I know of what I am writing here, and how real is the prejudice that will have to be overcome. In my own school I was met with this trouble again and again. The girls resented any mention of their menstrual function, and expressed often real anger and disgust when I required them to tell me the dates of their monthly periods, so that I might see they had extra food, more rest, and lighter studies. The answer that usually was given to me was this: “My mother never wanted me to tell her; I took no notice when I was at home.” What an unconscious indictment of the mothers! Often it was after long and patient effort only that I gained my way, and brought my girls to speak to me naturally about this function. I had the very hardest work to free their thoughts from the deeply implanted feelings of shame and disgust: in many cases I failed altogether, and I cannot, indeed, be sure that I ever fully succeeded. Of course, my failures were the result of harm that had been done much earlier in the home.
It was at this time of my life, now long years ago, when these considerations were forced upon my attention by my failures with my elder pupils, that I was first led to desire special classes for girls to enter at the age of puberty, where the life, the work, and the aims were separate and quite different from the ordinary school. It is so much easier to do the wise thing, if what you are doing is a matter of course, and not something you start for yourself.
I am convinced of the value that would be gained for life from the plan I am advocating. I would begin with these special classes, but I want more than that to be done. A much better course would be that separate adolescent schools should be provided, preferably in the country, where all work as well as play could be done out of doors. All girls would enter before the commencement of puberty, and would stay in one of these special adolescent schools for two or three years or longer. The work would be organised entirely to meet the needs of the individual girl; there must be no set courses of study, no hide-bound rules, and above all no examinations to be crammed for. In my opinion, which was formed from my own experience in my school, girls should do hardly any steady work for one year before and two years after puberty; they cannot, I am certain, work continuously without peril. Mental overwork or any kind of strain destroys the nervous resistance and tends to that irritable weakness which makes the rankest ground for all sexual ill health, and may work to establish evil habits in ways not yet openly recognised. The kind of work done should be chosen by the girl herself; there should be far more opportunity for rest and for play, and, while guarding against opportunities for harmful idleness, any kind of mental or bodily strain must be avoided. Hard study, if this is necessary, will come later at the close of this special school period. But I plead for all girls during the difficult time of their metamorphosis from the girl to the woman to leave them much more largely than we do at present to nature and to themselves.