Young women, as we find them, have not the same powers of endurance, in severe and protracted study, that young men hive; but, on the other hand, they do much of their work with greater facility. In the languages, in rhetoric, and belles-lettres, for instance, they are apter pupils than their brothers. Perhaps we do not find them as strong or original mathematicians as young men, but still it must be said that if the two most successful scholars of the last seven years, with us, were to be named in this department both sexes would be represented. They recite what they know better, on the average, than young men. The sexes seem to take different results from the same course. The philosophic phases of a subject always seem to me to take deeper hold of young men. They have "Darwinism," for instance, harder. It seems to me that a more symmetrical view is obobtained when a subject has been brought under both points of vision.”

A member of the St. Lawrence University, of New York, writes in reference to the women students, that "their average proficiency in all studies is quite as high as that of the young men "; and President Magoun of Iowa College has likewise affirmed: "It has not been found that young ladies, equally prepared, were at all behind young men, in the more difficult college duties,-mathematics, languages, science, or philosophy.” 3

The evidence is, therefore, abundant and explicit that the scholarship of the women is as high as the scholarship of the men in a college which admits both sexes. But intellectual training is of small worth in comparison with moral culture. What, then, are the results of co-education in the domain of personal character? Have immoralities prevailed? Has woman become mannish? Has the peach been made to lose its bloom? Have the reserve, the delicacy, the tenderness, qualities that are the special adornment of womanhood, -been sacrificed or even impaired? The testimony is unanimous in the negative, President White, in the paper from which an extract has already been made, writes:

"That there may be some danger to certain classes of women. shallow in character and weak in mind, is not unlikely, but of all women these are the least likely to involve themselves in the labor of preparation for the university or of going on with its courses of study. As to the good effect on the women who have actually entered the colleges, the testimony is ample. The Committee, in its visits, found no opposing statement either from college officers, students of either sex, or citizens of university towns, and all their observations failed to detect any symptoms of any loss of the distinctive womanly qualities so highly prized. Nor have they found that those who have been thus educated have shown any lack of these qualities

1 Ibid, p. 270-71.

2 Old and New, Vol. IV., p. 129.

Ibid., p. 760.

*

in after-life. On the contrary, it would be hard to find a body of women combining these qualities more nobly than the matrons of this State and surrounding States who have graduated at the academies and normal schools. These qualities they have, by the agreement of all observers, in a very much higher degree than the women of countries where a semi-conventual system of education is adopted."

Six years after Cornell University was opened to women it was affirmed, it is worthy to note, by one of its members, that "the whole tone of the University has greatly improved." 2

The testimony of President Fairchild is no less explicit :

"You would know whether the result with us has been a large accession to the numbers of coarse, 'strong-minded' women in the offensive sense of the word; and I say without hesitation that I do not know of a single instance of such a product as the result of our system of education. To show that our system of education does not bewilder woman with a vain ambition, or tend to turn her aside from the work which God has impressed upon her whole constitution, I may state that of the eighty-four ladies that have taken the college course twenty-seven only are unmarried. Of these twenty-seven, four died early, and of the remaining twenty-three, twenty are graduates of less than six years' standing. The statistics of the graduates. of the Ladies' Course would give essentially the same result." 3

Similar sentiments have been expressed by Horace Mann and Mrs. Mann, regarding the college of which he was the first president. President Canfield of the University of Kansas writes that there have passed "sixteen years of radical co-education without a whisper of scandal." The president of Butler University, Indiana, says:

4

"Let me assure you that a better set of students than ours it would be difficult to find. On no occasion whatever has discipline been made necessary by the association of the sexes. Our students are gentle and modest on the one hand, polite and gallant on the other, while on both they are attentive, industrious, and obedient." 5

Many testimonies of a general character in favor of the system might be presented. They refer, in part, to points already discussed. The president of the University of Michigan says:

"Women graduates are doing their full part in winning a reputation for Michigan University, and are justifying the wisdom of the Regents who opened to them the opportunities for a thorough classical training."

1 Orton's Liberal Education of Women, p. 219-20.

2 Ibid., p. 249-50,

8 Report of the Mass. Society for the University Education of Women, 1880, p. 18. 4 The Nation, No. 932, p. 401.

* Report of the Mass. Society for the University Education of Women, 1880, p. 20. 6 Ibid., p. 18.

The president of the University of Wisconsin also writes:

"After an experience of ten years in large college-classes, I am more than convinced of the suitableness of co-education: I believe it to be preëminently the fitting method of training our youth. I can only briefly indicate my reasons.

The fears so often expressed in reference to its effects on manners, on health, on the standard of scholarship, on the type of female character, have not been found by me to be true, but quite the reverse of the truth. On the other hand, this method gives a vigor, insight, and scope to higher education not attainable under the narrower conditions of sexual division. It is impossible to secure breadth without breadth.

Both men and women should encounter the conditions of life in regular sequence as they arise. A period of seclusion is no preparation for new, closer, and more responsible contact. It is very pitiful that some doctrinaire should have the power to prepare for women a private regimen that excludes a portion of the most weighty conditions and influences of that life which we have actually to encounter.

While much may be said in behalf of one, two, or three colleges recently provided for women, most of the instructfon furnished them is, and will remain, greatly inferior, to that offered to young men. Even the best of this instruction is inferior in the scope of its influence to that furnished in our older institutions, which have behind them the gathered force of our national life. It is uneconomical in theory and impossible in practice, to provide a second series of colleges equal in extension and educational force to those already in existence.

Seclusion in the education of women means weakness, and weakness means continued subjectlon to a faulty conventional sentiment; seclusion means inferiority, and. this inferiority is not to be measured by the distance between the best institutions open respectively to young men and young women, but by the distance from center to center, the difference of the average work in the two directions.”

The President of Boston University affirms the satisfactory character of the results of co-education in the institution which he serves. When the present president of Columbia College was the chief executive officer of the University of Alabama, at Tuscaloosa, it was his custom to invite the attendance on his lectures of young women from a neighboring female seminary. The effect of this association upon the manners of the young men was most advantageous, and the results were so satisfactory that the example was followed by other officers of the University.

The results of the system generally known as the "Harvard Annex," as far as they have any bearing upon this question, are in 1The Critic, No. 66, p. 154-5.

favor of co education. This system is simply that the professors of the University are teaching private classes of young women in the college studies. In speaking of this system the Rev. Prof. A. P. Peabody has said:

"I can see no reason why young men and young women may not study and recite together as well as talk, sing, and dance together. The reason usually given why they should not is purely a relic of some tradition, the reason for which has been entirely lost to the memory of man. When we think that they are to be together in the building, the most innocent and fitting of all associations would seem to be an association in the very highest pursuits, next to their eternal well-being, in which they can be engaged. There is no reason why association in this matter should be postponed."

Although Columbia College, despite the recommendations of its president, refuses to admit women to its classes it has yet provided an arrangement which offers even more advantages than the Harvard. Annex. The officers of the college examine women for entrance to a four-year course of duty, prescribe this course, which for the first two years is obligatory, and for the second two elective; examine students; and at the close grant a certificate which stands in the place of a degree. This system is inaugurated in the college year of 1883-84. Neither its details nor its results are at present known. But the fact indicates at least progress in the provisions for the higher education of women; and in the view of many it shows an advance toward the introduction of co-education into this most conservative institution.

The scope of this paper fails to permit extended reference to the education of European women. England has four universities of ancient establishment,-Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Durham. Professors at Oxford have admitted women to their lectures, and Somerville College and Lady Margaret Hall have recently been opened for the special use of female students. Cambridge admits women to its Honor examinations; and its professors instruct the students of Girton College and Newnham Hall. London University admits women to degrees and to honors on the same terms as men ; and Durham University grants to them degrees in arts.

From the seventh to the fifteenth century English women received precisely the same education as English men. It was not till the convent schools were swept away in the sixteenth century that they were denied those educational facilities which the last quarter of the nineteenth century is restoring.

MANUAL TRAINING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

BY RAY GREENE HULING, A.M.

A common vocabulary is a great help to clearness of thinking, when views upon any subject are interchanged. Let us, therefore, set out in the present discussion with a mutual agreement as to the meaning of a few terms which are sometimes rather carelessly used in remarks upon the matter in hand. They are industrial education, technical education, "handwork schools," "the creative method," and manual training.

Industrial education should mean the process of preparation for some special form of manual labor. It takes the child at a proper age, supplies him with suitable material and instruction, and, in time, sends him forth to do by himself the work of a carpenter, a machinist, or some other artisan. Formerly, the system of apprenticeship afforded ample means of obtaining such an education; now that that custom has fallen into less frequent use, it is not clear what there is for the great body of workingmen to supply its place. The State has an assured right to provide education of this sort, and Massachusetts is doing it by the State Agricultural College at Amherst, as well as in all its penal institutions which aim at reformation, and not simply at detention and punishment. The several towns and cities, also, since 1872 have enjoyed the legal right to maintain schools for industrial education, but I am not aware that any are now using the privilege. While, therefore, right in itself and permissible by statute, such education, having for its object preparation for some special employment, is not a desirable addition to our public school system; for no form of employment is so universal in application that it can fairly ask the public to supply vacancies in its ranks, while other occupations are less favored. Moreover, the State would violate the rights of children should it venture to prescribe during the school age their future avocation. I am by no means, then, prepared to advocate the introduction of industrial education, as I have defined the term, into the public school.

Technical education, so far as I have observed the use of the expression, seems to be employed with reference to the higher grades of industrial education, especially when combined with instruction in

1 Public Statutes of Massachusetts; chap. 44, sec. 8,