For thirty years the Ladybarn House School at Withington has been doing pioneering work for education. The school, as we reported last week, has ceased to be a private school and has become one of the permanent educational institutions of Manchester. This is therefore an appropriate time in which to give some account of its distinctive aims and methods, for while they are sufficiently well known to those directly interested in education, they are not so to the general public. The school was started in 1873 by Mr. W. H. Herford, the father of the present head mistress, as an attempt to put into practice some of the ideals of Froebel and Pestalozzi. Mr. Herford, ╥a pioneer in dark days,╙ has seen the newer teaching at work in Switzerland and Germany, and he was impressed with the urgent need of reform in English methods. The school began with nine pupils, and for a long time it maintained an uphill struggle. Eleven years after its foundation it had weathered its early difficulties and was sound financially. A kindergarten, for children under six years of age, was added in 1878. There are now about seventy boys and girls working and playing together at Ladybarn House.
The cardinal principle of the school is its thorough application of what is known as ╥co-education.╙ That is, boys and girls are taken between the ages of four and thirteen and taught in the same class, without distinction of sex. No distinction is made either in work or in play. As far as possible the balance of the sexes is kept even, for when the boys largely outnumber the girls, or the girls the boys, the purposes of co-education are apt to be defeated. Co-education is of course still a matter of controversy among education experts, though much less so in regard to younger than to older children. Those responsible for the Ladybarn School at least have no doubts as to the efficacy of the system. Thirty years of experience have taught them that when properly conducted co-education is altogether salutary. The evils which the opponents of the system hold up as bogeys have not been met with. It has been found, to quote the testimony of Miss Herford, ╥that the presence of boys and girls in every class has been a stimulus to good work in both teacher and taught.╙ The common objection that to exact the same amount of work from girls as from boys must unduly strain the powers of the girls has proved not to be well founded, at least as regards children of the age attending this school.
