opposition, of combat; his desire is obtained by first overcoming a competitor; and then see how this dominant masculinity stands out where it has
no possible use or benefit—in the field of education. All along the line, man, long master of a subject sex, fought every step of woman toward mental equality. Nevertheless, since modern man has
become human enough to be just, he has at last let her have a share in the advantages of education; and she has proven her full power to appreciate and use these advantages.
Then to‐day rises a new cry against “women in education.” Here is
Mr. Barrett Wendell, of Harvard, solemnly claiming that teaching women weakens the intellect of the teacher, and every now and then
bursts out a frantic sputter of alarm over the “feminization” of our schools. It is true that the majority of teachers are now women. It is true that they do have an influence on growing children. It would even seem to be true that that is largely what women are for.
But the male assumes his influence to be normal, human, and the female influence as wholly a matter of sex; therefore, where women
teach boys, the boys become “effeminate”—a grievous fall. When men teach girls, do the girls become ——‐? Here again we lack the analogue. Never has it occurred to the androcentric mind to conceive of such a thing as being too masculine. There is no such word! It is odd to notice that which ever way the woman is placed, she is 61
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supposed to exert this degrading influence; if the teacher, she effeminizes her pupils; if the pupil, she effeminizes her teachers.
Now let us shake ourselves free, if only for a moment, from the androcentric habit of mind.
As a matter of sex, the female is the more important. Her share of the processes which sex distinction serves is by far the greater. To be feminine—if one were nothing else, is a far more extensive and dignified office than to be masculine—and nothing else.
But as a matter of humanity the male of our species is at present far ahead of the female. By this superior humanness, his knowledge, his skill, his experience, his organization and specialization, he makes and manages the world. All this is human, not male. All this is as open to the woman as the man by nature, but has been denied her during our androcentric culture.
But even if, in a purely human process, such as education, she does bring her special feminine characteristics to bear, what are they, and what are the results?
We can see the masculine influence everywhere still dominant and superior. There is the first spur, Desire, the base of the reward system, the incentive of self‐interest, the attitude which says, “Why should I make an effort unless it will give me pleasure?” with its concomitant laziness, unwillingness to work without payment.
There is the second spur, Combat, the competitive system, which sets one against another, and finds pleasure not in learning, not exercising the mind, but in getting ahead of one‘s fellows. Under these two wholly masculine influences we have made the
educational process a joy to the few who successfully attain, and a weary effort, with failure and contumely attached, to all the others.
This may be a good method in sex‐competition, but is wholly out of
place and mischievous in education. Its prevalence shows the injurious masculization of this noble social process.
What might we look for in a distinctly feminine influence? What are these much‐dreaded feminine characteristics?
The maternal ones, of course. The sex instincts of the male are of a preliminary nature, leading merely to the union preceding
parenthood. The sex instincts of the female cover a far larger field, 62
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spending themselves most fully in the lasting love, the ceaseless service, the ingenuity and courage of efficient motherhood. To feminize education would be to make it more motherly. The mother
does not rear her children by a system of prizes to be longed for and pursued; nor does she set them to compete with one another, giving
to the conquering child what he needs, and to the vanquished, blame and deprivation. That would be “unfeminine.”
Motherhood does all it knows to give to each child what is most needed, to teach all to their fullest capacity, to affectionately and efficiently develop the whole of them.
But this is not what is meant by those who fear so much the influence of women. Accustomed to a wholly male standard of living, to masculine ideals, virtues, methods and conditions, they say—and say with some justice—that feminine methods and ideals would be destructive to what they call “manliness.” For instance, education to‐day is closely interwoven with games and sports, all of an excessively masculine nature. “The education of a boy is carried on largely on the playground!” say the objectors to women teachers.
Women cannot join them there; therefore, they cannot educate them.
What games are these in which women cannot join? There are forms
of fighting, of course, violent and fierce, modern modifications of the instinct of sex‐combat. It is quite true that women are not adapted, or inclined, to baseball or football or any violent game. They are perfectly competent to take part in all normal athletic development, the human range of agility and skill is open to them, as everyone knows who has been to the circus; but they are not built for physical combat; nor do they find ceaseless pleasure in throwing, hitting or kicking things.
But is it true that these strenuous games have the educational value attributed to them? It seems like blasphemy to question it. The whole range of male teachers, male pupils, male critics and spectators, are loud in their admiration for the “manliness” developed by the craft, courage, co‐ordinative power and general “sportsmanship”
developed by the game of football, for instance; that a few young men are killed and many maimed, is nothing in comparison to these
advantages.
Let us review the threefold distinction on which this whole study rests, between masculine, feminine and human. Grant that woman, 63
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being feminine, cannot emulate man in being masculine—and does not want to. Grant that the masculine qualities have their use and value, as well as feminine ones. There still remain the human qualities shared by both, owned by neither, most important of all.
Education is a human process, and should develop human
qualities—not sex qualities. Surely our boys are sufficiently masculine, without needing a special education to make them more
so.
The error lies here. A strictly masculine world, proud of its own sex and despising the other, seeing nothing in the world but sex, either male or female, has “viewed with alarm” the steady and rapid growth of humanness. Here, for instance, is a boy visibly tending to be an artist, a musician, a scientific discoverer. Here is another boy not particularly clever in any line, nor ambitious for any special work, though he means in a general way to “succeed”; he is, however, a big, husky fellow, a good fighter, mischievous as a monkey, and strong in the virtues covered by the word
“sportsmanship.” This boy we call “a fine manly fellow.”
We are quite right. He is. He is distinctly and excessively male, at the expense of his humanness. He may make a more prepotent sire than
the other, though even that is not certain; he may, and probably will, appeal more strongly to the excessively feminine girl, who has even less humanness than he; but he is not therefore a better citizen.
The advance of civilization calls for human qualities, in both men and women. Our educational system is thwarted and hindered, not
as Prof. Wendell and his life would have us believe, by
“feminization,” but by an overweening masculization.
Their position is a simple one. “We are men. Men are human beings.
Women are only women. This is a man‘s world. To get on in it you
must do it man‐fashion—i.e., fight, and overcome the others. Being civilized, in part, we must arrange a sort of “civilized warfare,” and learn to play the game, the old crude, fierce male game of combat, and we must educate our boys thereto.” No wonder education was
denied to women. No wonder their influence is dreaded by an ultra‐
masculine culture.
It will change the system in time. It will gradually establish an equal place in life for the feminine characteristics, so long belittled and derided, and give pre‐eminent dignity to the human power.