[The Family and it’s Members by Anna Garlin Spencer]@TWC D-Link bookThe Family and it’s Members CHAPTER XIV 10/34
Some basic facts must be in mind when we attempt to answer the question, Shall we try for somewhat divergent schooling for the two sexes? First of all, we must remember that we have inherited the fruits of a long race-experience in which men and women were for the most part so separated from, each other in functioning that the education of boys and girls was made wholly unlike after sex-differentiation began, and sometimes, as in Sparta, before that period.
The difference in ideal and in method of training was not, as some have said, that "boys were trained for human and socialized work" and "girls were fitted for personal and generally menial service alone." Both were trained for personal character and for social ends.
The men were tied to the land, and the political order, and the family responsibility for parenthood, and some distinct personal service in behalf of the group life, as were the women.
The difference, the tremendous difference, was this: that the service demanded of men, whatever their part or lot might be, was early seen to require a definite schooling for some particular vocation, demanding some measure of intellectual concentration and technical skill; while the service demanded of women was supposed to be of a nature requiring only general apprenticeship within the family life.
The specialization of labor, as is often shown, took from that family apprenticeship of women, one by one, its vocational elements of manual work until the housemother seemed to need only that general ability which can quickly and wisely use the fruits of others' expert knowledge and technical training.
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