Our Androcentric Culture, or The Man Made World

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

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,

ial function, what has been the ef

s 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

nt, the nursemaid, and its second, the "dame-school"; and on the other the influence of the d

and economic conditions, and is further modified by them. All these conditions, so far, have been of androcentric character; but what we call education

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

an equal education for boy and girl. When this demand was first made, by women of unusual calibre, and by men sufficiently human to over

omen were met as a deliberate attempt to "unsex" themselves and become men. To be a woman was to be ignorant, uneducated; to be

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 character

on the entrance of a few straggling and necessarily inferior feminine beginners into a trade or profession, those in possessi

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 unki

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, si

ect 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 te

n 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! I

e, if only for a moment, from

h sex distinction serves is by far the greater. To be feminine-if one were nothing el

knowledge, his skill, his experience, his organization and specialization, he makes and manages the world. All this is huma

tion, she does bring her special feminine characteris

ness 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 proces

y feminine influence? What are these

ves 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 sys

s most needed, to teach all to their fullest capacity, to

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 ex

n 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 s

rs, male pupils, male critics and spectators, are loud in their admiration for the "manliness" developed by the craft, courage, co-ordinative power and general

s 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 o

anness. 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 mea

ore prepotent sire than the other, though even that is not certain; he may, and probably will, appeal more strongl

ur educational system is thwarted and hindered, not as Prof. Wendell and his li

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 g

equal place in life for the feminine characteristics, so long beli

at both can do together will be accepted as human; but what either boys or girls have to retire

ed courage in male animals is mere belligerence, the fighting instinct. To meet an adversary of his own sort is a universal masculine trait; two father

measures; to learn the processes of constructive citizenship. We need an education which shall give its facts in the order of their importan

x in our children, by dress and all its limitations, by special teaching of what is "ladylike" and "manly." The boy is allowed a freedom of experience far beyond

where the limitations of women have checked race progress most thoroughly. Here hereditary influence was constantly offset by the advance of the male. Social selection did develop higher types of men, though sex-select

he criticism of Europeans on American women. "Your women are so sexless!" they say, meaning merely that our women have human qualitie

hown, and could have, by profuse illustration, was that the faces of boy and girl differ but slightly, and the faces of old men and women differ as little, sometimes not at all; while the face of the woman approximates the human more closely t

mininity first, and next for qualities of submissiven

w rare it is to find a mother capable of a dispassionate appreciation of educative values. Books in infant education and child culture generally are read by teachers more than mothers, so our public libraries prove. The mother-instinct, quite suitable and sufficient in animals, is by n

ild to the action of untaught, unbridled mother-instinct, that suggestions as to a b

of us in being better off for competent care and service. It seems delightfully absurd to these reactionaries that ages of human progress should be of any benefit to babies, save, indeed, as their more human fathers, specialized and org

ositions. The time is coming when the human mother will recognize the educative possibilities of early childhood, learn

an. We shall learn from wide and long experience to anticipate and provide for the steps of the unfolding mind, and train it, th

us human motherhood. It would require a quite different status of wifehood, womanhood, gi