Page:The Fun of It.pdf/176

144 sex, and putting them in little feminine or mascu­line pigeonholes.

Outside of school, similar differences are notice­able, too. In the home, boys and girls usually follow the pursuits which tradition has decreed for the one and the other. As different as what they do are ways of doing it. Girls are shielded and sometimes helped so much that they lose initiative and begin to believe the signs “Girls don’t” and “Girls can’t” which mark their paths. Mrs. Ber­trand Russell puts this fact very forcibly when she says women are bred to timidity.

It is not surprising then that as boys and girls grow older their backgrounds become more and more unlike. Consequently, it seems almost neces­sary to evolve different methods of instruction for them when they later take up the same subjects. For example, those courses which involve mechani­cal work may have to be explained somewhat dif­ferently to girls not because girls are inherently not mechanical, but because normally they have learned little about such things in the course of their education.

I could illustrate this idea the other way around. I once watched the progress of a boys’ cooking class. The teacher started out with the same method of approach as she used for the girls. What happened? Her pupils were so stupid she was almost ready to believe the masculine mind incap­able of comprehending the rudiments of boiling eggs. However, being a resourceful instructor, it