THE REACTION FROM COEDUCATION. 13 



outstrip the men in mere class room exercises, and that the latter should 

 consequently be spared such depressing competition. A few eminent 

 Harvard professors have even gone so far as to rank their students at 

 Eadcliffe higher than the men in the corresponding Harvard classes. 

 This may of course be the exception which proves the rule. One may 

 safely surmise that there are no wider differences in point of scholar- 

 ship between coeducational institutions as a class and men's colleges, 

 than there are among men's colleges themselves. Indeed, in elective 

 courses, in which the men and women are represented in anything like 

 equal numbers, a common verdict of instructors concerning their rela- 

 tive merits is that the women are on the average the better students. 

 They seldom attain the eminence of the ablest men, but the ablest men 

 are excessively rare. There is certainly no palpable proof and not even 

 good circumstantial evidence to convict women of lowering the under- 

 graduate standards of scholarship. 



A subtler form of this same criticism aimed at American education 

 in general, but especially applicable to coeducational institutions, is the 

 assertion that women exercise a repressive influence upon the spirit 

 of research for which they have as a sex neither capacity nor apprecia- 

 tion. Inasmuch as a real university must get its highest inspiration 

 from the spirit of investigation it is obviously a matter of paramount 

 importance to prevent women from securing any considerable influence 

 in university life. This argument can be made rhetorically effective, 

 but it begs the whole question and will carry no conviction to one not 

 already convinced. 



The disrespect for women's intellectual capacity, indicated in the 

 above criticisms, sometimes takes still another form in the charge 

 that as a class women are not serious-minded in their work. For many 

 of them, it is said, life is a game with matrimony as its principal stake, 

 and college work is but an amusing episode. Coupled with another 

 frequent criticism based upon the professional tendencies of which we 

 have already spoken, i. e., that the intellectual horizon of college women 

 is too often bounded by purely utilitarian considerations of the bread 

 and butter world of pedagogics, this leaves women in possession of few 

 academic virtues. Apparently they are either too strenuous or too 

 flippant, and both characteristics are institutionally undesirable. 



It must be remembered that coeducational colleges inconsiderately 

 differ very widely from one another, and so render the task of the 

 generalizer extremely hazardous. Unquestionably one could find in- 

 stitutions where the frivolous society girl is overmuch in evidence, 

 whereas in others the uncomely drudge doth too much abound, and 

 probably neither of these young persons is wholesome in excess. But 

 it is needless to say that in every coeducational university of impor- 



