English High Schools for Girls: Their Aims, Organisation, and Management

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Introduction

The following pages represent the endeavour, incomplete and partial as the work of any one student must be, to sketch the characteristic aims, organisation and methods of a modem English High School for Girls as these have grown up during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and as they are developing to suit the wants and difficulties of to-day. Broadly speaking, such schools are day schools with the direct intention of correlation between the school and the home in the girls daily life; the writer's experience, indeed, has been almost entirely with such schools. The new schools which are being founded by local authorities are also for day pupils. It follows that the day school is the type mainly described here, but much in the matter of general educational principle and method applies equally well to boarding schools, and among the appendices is a note on the system of separate boarding houses sometimes attached to a high school. The type of school mentioned is also in the main public or proprietary, not private, and for the same reasons.

vi Introduction

But here again also the sections dealing with actual teaching and organisation apply equally well to the school which is owned and fully controlled by a private individual.

The question of the co-education of boys and girls, important and interesting as it is, is outside the reference of this book, which deals with schools for girls only, and with the system and methods which have grown up in England under the influence of women who thought mainly, almost entirely, of the needs of their own sex in education, since boys were already well provided with schools.

The whole subject of girls' education is a very wide one and must be considered in sections.

First must come its aims and ideals, and the limits of that part of it which lies within the province of this book, namely, secondary education, as distinguished from primary or elementary, and from university or tertiary education.

The characteristics of a girls' high school, as explained in part by the historic evolution of such schools between 1850 and 1900, are suggested, and some discussion of possible differences in the education of boys and girls follows. An attempt is then made to analyse the aims and ideals of education for girls, and in broad outline to state the means required to carry these into practice. Then it is necessary to consider the organisation for the performance of such work. At once two divisions of the subject appear, which may be termed external and internal organisation; the first deals with the

Introduction yii

relation of the girls' school to the community and to other educaticHial institutions, its place in the organisation of education administratively ; this division thus includes some treatment of the types of schools fitted for different localities and conditions, questions (rf finance and govenunent, of endowments and grants, the legal status of a high school as well as the connection with primary or preparatory schools on the one hand, and the universities or technical colleges on the other. To these subjects Chapter 11. is devoted. The second division, internal organisation, explains itself; it is a question of how a given school is arranged for the performance of educational work. To this is devoted Chapter III., which treats of the form system, bifurcation and specialisation, junior departments, hours and length of school sessions. The teacher herself is next considered, even prior to the building and equipment, since the living influence of a personality is more vital in education than the material body of brick or stone in which a school dwells. Chapter IV. deals with the qualifications, duties, appointment and salary of the teacher, the functions of the form mistress and the organisation of her work, and the division of subjects among teachers.

In Chapter V., building and equipment, on which whole books have been written, are treated briefly, and in special relation to the needs of g^rls and womea

The next five chapters are devoted to the pupil ; first comes the healthy body (Chapter VI.), which viii Introduction

involves physical training and games as well as personal hygiene. The relation of school and home is dealt with in part at this point Then follows the question of securing the healthy mind ; curriculum, time-tables (Chapter VII.), methods of teaching (Chapter VIII.), with a note on the use of a school library.

Last to be considered, as it is in part the product of physical and mental conditions, is character, and that part of a school life which deals definitely and explicitly with the training of character, discipline (Chapter IX.), form management and moral influences (Chapter X.). Closely connected with this last is the matter of personal relations (Chapter XL), though here the subject no longer concerns the pupil, but touches on parents, head and assistant mistresses, and the world without, in their mutual interaction. To-day it seems necessary, in view of the importance of the subject in England, to set aside a chapter (XII.) for the treatment of tests and awards, examinations, scholarships, inspections. For similar reasons it is desirable to consider separately (Chapter XI 1 1.) the place of technical subjects in a high school course ; namely, domestic arts, music and painting, arts and crafts, and secretarial work.

The last chapter (XIV., "Social Life in a Day School ") is an endeavour to summarise what is done in some of the existing day schools to develop corporate life and public spirit.

Of necessity the views and opinions of any one person must be partial and incomplete, must repre-

Introduction ix

sent one tradition of professional practice, and must be coloured by the feelings, experiences, and even the prejudices of the particular professional expert, physician, engineer, or teacher. There is, indeed, a marked degree of variation in English girls' secondary schools, owing to the freedom they have had to grow up for themselves from the beginning, and make their own traditions, and owing also to the marked variety of English social life, which is reflected so definitely in the English school system. It may well be, then, that the present writer may state some principles which are not true universally, or even generally, over the area of the subject, and may ignore, through ignorance, much that is valuable and sound. But it is hoped that at least an approximation is made to what a typical description should be.

Professor Sadler's Reports on certain counties and towns have been largely used and are often quoted, and special acknowledgment of the valuable help gained from them is gladly made. Useful suggestions and comparisons have been drawn from the official French "Rapport G^n^ral," 1899, of the Enquiry into Secondary Education {Enquite sur r Enseignement Secandatre), made by a special parliamentary commission of French educators. Much scattered information has been gleaned from educational pamphlets and fugitive articles or addresses, too numerous to be separately acknowledged. The author has not scrupled to reproduce passages from such work of her own, prepared for professional

X Introduction

conferences, when suitable for a more permanent purpose. Three of the appendices are official documents issued by the Association of Head Mistresses and the Association of Assistant Mistresses, and the diagram in Appendix G is reproduced by kind permission of Mr. J. H. Reynolds, Director of Higher Education for Manchester. For details concerning the many important high schools of the Girls' Public Day Schools Trust reference should be made to the Secretary, Queen Anne's Gate, London.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

Introduction v

CHAPTER I. The Aim of Girls' Education

What education is — The teacher the centre of the work — Primary, secondary, tertiary education — ^Age limits — The " Four Years* Course " — Outline history of the movement for girls' high schools — Their characteristics explained by his* toric considerations — ^Views of Miss Buss, Miss Beale, Mrs. William Grey and others — Present day purposes — Differences between the education of boys and girls — Threefold aim of a girl's education.

CHAPTER II. External Organisation i6

First, external, in relation to the community and to other educational institutions — Different types of girls' secondary school — The middle school — The high school proper — ^The technical high ^school — Relation to population, locality, city, suburbs, rural areas — Statistics — Differences due to size — A, up to 150 pupils, B, up to 300 pupils, C, up to 500 pupils — Cost, fees, endowments — The Board of Education and its grants — The girls' high school in relation to public elementary schools and the intending pupil teacher — Its relations to the university.

xi xii Table of Contents

PAGE

CHAPTER III. Internal Organisation 36

Second, internal — Six forms leading to matriculation and college standards — The form system : what it means and does — Provision for entry at various ages — Reclassification for certain subjects, i,g. mathematics — " Sets " — Bifurcation, ** slow trains and express trains " — Specialisation — Preparatory schools and departments — Kindergarten — Hours and terms.

CHAPTER IV. The Teacher 55

Staff— Proportion to numbers, qualifications and duties — Continuance of intellectual interests — Tenure — Cost — ^The form mistress: her functions and the organisation of her work — Subject teachers — Horizontal and vertical strata.

Chapter V

Central hall plan, corridor plan, adapted house plan — General considerations — ^Ventilation and heating — Classrooms : lighting — Assembly Hall — Staircases — Laboratories — Studio — Dining hall and kitchen — Library and common rooms — Gynmasium, playgrounds and garden — Cloakrooms and sanitary accommodation.

Chapter VI

Care of health — Physical training — The school doctor — Physical measurements — Food and sleep— Dress — The journey to school — Relation of the school with the home — Games.

CHAPTER VII. Mbns Sana : Curriculum 104

Need of electives, of stratification of subjects — The humanities — Latin and modern languages — Mathematics and science for girls — Technical subj^ts — Manual Training — Art — Standard of attainment — Division of time among different subjects— Tables Q^ vour8c$ of study.

Table of Contents xiii

PAGE

Chapter XIV

Games and gymnastics — Societies — Acting — Gardening — Philanthropic work — School visits and journeys — The school g^d its alumna; — The making of a tradition.

xiv Table of Contents

PAGE

Appendix A — Some Quotations on Education . . . .215

Appendix B — True Cost of Girls* Education 220

(Head Mistresses' Association Leaflet.)

Appendix C — Tenure 227

(Leaflet, Head and Assistant Mistresses' Association.)

Appendix D — Afternoon School 230

(Head and Assistant Mistresses' Association.)

Appendix E — The Boarding-House S3rstem 238

Appendix F — ^The Training of Teachers in a Girls' High School . 240

Appendix G — Scholarship System of the Manchester Education

Committee At end of hook

Bibliography of Prof. Sadler's Reports 244

Chapter I. The Aim Of Girls* Education

There is much to be said for the old-fashioned plan of b^inning a subject by defining the terms used in it, more particularly when such attempt at definition at once reveals the difficulties implicit in a phrase. What is education? What is a girls' high school? — are questions which are much easier to ask than to answer. Definitions of the first word may be drawn from many sources ; ^ it may suffice here to state that the kind of education dealt with in these pages includes four objects : the formation of character; intellectual training; the acquisition of knowledge; and technical skill in some at least of the activities of later life. It is effected chiefly through the personal influence of the teacher on the pupil, which is the centre of all education.

A girls' high school is by genus a school giving girls a second£U-y education, generally under some degree of public control ; that is, it is not conducted by an individual for private profit. It belongs as a rule to some corporate body, company, trust, local education authority, board of governors, etc., who own or rent the building, engage, pay and dismiss the staff, receive the fees through a clerk or other official, and are generally responsible for the management. This definition itself brings up another difficult phrase — ** Secondary Education " . What is this ? Authority after authority hcis tried in vain to define it, though

* See Appendix A»

I most of us know what it means. The highest English Government authority, the Board of Education at Whitehall, defines a secondary school thus, in its official regulations : —

For the purpose of these Regulations the term Secondary school means a day or boarding school which offers to each of its scholars a general education of a wider scope and higher grade than that of an ordinary Elementary school, given through a complete progressive course of instruction continuing up to and beyond the age of sixteen.

Here the relation of secondary to primary or elementary education is suggested ; nothir^ is said of its relation to tertiary or higher education. This is that given in a university or institution of university standing. In genersJ, however, university education must be preceded by secondary educatioiL The easiest way of understanding the difference between the three kinds is by considering the limits of age. Primary education b^ins between three and six years of age, and finishes at twelve, thirteen or fourteen. Secondary education may begin at various ages, but ia_intended- -to end. at_Bixteen, seventeen or eighteen. Tertiary, higher or university education cannot well begin before sixteen : eighteen is the usual agej and it 4?nds.ahont the legal age of-twenty-oney at which adult life begins.

The Board of Education lays down a rule that there must be an approved Four Years' Course in a secondary school, intended to cover the years from twelvgjo-sixteen, providing " instruction in the English language and literature ; at least one language other than English, Grec^^phy, History, Mathematics, Science and Drawing" (Regulations, p. 4). Many girls' secondary schools cover not four years but ten (eight to eighteen) ; all would be found to comply at least with the Board's requirements stated above.

The Aim of Girk' Education 3

The distinction between the three kinds of education is one of age, ability, and curriculum ; it ought to have nothing to do with social class. Mr. Birrell, then Minister of Education, speaking at Leeds in the spring of 1906, said: —

Still more would one regret if the vulgar notion were to get embodied in anybody's mind that elementary education was something for the children of artisans and agricultural labourers, that secondary education belonged to the children of the professional, shopkeeping and middle class, while university education was the luxury of the rich. That would be a detestable idea. And it would be a retrograde idea, something quite alien and hostile to the education in this country even as it was carried on in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeeth and eighteenth centuries.

As a matter of fact, however, the children of the poorer classes are obliged to go out to work earlier, and thus the limits of age and cost in the three kinds of education bring in a certain element of class distinction. This is happily minimised by the provision of scholarships and maintenance allowances, out of public funds or endowments from the past, so that brilliant or even clever boys and girls may go right on to the highest university standards.

Historically, the girls' high schools were founded in the first instance for the dai^hters of the middle classes, professional and trading, who could afford to pay fees covering part, sometimes the whole, of the cost of education. A very brief historical survey may make the subject clearer.

There b^an in England about 1848-50 a very remarkable movement for the better education of women ; it was marked by the establishment of women's colleges in London, Cambridge, Oxford and elsewhere, as well as by the openir^ of different kinds of secondary schools for girls. It was helped by public-spirited and chivalrous men, but it was mainly carried on by womea Of these certain are

reverenced as pioneers and founders : Frances Mary Buss,

I *

Dorothea Beale, Maria Grey, Anne Jemima Clough, who are no longer living; there are others still with us, of whom we must name one, Miss Emily Davies, founder of Girton College.

In studying this development of girls' education, we are at the outset faced by the question of origin and causes. Why did this movement begin about 1850? Why did the nineteenth century see the wide diffusion of new ideals for women and the successful stn^gle against the limitations of the past? To these questions we can give no satisfactory answer. No great mind has yet grappled with the history, the philosophy, the details of research necessary for such a labour ; no writer on the subject has been gifted with insight keen and true enough to explain for us so remarkable a phase of human progress. There are of course broad and general influences which must have acted throughout the century : the vast and far-reaching waves of thought and action set up by that great explosion, the French Revolution ; the spiritual movements associated with the names of Wesley, Simeon, Newman, ; Pusey, Maurice ; the effect of political reforms, themselves effect and cause of deeper reformation in the mind and life ; of the nation ; the enlightening power of scientific con- ' ceptions and modes of thought, the work of Darwin and Mill, Spencer and Martineau, which liberated reason from 'the superstitions and prejudices of the past; — all these had their share in bringing about the creation of girls' education as they brought about other good things in the Victorian era. The Reform Bill of 1832 gave the middle classes political power ; thirty years later they might well need and appreciate efficient schools for their daughters ; the Oxford Movement in the forties was bringing back mediaeval ideals of womanhood, recalling stately ladies like the Abbess Hilda, leaders of thought and inspirers of action like Catherine of Siena and Theresa of Spain. Since 1837 the influence of the Queen and the Court had roused the chivalry and elevated the standards of society, and as the century rolled on the liberation of intellect, begun as far back as the period of the Renaissance, was continued and extended by men of science.

Miss Zimmem in her book {The Renaissance of GirU Education^ published for the Jubilee of the College Movement in 1898, attaches great importance to the influence of the sovereign : —

The benefits which a woman's reign always confers on women have been experienced to the full during the long and peaceful reign of our present Queen. The interest taken by her and the Prince 'Consort in art and letters, in the general improvement of the people, set an example that was readily followed. Ladies of the upper and middle classes began to take a keener interest in the lives of the poor, and in dealing with the problems they thus encountered were often brought to realise their own want of education.

It may be said too that the general advance in wealth and civilisation tended to help the cause of women.

However this may be, there is no doubt as to the rapidity with which the movement spread. In 1848 the first women's colleges in London — Queen's and Bedford — were established. In 1850 Frances Mary Buss began her school, which was soon made more public in character, and after a long struggle was established and endowed by a scheme of the Privy Council as a first grade public school. The Ladies' College, Cheltenham, was opened in 1853, had Miss Beale as its head in 1858, and grew rapidly under her influence. The women's colleges began between 1869 and 1875. The Royal Commission of 1864-67, to inquire into the state of secondary schools, took cc^isance of girls' schools. The National Union for the Higher Education of Women was founded in 1871 by Maria (Mrs. William) Grey, and the Girls' Public Day

Schools Company established in the next year under the patronc^e of H.R.H. Princess Louise (now Duchess of Ai^ll). Its first school was at Chelsea, January, 1873; the Notting Hill High School was opened the following September, and many others followed, till in 1875 the Company had in its schools 700 girls.^ The North of England meanwhile had awakened, largely under the influence of Miss Clough, to the need of improving girls' education. In January, 1874, the Manchester High School was founded by a number of Manchester citizens, men and women, of whom two. Miss Gaskell and Mr. E. Donner, still remain on the governing body. In ten years it had become, like the Frances Mary Buss School, a first grade public endowed school under a scheme. The King Edward's Schools for girls, Birmir^ham, the Harpur Trust Schools at Bedford, the Bradford and Leeds Girls' Grammar Schools came into being in the same momentous decade, 1872-82. The culmination of the movement is generally taken to be the opening of d^rees to women at the University of London in 1879, ^^^ ^^^ " Three Graces " of the Senate of the University of Cambridge in 1881, admitting women of right to the Tripos examinations.

When, between 1865 and 1875 the movements that gave rise to the girls' high school began, the cardinal faults of girls' education were, as the Schools Inquiry Commission reported (1867) —

Want of thoroughness and foundation; slovenliness and showy superficiality ; inattention to rudiments ; undue time given to accomplishments, and these not taught intelligently or in any scientific manner ; want of organisation.

Thus the reformers and pioneers emphasised the ideal of accuracy and thoroughness, and advocated the study of mathematics and Latin to this end. Miss Emily Davies urged : —

The strengthening of the mind by studies of a bracing nature, and its enrichment by the acquisition of knowledge are among the duties of life (Home and the Higher Education^ 1878).

Miss Isabella Tod writes {On the Education of Girls of the Middle Classes ^ 1874) : —

This study (mathematics) offers peculiar advantages for the correction of the mental errors to which the n^lect of real culture has made women liable.

She also advocates the study of Latin and Greek. She expresses admirably the general aim : —

It is indeed in the first place on the duty of enabling them to be whatever Heaven meant them to be that we ground the claim of women to a full participation in the blessings of a Hberal education. There is but one trae theory of education for men and women alike ; just as there is but one religion, one moraUty.

These statements also express Miss Buss's views ; the passages which may be quoted from the record of her life {Frances Mary Buss and her Work for Education , by Annie E. Ridley) emphasise another side of the subject, the need of qualifying girls to earn a living. She writes in 1871 : —

But as I have grown older the terrible sufferings of the women of my own class ^ for want of good elementary training have more than ever intensified my desire to lighten, ever so little, the misery of women brought up " to be married and taken care of," and left alone in the world destitute. It is impossible for words to express my fixed determination of alleviating this evil.

Miss Ridley, describing her friend, also writes, p. 42 : —

In one of this girl's early sayings — "Why are women so little thought of? I would have girls trained to match their brothers I " — ^we have the kejnnote of her harmonious life. It

^ Miss Boss was the daughter of an artist.

was experience transmuted into sympathy. In the stress of her own girlish efforts she gained her life-long feeling for the half-educated, on whom is too early laid the burden of moneygetting.

We may quote also the words of an old pupil from p. 79 :—

Seeing, as she did, numbers of these, she was very strongly impressed by the absolute necessity for young girls to be trained to some employment by which they might, if necessary, earn a livelihood. For women to be dependent on brothers and relations, she considered an evil to be avoided at all costs, and she tried to keep before us the fact that training for any work must develop a woman's intellect and powers, and therefore made her — married or single — a, better and nobler being.

Thus, into the schools officered by teachers who knew how hard it was for gentlewomen to earn a living, there entered also the ideal of giving to girls of the middle class the thoroughness and accuracy and real intellectual training which would fit them to work like their professional brothers for something like a living wage. This, as well as the desire to enter into the inheritance of lectming so long possessed only by men, led to girls following the lines laid down by men in the past. A powerful influence in this direction was also found in the need of showing that women could do the work of a university career, and were worthy of its opportunities.

It was this principle that made Miss Buss fight so strenuously for the opening of examinations to girls and women on exactly the same terms as to boys and men, which made her welcome Girton College so enthusiastically and send her girls there, and later, when London University opened its degrees to women, which made her so deeply attached to an institution which at last gave women an absolutely equal chance with men. This characteristic has coloured the tradition in which her old girls have been brought up ; in this generation we find them ardently supporting the newer Universities likeManchester and Wales, while the Frances Mary Buss Schools themselves are now most intimately related to the University of London and to the London County Council's system of Scholarships.

Miss Beale's views may be found clearly stated by herself in the book Work and Play in GirU Schools (Introduction). She was not at first so strongly in favour of the identity of standard for boys and girls as were Miss Buss and Miss Emily Davies, though she believed in boys and girls having similar tastes. "Not that I would assimilate the teaching of girls to that of boys, but because the teaching of both should aim at developing to the highest excellence the intellectual powers comnjon to both." She quotes in the Introduction well-known definitions by Milton, Bacon and Ruskin, of education, and continues : —

So the task of the educator is in the first instance to develop to the highest perfection all the powers of the child, that he may realise the ideal of the All-Father. But the perfection of man . . . can be attained only when as a son he enters into and co-operates with the Divine purpose in thought and heart.

Let us give to girls an invigorating dietary, physical, intellectual, moral; seclusion from evil is impossible, but we can strengthen the patient to resist it.

Miss Beale places first among subjects of study the humanities " which have to do with man — language and literature, history and art, ethics, religion and philosophy ". It appears to one whose own tradition is not that of Cheltenham that a marked characteristic of it is the excellence of that side of its work — the humanities — a matter of peculiar importance to the wealthier girls of the social class for which the Ladies* College w£is from the beginning intended.

The aims of the Girls* Public Day Schools Trust may lo English High Schools for Girls

be formulated in the words of one of its founders, Mrs. William Grey : —

Intellectual, moral and physical development, the development of a sound mind in a sound body, the training of reason to form just judgments, the discipline of the will and affections to obey the supreme law of duty, the kindling and strengthening of the love of knowledge, of beauty, of goodness, till they become governing motives of action.

Miss Mary Gurney, another of the founders, quotes this passage in a pamphlet published in 1872. The official statement of the Company as to its purpose runs : —

To supply for girls the best possible education, corresponding with the education given to boys in the great public schools of the country.

The motto of the Trust is ** Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed ".

All these several bodies of workers for the improvement of girls* education believed in large schools, not only on grounds of economy, which was a most important consideration, but on grounds of greater efficiency and better influence on character. They followed the principles laid down by the Schools' Inquiry Commission : —

Small schools are in themselves as an instrument of instruction commonly inferior to larger ones. . . . Nor are the moral Iqss than the intellectual advantages of a large school. It is easier to create a healthy public opinion.

Assuming, as we may fairly do, that the homes of our middle class are commonly favourable to the growth and development of the female character, we are inclined ourselves to the opinion that in the case of girls more than in that of boys the combination of school teaching with home influence, such as day schools admit of, is the most promising arrangement.

Mr. Bryce's recommendations in the Commissioners' Report are of special interest, as reform has proceeded along the lines he traced. He advised :—