Participants, Literature and Themes

In the Ecole d'Humanite (an international boarding school founded by Paul Geheeb in 1934) an experimental course in patriarchal attitudes and the special problems of women in our society was held from January to April, 1974. The class met six days a week for 75 minutes each day. The 8 participants (4 boys and 4 girls ranging in age from 16 to 18 and coming from German- and French-speaking Switzerland, Yugoslavia and the United States) were capable of communicating in both English and German and these two languages were utilized for discussion, reading and written work. Each student read a book outside of class and reported on it to the others. The works read included de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex', Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique', Engel's 'The Origin of the Family', 'Private Property and the State', Mead's 'Male and Female', Vaerting's 'The Dominant Sex', etc. In class excerpts were read from J. S. Mill's 'On the Subjection of Women', Morgan's 'The Descent of Woman', Greer's 'The Female Eunuch' as well as articles from the daily press. Two literary works were read and discussed—Shakespeare's 'The Taming of the Shrew' and Ibsen's 'A Doll's House'. Written assignments were based on such topics as 'The Ideal Man/Woman', 'A Man/Woman I could not Stand', 'My Life Story Written at the age of 80', the description of a feeling, how Katharina felt under Petruchio's regime, etc.

All written work was read aloud and discussed. Students were encouraged to speak of their own experiences and feelings and the discussion was allowed to digress into many such 'side issues' as the importance of physical attractiveness in a relationship, the significance of dirty jokes, why boys dislike dressing up as girls for a masquerade or dancing the girl's part in a folkdance whereas girls don't mind playing the male role, why girls don't want to feel superior to their boyfriends, what an 'image' is and what sort of toys the members played with when they were small.

Historical aspects of the women's situation were touched upon as well as the current legal situation and new developments in the women's movement.

Class Discussions

An example of a class discussion follows. The assignment was to make a list of typically female and typically male traits. On this day, February 7th, we discussed Alex's list. One female trait he named was tenderness.

Archie:	I don't understand why that's purely feminine.
Olivier:	Neither do I.
Alex:	Well, men have to be tough, hard. That's the
	way women like them. 
Natalie:Is that true? 
Molly:	No! 
Marianne:Most women probably do like men to be strong, 
	but it's silly.

All talk of the cult of muscles, Mr Universe, Charles Atlas, etc. General consensus: there must be women who want strong men as protectors, who like being protected.

Natalie:But we've wandered from the subject of 
	tenderness as a female trait.  
	What is tenderness anyway?
Christina:When you're tender you show soft, gentle feelings.
Ted:	Kindness, pity, care.
Anka:	If you show your feeling by crying that's a sign 
	of tenderness.

Natalie asks each one when he or she last cried. Girls: Yesterday, last week, two days ago, three weeks ago. Boys: Can't remember, three years ago, long ago, not long ago.

Natalie: Would you be ashamed to cry in public? 4 girls: No. 3 boys: Yes. 1 boy: No, I'm human, too, after all. If Marianne can cry, why can't I?

Natalie:Can you think of other expressions of tenderness? 
Christina:Girls hug each other in public. 
	Boys don't. Why is that?
Molly:	In France where I worked last summer men kissed 
	each other.
Others:	In Italy and Spain, too.
Alex:	Why do we behave differently?
Anka:	We can't be sure that those men feel more tender.
Alex:	But a man has to be hard. He has to go out
	and fight in the world.
Christina:That's right. He has to struggle to succeed.
Marianne:Some women succeed too.
Natalie:Are successful women hard?
Archie:	They turn into men. Look at Golda Meir.
Christina:But how should we be? Like men? Not like men? 
	How should women be?        

Christina's question could not be answered. The class realized that it expressed succinctly one baffling feminist dilemma: woman recognizes that what she is has been artificially cultivated; she rejects patterning herself after those who have subjugated her; how does she discover and realize her true nature?

Students Feedback

Toward the close of the term the students wrote down some of their impressions of what they had learned in the course.

Olivier:
In this course, I discovered many things in myself that were unknown to me before. Through discussions with my classmates of both sexes I was made aware of the fact that the education I got from my parents' generation and from society had been emphasizing the difference between male and female and that this education had falsified my relations with the other sex.

Anka:
Through our course I have for the first time become conscious of woman's position in the past centuries and today. Relationships and attitudes in our school are different from those in ordinary schools. The girls have the same rights and, for example, have just as much sport instruction as the boys, and the boys take cooking, sewing and knitting as well as the girls. We all do the cleaning together and boys don't feel inferior for doing housework. I realized that prejudice can be combatted through education.

Molly:
I concerned myself with questions that I had always avoided. I tried to express feelings in words even though my ideas were confusedly humming in my head. The feelings were unclear, the thoughts were unclear, but in our discussions we stimulated each other and talked and talked until our thoughts became clear. At first we were all unsure of ourselves but now that we've been workinq toqether for weeks and have praised and criticized each other we've become a group whose members can learn a lot from each other.

Marianne:
Trying to describe my ideal man was Interesting but very difficult. I had never thought about such a thing—it seemed so obvious. In the discussions my conception changed and expanded through hearing the others' ideas.

Ted:
The talks and our readings have really shown the extent to which man has gone to subjugate women.

Christina:
How and as what should I take my place in society? What do we expect of a man and what of a woman? There are many questions for which we found no answer, but one thing at least became clear to me in considering the laws — something must be done to change them.

Archie:
I never realized all that was involved in the relationship between man and woman or between a boy and a girl - all the advantages and disadvantages and consequences and peculiarities. Now I am beginning to understand the meaning of the word 'emancipation'. I think this course can be of great significance to us in our later life.