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I was educated in such a school myself, and my experience teaches me that there is a certain emulation or desire to stand well in the eyes of the opposite sex, which stimulates the pupils in such a school to greater mental exertion, and makes them more zealous in the pursuit of knowledge. Girls are usually quicker in their perceptions than boys of the same age; consequently boys derive the greatest benefit from this comradeship. Contact with the gentler sex also smooths the rough edges of a boy's manner, and develops the chivalrous side of his character, making him more manly, more honest and straightforward than he would be if accustomed only to the society of boys like himself. There is still a good deal of the savage in man, and this trait is more likely to develop itself when men herd together.

On the contrary, a girl who is brought up in the companionship of boys is more likely when she arrives at womanhood to estimate men at their true worth, and is less likely to become the prey of the first designing adventurer whom she meets.

Your inquiry strikes a Wisconsin man or woman somewhat as would an investigation into the advisability of allowing men and women and boys and girls to Occupy the same pews in church. Coeducation has been so thoroughly accepted and so long practiced in the West that we have to speculate as to the probable effects of a return to the old monastic system.

Mrs. D. H. JOHNSON.

In regard to the coeducation of boys and girls in high and grammar schools, I am entirely in favor of it, believing it to be for the advantage of both sexes to mingle freely in all departments of education.

I have not had a very large personal experience, but have had under my care a boy and a girl who were passing through a coeducative high school. In neither case did I see any evil or disadvantage arising from coeducation; but on the contrary a natural healthy friendship with those of the other sex. I should entirely approve of the principle of coeducation, from the lowest primary school to the highest university or professional school.

II.-OPINIONS OF FOREIGN EXPERTS.

EDNAH D. CHENEY.

The Chicago exposition and congresses of 1893 brought to this country many foreign experts deputed by their governments to study our school systems. To these critical observers coeducation appeared the most striking feature of our educational systems. They realized also that it arose out of social conditions radically unlike those that exist in the Old World, which differences are in turn strengthened and perpetuated by this policy.

COEDUCATION OF BOYS AND GIRLS.

[From report of Dr. E. Schlee, of the Realgymnasium of Altona, Prussia, delegate to the Educational Congress at Chicago.]

A very common, although not universal, feature of the American public school is the coeducation of the boys and girls, not only in the primary schools (cities) and in the country schools, as is also the case with us, but also in the grammar and high schools of cities. Furthermore, the sexes are not separated in the normal schools (Lehrer-Seminarien), in colleges, and even in universities. In Chicago coeducation is the invariable rule; in Boston and New York union and separation are both found. To us it seems strange, at least, to see, if only in photographs, boys and girls not only of 13, but even of 16 years of age, sitting together or standing in mixed rows, going through free gymnastics and exercises with wands. It is to be noticed, however, that they have single desks; also, that generally the teacher is a lady, even for the free gymnastics. All special rooms (i. e., toilet rooms, etc.) and the playground are strictly separate for boys and girls. This coeducation has not been without opposition; especially in Boston where the system has already been twice severely attacked. Ten years ago Dr. Clarke attributed to this the fact, which, however, was elsewhere disputed, that American ladies of the higher class were not very good housekeepers and mothers. The Commissioner of Education obtained reports from 300 cities and town, and these were, on the whole, favorable to mixed schools. He therefore commended this policy,

1 Gen. John Eaton.

arguing that if we must live together we must be educated for that purpose; to educate the sexes separately is to change the natural order of things.1

Later Dr. Philbrick stated that by this means (coeducation) the peculiar form of education best suited to the different sexes was prevented. But the Commissioner responded that Dr. Philbrick had had no experience in mixed schools and that the statistical returns showed only favorable results as far as regards conditions of health. At the same time the good effects upon morals were mentioned, which had resulted from coeducation in Norway and Finland, and reference was made to the unfavorable effects of the monastery education in France.

A schoolman of large experience also personally told the writer that coeducation had a favorable effect on the general behavior, on the bearing of the pupils toward each other, and on the whole discipline. Germany takes in this respect, perhaps, the right medium between France and America, but if one observes how beneficial in general is the comradeship of the children of intimate families one might, where the nature of the studies and where outer circumstances, especially in smaller places, make the union desirable, consider that the American way would be advantageous in our country also.

The discipline, indeed, is not as strict as in Germany. While formerly in America corporal punishment is said to have taken place often enough, it is now everywhere forbidden in the public schools.3 Also deprivations of liberty seem not to be practiced. Where admonition does not avail temporary exclusion from school by the principal of the school for not more than a month, by the school superintendent as long as a quarter of a year, or expulsion from school is the only means. And yet the American educational method, by reason of the many recitations of the individual scholars, gives abundant cause of disturbance and trouble of which much complaint is made.

In discussing the teaching force of our schools, Dr. Schlee dwelt also upon the spectacle, novel to a foreigner, of the general presence of women side by side with men in various business and professional pursuits. He expressed the opinion that this transfer of women from the domestic circle into careers competitive with men increased "the restlessness, haste, and intense strain in all relations of life."

Prof. Stephan Waetzoldt, of the University of Berlin, chief commissioner of the German educational exhibit at Chicago, says:

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'No distinction in the quality, kind, and aim of instruction is made in any of the elementary schools for boys and girls. In the old States the sexes are not, as a rule, instructed together in second schools, but in the Central and Western States they sit together from the primary school to the university, the latter included. This is the system of coeducation, the education common for both sexes so highly commended by Americans. At the congress of education at Chicago this subject was often discussed, and not one disapproving voice was heard. At first I was altogether misunderstood when I explained that our views on the education of girls differ essentially from those of Americans. They see only the advantages of coeducation, believed to refine the boys and strengthen the girls, and we must accept these peculiar conditions just as in domestic life. The intercourse of boys and girls, of adults and children, is altogether different from what it is among us, and I doubt whether it has a moral advantage. Certain it is, however, that the girls on the average are more intelligent than the boys; they go to school longer. In the high school of Chicago the proportion of girls to boys is 3:2. As business and politics take up the men's entire time, the women have become the supporters of the higher intellectual interests and the protectors of intellectuality in domestic life.'

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Prof. Emil Hausknecht, of Berlin, for several years professor in the National University at Tokyo, says on the subject of coeducation in America:

"As a makeshift, coeducation is better than nothing. As a principle, it entirely ignores the needs of the separate sexes, arising from the differences in the development of boys and girls. Boys and girls from the ages 14 to 18 must be differently

Hon. Andrew Jencks, superintendent of schools, Pawtucket, R. I., in Circular of Information, No. 2. 1883.

2 The reference here is to the following observation by Dr. Harris in response to an inquiry from Dr. Voss, of Norway: "With regard to Mr. Philbrick's judgment on the subject of coeducation, I think that he stood almost alone among our ablest writers on education in his opinion. The Boston schools under his charge educated the sexes separately. It may be that his experience in that city had undue influence on his opinion." [Ed.]

Corporal punishment in public schools is forbidden by law in the State of New Jersey, and in many cities by school law or by school boards. The prohibition is far from universal, but pub: lic opinion is very generally opposed to this form of punishment. [Ed.]

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treated, both in regard to the intellectual and emotional nature. Coeducation is possible, however, in America more than in Germany or elsewhere, because custom and education have given to the girl and the woman greater freedom and determination in their manners and appearance, but also give them strong protection against encroachments and improprieties. Coeducation is possible in America also, because the week has only 5 school days, Saturday being a holiday, and the school day has only 5 lessons, of which one is usually a study hour. Besides, grammar and high schools require much less severe intellectual efforts, and a much more concentrated and simple exertion of the mind than is required in our secondary schools for boys.'

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THE COEDUCATION OF THE SEXES IN THE UNITED STATES.

[Extract from a report to the minister of the public instruction, France, by Mlle. Marie Dugard, delegate to the Chicago Congresses of 1893.]

Of all the features which characterize American education, perhaps the most striking is the coeducation of young men and young women, whether in the public schools (primary and grammar schools) and in the high schools, or in the colleges, the scientific schools, and universities. At least it is most striking to a French observer, for it reveals to him a state of mind and of habits which is entirely strange to him. The sight of youths of 16 to 18 years, almost men, working, chatting, and enjoying daily comradeship with young ladies, who, by reason of their distinction, elegance, and often a precocious beauty, seem not at all like students, confounds all his ideas. He is astonished that such an ideal should have sprung up in the healthy American mind, and he does not dare to think of the results, so opposed do they seem to his moral sense. How the United States have come to adopt coeducation, a glance at their origin enables one easily to understand.

When the settlers fixed themselves in America, their first concern after having cleared a place, built log houses, and provided for the necessities of the material life, was to organize schools to the end, according to an expression of an ordinance of Massachusetts, "that the knowledge of their fathers might not be buried with them in their tombs;" but as they were too poor to give to every village two school buildings, they opened only mixed schools, where the pupils of the two sexes received the same instruction. This system, which offered real pecuniary advantages without any moral danger as the children were restrained by the bonds of relation or friendship between their families-was extended, and outlived the causes which had created it. Rich and prosperous cities covered the prairies of the settlers, palaces took the place of the log cabin of the first builder; but, among all these changes, coeducation remained.

Harmless as it is for small communities and for elementary classes, is it so still when transplanted into the new conditions of the modern life and into all orders of instruction? This is a question much agitated in the United States. It would be indeed a mistake to believe that the mixed education is so inwrought into the American customs that it never encounters opposition. In certain communities it is, on the contrary, much criticised, and several cities, especially in the East, have entirely discarded it; others retained it only in the grammar and primary schools, sometimes in the latter only.

The controversy is worth analysis, for it enables us to see the possible results of coeducation and illuminates one of the most important problems of American pedagogy.

"The organization of a being is always in harmony with the functions which nature assigns to it," say the opponents of mixed education. Now the organization of woman differs much from that of man, therefore she has different functions and should not receive the same education. These principles do not involve in them the thought that woman is inferior to man.

"The highest ideal of humanity," wrote an ardent adversary of the mixed school in a book which was formerly considered an authority, rejecting any comparison of inferiority or of superiority between the sexes, "demands that each be perfect after his nature. The lily is not superior to the rose, nor the oak tree superior to the clover; neither is the beauty of the lily the beauty of the oak, nor the purpose of the oak tree the same as that of the clover." It would be a poor horticulturist who would treat them in the same way. And he adds: "If woman subjected to masculine education intended for the development of the male organization can equal man, she ought to surpass him if she receives feminine education designed to develop the organization of woman."

From these general arguments proceeds a long series of objections-physiological, intellectual, and moral-which we will summarize:

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Coeducation is injurious to the health of the young girls; less strong than the boys, they can not endure the same work without hurting their organism; and to oblige them to study together is to substitute for the sound emulation, which reigns in the separated schools, a morbid rivalry from which their nerves must suffer. Their excessive pride prevents them from admitting that this régime exhausts them; desirous to equal young men and even to surpass them, they study with great zeal and constantly strain the activity of their brains. The results of this overpressure one can see to-day in the American woman, intellectual, refined, brilliant indeed, praised by Europeans on account of her spirit and grace, but pale, feeble, of a delicate beauty which soon vanishes, and incapable of having a large family. Therein lies an imminent danger for the future of the race, and if this is not remedied there will soon be a race of women capable of being doctors, journalists, advocates, architects, engineers; in one word, everything except wives and er mothers.

More than this, the woman, having different functions from the man, has not been endowed with masculine intelligence, and consequently it is not reasonable to impose upon her the studies and methods which are suitable for the masculine mind. "The boys should work as boys and the girls as girls. Mary can master Virgil and Euclid as well as George, but both of them would be weakened and would not attain their legitimate end if they were condemned to the same methods. In all their work women should respect their characteristic organization and remain women and not strive to be men, or they will fail utterly. For the two sexes there exists no exception to the law that their greatest power and their greatest perfection lie in the complete development of their organism.

The difference in the intellectual development of the young people of either sex is also opposed to their common education. Until the age of 16 or 17 years the young man has a mind less developed than the young girl; if he works with her he will be discouraged and give up efforts which do not offer him any success.

From the moral standpoint the consequences of coeducation are still more dangerous. It is a law that if two individuals live together the one who has the strongest personality becomes the model for the other. Educated with boys, the young girl, having a temperament weaker and more supple, copies the manners of the boys and loses her graces, while the boys do not become softer by the feminine association. Finally, it is impossible that between young men and young women, associated every day in the familiarity of classes, there should not be formed some romances, which the American education, it is true, renders inoffensive as far as regards manners, but which will nevertheless have disadvantages.

These objections seem judicious, and in the light of them it seems that coeducation ought to be abandoned, but it is necessary to hear how its partisans defend and justify its continuance.

It must be observed, in the first place, that besides the advantage of conforming to the historical origin of the United States and to the habits of the majority, it has unquestionable advantages; it is economical and permits the use of a part of the school funds for the purchase of books, apparatus, etc.; it conforms to the natural method; that is, to the organization of nature and society; finally, in uniting the minds of the two sexes in the same culture, it gives them common thoughts and tastes, and so prepares for the happiness of family life, where the principal cause of dissensions is the barrier which is raised between the ideas, the sentiments, and the belief of husband and wife.

Taking up the objections of the opponents, the defenders of the policy reply to them by considerations which are not without value.

It is assumed, they say, that woman not having the same nature as man, must not be educated in the same way. That is a poor argument, for in reality the soul has no gender. But let us admit that there exist between the man and the woman great differences on the intellectual side as on the physical; we can not draw from this an argument in favor of separate education, as the resemblances are, in spite of all, more numerous than the oppositions.

If the lily and the rose, following the figure of Dr. Clarke, require different culture, does not their common need of air, of sun, and of dew permit the horticulturist to let them bloom in the same garden? Some maintain that if woman can accomplish much with a masculine education, she would accomplish more with a feminine education. Ought one not to say the contrary, that the more dissimilar the two sexes, the more useful it is to woman to be educated with man, in order to acquire certain virile qualities which she will never possess if she remains shut up in her femininity?

It is asserted that the excessive work and the morbid rivalry of the mixed schools are injurious to the health of young women; but this dangerous emula

tion, and this overpressure, are not due so much to coeducation as to the general organization of modern instruction.

In the schools where the scholars of the two sexes are separated the programmes are so arranged that the girls study as much as the boys, and it is often seen there that emulation degenerates into unwholesome jealousy. The delicate health of women, of which advantage is taken in this discussion, originates from causes that have nothing at all to do with mixed education. It is caused rather by the enervating dryness of the climate; by the feverish activity and the unhealthful habits of American life, habits from whose debilitating influence the less robust female suffers most, and by the unhealthful dress which custom imposes upon young women and which prevents their taking as much exercise as young men, while it makes work harder for them.

"Women, and even girls at schools," says C. H. Dall, "take their studies in addition to their home cares. If boys are preparing for college, they do not have to take care of the baby, make the beds, or help to serve the meals. A great many girls at the high schools do all this.'

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To all these causes must be attributed the weak health of the American women, and it is entirely unjust to make coeducation responsible for it.

Resting upon the principle that woman has not the same mission as man, some contend, also, that it is not desirable for her to receive the same instruction. This reason had formerly some weight when woman remained at the fireside, confining her activity to domestic duties and depending upon her father, her brothers, or her husband for the care of her future; but times have changed; in the present state of our social organization many women are obliged to provide for their own needs and often for those of their families. Forced to work for their living like men, it would be unjust to refuse to those whom nature has made more feeble the same means of defense; that is, the same culture, the same knowledge. The opponents of mixed instruction acknowledge entirely this truth; several concede to the women the right to have the same knowledge as man, but they add immediately that as her mind is not the same she must not acquire them in the same way, and from this difference they derive the necessity of separate education-a false conclusion, for there exists often among certain children of the same sex greater mental differences than between young men and young women, taken as a whole, and yet no one thinks on that account of providing a special teacher for them. It is the duty of the professor to use a method flexible enough to accommodate itself to the different intellectual necessities of his pupils.

To this the answer is, that when the young men work with young women whose livelier minds are more capable of assimilation, young men are discouraged. Experience has proved, on the contrary, that the feminine quickness excites the slower intelligence of the boys. If there really have been young men repressed by the success of women, it is certain that the success of a comrade of the same sex would have had the same effect.

There remain the moral objections. According to the testimony of educators, who for a long time have directed mixed schools, young women, far from becoming masculine by the contact with boys, have, on the contrary, greater dignity and reserve, and the young men, in their turn, lose in the society of young girls that roughness of manner and that carelessness in attitude and language which characterize the men educated apart from women. As to the last objection, the gravest of all, we have here the reply of an educator whose words have special authority, because he was partly educated in mixed schools, partly in those open to boys only, and he directed for several years the mixed schools of St. Louis:

"My observations have led me to indorse the statement of Richter: To insure modesty I would advise the education of the sexes together, for 2 boys will preserve 12 girls or 2 girls 12 boys innocent amidst winks, jokes, and improprieties, merely by that instinctive sense which is the forerunner of natural modesty. But I will guarantee nothing in a school where girls are alone together, and still less where boys are.' I had noticed that the atmosphere of 'mixed' schools was desexualized, where that of separate schools seemed to have a tendency to develop sexual tension. Again, whatever tendency toward indecency might manifest itself was far more easily checked in 'mixed' schools, by reason of the crossfire of watchfulness which made intrigue far more difficult to keep secret. The brothers and sisters and other relatives and intimate acquaintances of the pupil attended the same school, and every act was scanned from two points of view-the boys being participants in boys' gossip, and the girls being participants in girls' gossip and the barriers being removed within the precincts of the family, parents could not fail to have a more faithful account of the behavior of their children than when isolated in different schools. Brothers and sisters mutually protect each other

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