i2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with strictly educational questions, and in part with general social 

 considerations, differ in a somewhat suggestive manner as concerns one 

 particular from those which were most commonly encountered in the 

 early days of coeducation. The most frequent probably of all criticisms 

 was the hygienic one. Although it was a matter of prehistoric knowl- 

 edge that women could work all day in the field, many learned persons 

 predicted a speedy decline for the audacious young female who at- 

 tempted to follow the same collegiate course as her brother. The young 

 person referred to has, however, both in coeducational colleges and in 

 colleges for women, generally insisted on the retention of oppressively 

 good health. And she has done even worse things to discredit the gen- 

 eral calling of prophet by discovering numbers of educated men who 

 were willing and eager to attempt matrimony with her assistance. Worst 

 of all, when she has married, she has had a normal number of vigorous 

 children. The irreconcilables on these points generally deny them- 

 selves the luxury of the available statistics. This is by no means to 

 call in question the possibility held out to an injudicious girl of ruining 

 her health by social and mental dissipation at a coeducational college. 

 She can in this way undoubtedly emulate some of her sisters at women's 

 colleges and certain of her brothers at men's universities. 



But the intelligent contemporary opponent of coeducation has largely 

 lost interest in the health of college women, and he has of late more 

 often turned his attention to the baleful influence of the sex on social 

 and intellectual standards. It is maintained, for instance, by an oc- 

 casional instructor that women lower the level of scholarship in his 

 classes. He finds it impossible to make such rigorous exactions of 

 them as he would of men, and in consequence the whole tone of his class 

 is contaminated. There seems reason to believe that this opinion is 

 largely subjective in its basis, and it is suggestively rare on the lips 

 of instructors educated in coeducational institutions. The instructor 

 may have allowed himself to secure from his classes what he deemed 

 the best work by the aid of a class room manner which he properly 

 considers incompatible with the presence of ladies. In such cases one 

 may fairly question the propriety of the pedagogical method. He may 

 cherish a purely sentimental attitude toward women. This is a not 

 infrequent circumstance in the case of young men brought up in men's 

 colleges, and exposed for the first time to the ravages of coeducation. 

 In this case time or matrimony or both are likely to cure his complaint. 

 Certainly there are plenty of instructors who have taught in men's 

 colleges without detecting any such decline of standard upon transfer- 

 ring the scene of their labors to coeducational institutions. Indeed, 

 a contrary opinion has been not infrequently expressed, and one even 

 hears the antithetical argument soberly advanced that women inevitably 



