Danger in Girls’ Schools.
ONE of the practices most energetically relied on in the higher class of girls’ schools, says the Popular Science Monthly, is that of the competition of one scholar with another. In some of them this competition is terrific. It extends to every subject; it becomes so keen as to put each girl who is in the foremost rank in a fever-heat of emulation before the examinations. In some cases it overmasters every other feeling for the time being. No doubt, from the school-master’s point of view, it is the very thing he wants. In his professional enthusiasm he aims at the highest mental result. He is not professionally interested in the health or the special nervous constitution of the girls; he does not regard them as each one a medico-psychological entity and problem. I don’t say this by way of reproach. All good men try to attain the highest result in their special departments. The educator has no means of knowing the constitution and hereditary weakness of his girls—that the mother of one died of consumption, that the father of another was insane, that neuralgia is hereditary in the family of a third, that one has been nervous, another has been threatened with water in the head, etc. His own education and training have not taught him to notice or know the meaning of narrow chests, or great thinness, or stooping shoulders, or very big heads, or quick, jerky movements, or dilated pupils, or want of appetite, or headaches, or irritability, or backaches, or disinclination to bodily exertion. But all these things exist in abundance in every big school, and the girls handicapped in that way are set into competition with those who are strong and free from risks. It is the most nervous, excitable, and highly strung girls that throw themselves into the school competition most keenly. And they, of course, are just the most liable to be injured by it. All good observers say the intensity of feeling displayed in girls’ competition is greater than among lads, and that there is far more apt to arise a personal animus. Girls don’t take a beating so quietly as boys. Their moral constitution, while in some ways stronger than that of boys, especially at that age, suffers more from any disturbing cause. The whole thing takes greater hold of them—is more real.