Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescent girls and their education. In G. S. Hall, Adolescence its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology sex, crime, religion and education, Vol. 2, pp. 561-647). New York, NY, US: D Appleton & Company.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10618-009
This chapter focuses on the education of adolescent girls. After examining differences of the sexes in strength, mortality, brain, senses, agility, mental traits, crime, disposition, variability, conservation, and progressive sexual divergence, the author examines medical and biological views in other lands and in this country since Dr. E. H. Clarke. The author next discusses health and its tests, and the danger of overdrawing reserves. The issue of marriage of educated women and the latest statistics or nubility rates of male and female colleges are presented. The author also describes fecundity in earlier generations in America and sterility in this and other countries, and its causes and stages. The best age for parenthood in mother and in father is presented, as are the effects of overnutrition and mental strain. Statistics of children of graduates of girls' colleges compared with rate of reproduction of male graduates are examined, and the dangers of late marriages and of only children are addressed. Fertility as a test of civilization, individuation versus genesis, and dominance of the instinct for marriage and motherhood in normal women and substitutes provided for it are all discussed. Regarding education, New English opinions of coeducation of various degrees are described, and the advantages and dangers for both boys and girls are presented, particularly in light of "The age of eighteen". Changes to the dollish, disappointed, and devotee type, and dangers of aping man-made education and of complacency are examined. Arrest in the first stages of a movement just begun, training for spinsterhood and self-support versus for maternity, and hints and general outlines of a higher education for girls based on their nature and needs and not on convention or the demands of feminists are presented. The author concludes with examining branches of such a curriculum, methods of this curriculum, and feminine hygiene. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)