Adaptation of the Teaching Method to Women's Education.

Adaptation of the Teaching Method to Women's Education.

 

The young girl, like the young man, needs strength, courage, self-control, a spirit of method. Like him, she must receive a general education ensuring her full physical, intellectual and moral development.

              The Method set out in this manual is therefore valid, as a whole, for both girls and boys. However, its application to female education requires certain adaptations. The " puberty crisis " is often invoked to deprive girls of all physical exercise for a fairly long period of time: if it is true that their training is sometimes difficult, requiring both that the forces be spared and the rest well balanced. However, it should be noted that the difficulties come, most of the time, from a defective circulation or from other deficiencies resulting from a too sedentary life. Medical treatment may be necessary for some young girls; but, for the majority of them, physical activity will have a salutary effect: it will suffice to avoid sudden, violent or too prolonged efforts. 

In physical training proper, the exercises may be the same for girls as for boys. However, we will insist on exercises of movement, flexibility and skill, more than those of pure strength. Particular importance will be given to quadrupedics, climbs, porters and light lifts, which are effective for the development of the abdominal muscles, the straightening of the attitude.

In sports initiation, the legitimate concerns of families will be taken into account by avoiding spectacular exhibitions; but, this reservation being made, young girls should be trained in sports exercises with the methods used for boys, in an appropriate dosage.

Young girls will be able to practice most sports and games among themselves, with the exception of violent games (football, rugby, boxing).

Exercises on apparatus and, among them, exercises on the horizontal scale, balance beam and parallel bars should be used with caution.

On the other hand, an important place will be reserved for rhythmic education, which develops flexibility and grace.

Manual work will be oriented towards the tasks of the future, those that children, the house, the garden will demand. We will strive, leaving room for fantasy, to awaken personal taste, to develop artistic sense, not to impose unnecessary constraints. Many young women have taken years to acquire a taste for domestic work, horrified from childhood by the sole fault of parents or clumsy educators : it is during adolescence that women and mothers, guardians of homes and of race, must prepare for their mission.

 

1

 

[1] National education, Revue des Deux-Mondes, August 15, 1940.

[1]

[2] Doctor CARREL, L'Homme cet Inconnu.

[3] Georges HEBERT, Physical, virile and moral education by the Natural Method , page 30.

[4] Georges HEBERT, Physical, virile and moral education by the Natural Method , page 431.

[5] On this subject, see the work of the Joinville Higher School of Physical Education. ( General Regulations of Physical Education, French Method, Part Two).

[6] National Education, Revue des Deux - Mondes, August 15, 1940.

[7] Cf. a) Instruction for the application of the New provisions concerning general and sports education in higher education - in high schools, colleges, secondary courses and upper primary schools, - in primary education : November 18 1940.

b) Instruction for the Organization of General Education in Technical Education: November 15, 1940

[8] Georges HEBERT, Physical, virile and moral education by the Natural Method , page 54.

[9] G. HEBERT, Physical, virile and moral education by the Natural Method , pages 436 and 437

[10] Cf. General Regulations of Physical Education, French Method , Part Two.

[11]                     BOYS. GIRLS                                        

From 9 years old: chicks. From 9 years old : chicks.                                          

From 10 and 11 years old : youngest. From 10 and 11 years old : youngest.                              

From 12 to 13 years old : minimal. From 12 to 13 years old : minimal.                             

From 14 to 15 years old : young cadets. 14 and 15 years younger.                           

 

From 16 to 17 years old : cadets. From 16, 17 and 18 years old: juniors.                                         

From 18 to 19 years old : juniors. From 19 years and over: adults.                                         

From 20 years and above : adults.