I. On Mixed Schools

179. - On account of the serious controversies concerning these matters, it seems necessary to inquire what is to be thought of mixed schools, or of the common education of both sexes (coeducation).

We do not speak of that system of common education which is promoted with an intention hostile to religion and Catholic morals, so that the tenets of the naturalists may prevail more easily. Formation of this kind is commended indiscriminately; it has as its executors impious schoolmasters, until they can obtain what they call "the educating couple" ¹; nor does it pay even the least attention to the customs of the region and the character of the people. The bishops of France rightly pronounced it to be abhorrent; and they desired that Catholics should strive by every means to prevent it from being forcibly thrust upon the parents of France ².

¹ That is, two spouses (united by free love) who educate both sexes by common labor.

² Cf. La coéducation des sexes; Son immoralité et son illégalité. Canon Tournier, Action catholique, Paris.

But mixed schools exist by sufficiently general usage in England and in several English colonies, in which, up to the age of thirteen or fourteen years, adolescents of both sexes are educated in a common class and exercise games together in a common playground.

In the United States of North America, a similar institution flourishes greatly among Protestants; it is admitted more rarely by Catholics.

Hence that system has also found Catholic defenders, who, speaking more moderately and abstaining from universal commendation of this institution, praise these schools because they imitate the rationale of the family more closely; because by the contention and emulation of both sexes they add incentives to labor; and because girls, by their presence, influence the polished civility of adolescents. They themselves nevertheless do not will that this institution be destined for that age in which vain loves are to be feared.

But that the affections of the soul thereby become purer; that adolescents transfer more successfully to the other sex an inclination which sought a less good satisfaction among the same sex: Protestants or men alien from religion rather seem to contend these things ³.

³ Cf. the authors cited in Mendousse, pp. 47-48, 62-65.

Therefore persons and places are to be distinguished by an equitable judge. Custom also must be considered. For it brings it about that certain things flourish without great disadvantages in one region to which you could not prudently give a beginning in another region.

Nevertheless, this common education seems to us to be little worthy of approval in itself. For:

1. Does not nature, which has so distinguished the two sexes that one would complete the other, seem to demand that they be formed under a distinct rationale, accommodated to the proper character and destiny of each sex?

Compayré himself fears this: "In this daily and incessant contact of the two sexes, it is to be feared that one may be drawn too much into the sphere of the other; that young girls, assuming boyish manners, may become too virile, or that, on the contrary, young men may allow themselves to be softened and rendered effeminate" ⁴.

⁴ Revue philosophique, vol. 61 (1906), p. 583.

2. After the age in which boys are accustomed to repel girls, there follows the age in which they break forth into facile mutual loves.

At the former age, does not nature itself seem to demand separation by that very aversion of mind? But at the latter, who would not see the danger of constant association among adolescents of both sexes whose will is not yet firm? Nor let the example of the family be opposed. For the reverence of piety, which sanctifies the association of a brother with his sister, is absent from that fellowship of adolescents of different families.

As Mendousse himself writes ⁵: "If one reflects that, during the first years which follow puberty, there is scarcely any excitation which cannot assume an erotic character, one is justified in asking to what point association with the other sex, and consequently the multiplication of stimuli for the senses and the imagination, could contribute to calming the obsession of desire.... Although the English 'experimentalists' believe coeducation advantageous at the beginning of adolescence, it nevertheless seems indeed that at that time it is not without disadvantages.... The comradeships which are established rarely have that mystical nuance in which nascent sensibility delights, and sometimes become a source of disenchantment."

⁵ L'âme de l'adolescent, pp. 47 and 63.

What of the fact that marriages themselves can thereby become less desirable? "The adolescent... risks being immunized when his hour comes, and making himself a celibate before the name applies" ⁶. They also observe in America that, on account of these mixed schools, loves among adolescents of the same sex are no fewer in number than elsewhere ⁷.

⁶ Ibid., p. 64.

⁷ Ibid.

Wherefore, in America itself, the fortune of the common school seems to be declining ⁸.

⁸ Ibid., p. 63, note.

This, therefore, will be our conclusion:

Mixed schools are never to be positively commended in themselves, or as though they were of themselves better than separate schools. Nor do they seem consonant with the wishes of nature. In some parts they do less harm than elsewhere, indeed they are seen to be almost free of disadvantages.

How much more prudently than the supporters of institutions of this kind did the pagan Quintilian write, when he disapproved schools common to various ages: "I do not approve of boys sitting mixed with adolescents. For even if a man such as ought to be placed over studies and morals can keep the youth also modest, nevertheless weakness must be separated from the more robust, and one must be free not only from the crime of baseness, but also from suspicion" ⁹.

⁹ Book 2, chapter 2.