Sir,-My only excuse for writing to you about education for girls is that I am the mother of two teenagers, who were as surprised as I was at the views of your correspondents.
In his letter on January 6 Mr. Jacks says that no thought has been given to a school curriculum for girls: surprising though this is, as former Director of the Department of Education at Oxford, Mr. Jacks must know his facts. That such a curriculum must be different from that for boys is thereupon assumed by your subsequent correspondents, upon the evidence that as the sex ratio alters girls are the more likely to get married. But why should we therefore infer that education for girls must become a vocational training for the nursery, the kitchen and the sick room?
Recent figures show that married women increasingly engage in a career so that even if we accept the belief in vocational training for women, the argument for increasing babycraft teaching at school is unsound.
No matter what subjects are taught, the main object must surely be to teach children how to learn and how to think, rather than what to know and what to believe.
Yours faithfully, MARGARET DAWES. 8, Belbroughton Road, Oxford.
Sir-What about a suitable education for future fathers?
Yours sincerely, Elvira Witney. The Lodge, King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth, Lincolnshire.
The Times,
20 January 1960
Sir,-The question of woman's education has come full circle. It is suggested that girls should drop mathematics and classics because soon there will be no old maids. The educated woman, who marries young, spends her days in lonely drudgery and is too exhausted of an evening to enjoy the companionship of her intellectual equals, who have spent the day in intelligent company. However much she may be able to earn outside her home, she has small chance of finding other women who will accept the work and wages she can offer.
The mistake we make is to think that the majority of girls are capable of a university education. They are not. The majority do not love learning, and only pine to be married as soon as they can escape from the typing-pool and the shop counter. If these girls could be taught the domestic arts which will stand them in good stead when they achieve their aim, they might, until that happy day, enable the comparatively few women who can win high academic honours to employ their earning powers.
Domestic service should once again be respected as a skilled trade, and a university education regarded as a privilege. It is only sentimental snobbery which condemns a woman to work for which she is unfitted.
Yours faithfully, Helen Laybourne, 16, The College, Durham, Jan. 17.
Sir,-While heartily agreeing with recent correspondents in your columns on the importance to-day of a more general curriculum in girls' schools, surely the changing balance of the sexes in the population has implications for boys' education which must not be overlooked.
One-third of the married women in this country also goes out to work. In these circumstances, the domestic duties must inevitably fall more equally on husband and wife. Is this not a strong argument for the inclusion of domestic subjects in the curriculum of every boys' school, since nowadays even the lawyer or professor is apt to find himself changing nappies?
I remain, Sir, yours truly, Priscilla Cornwall-Jones, 47a, Prince of Wales Mansions, S.W.11.
.lcThe 1959 Crowther report reviewed the workings of the educational system. One of the ideas that came out of it was that girls should be taught home-making skills. This provoked a debate in the letters pages of The Times.
