Standards Raised by Women TeachersBy Anne Bigoney Stewart(In “The Educational Review.”)
By Anne Bigoney Stewart
(In “The Educational Review.”)
It is due to the perseverance of the women in their poorly paid duty that teaching is gradually emerging into a regular profession with a proper stipend and respectable standing, and now when such is the result, we have men crowding back into the profession grumblingly, complaining of the poor pay, and throwing up their hands in “holy horror” at the “woman peril.”
And after all, of what does “the woman peril” consist? That boys are being feminized; that is, that boys are being trained to decenter standards of living? That they do not so much drink, or smoke, or, we hope, “sow wild oats,” that they do not so much regard these acts as manly, or a necessary part of their upbringing? That war is not a regular occupation; that peace is desirable and to be sought after?
“That abnormal families in which the mother’s influence is too long continued and not sufficientlycounteracted by masculine control are notoriously productive of decadence and degeneracy.”
That is certainly a grave charge! “A mother’s influence”! that which has been the theme of poets, artists, scholars, essayists, the clergy, for centuries, “productive of decadence and degeneracy.”
It would appear that logically as the masculine mind may think, its logic is not unassailable.