24 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Turning to the present and the future, and applying standards 

 properly applicable to the coeducational system, it must be admitted 

 that on the instructional side only one difficulty of serious import ap- 

 pears to exist. This is the tendency toward sex segregation in certain 

 courses of which we have already spoken at length. The most un- 

 equivocal advantages of coeducation spring from the fact of joint 

 instruction, and any influences which tend to preclude this are unfor- 

 tunate. For the various other alleged shortcomings of the system on 

 this side, there is no conclusive evidence and opinion is hopelessly 

 diverse. Furthermore, the criticisms which are advanced, so far as 

 they are capable of satisfactory proof, concern the merely incidental 

 and obviously remediable excrescences of the system, and not its funda- 

 mental principles. On the other hand there is almost complete una- 

 nimity of opinion regarding the difficulties actual and possible on the 

 social side of coeducational college life. 



This fact itself is altogether significant essential unanimity of 

 opinion regarding one class of difficulties, with radical and compli- 

 cated differences regarding the other class. 



It does not seem chimerical to hope that the first difficulty may at 

 an early date in large measure take care of itself without artificial 

 assistance. Despite the common assertion of the educational rhapso- 

 dists that women's native tastes are all in emotional and esthetic 

 lines, even her religious bent included, a study of the elections made 

 by women in the courses of both coeducational and women's colleges 

 suggests, as we have already seen, a much more equitable and catholic 

 distribution of her interests. As wider academic and professional fields 

 open to women, and as the number of women increase who are not 

 obliged to conform their collegiate work to immediate bread and but- 

 ter interests, there will certainly be a less proportion of them found in 

 the literary courses than at present. And on the other hand, as regards 

 the men, there seems some reason to believe that we may see a reac- 

 tion from the present extreme tendency to cater to a purely technical 

 preparation for professional life. Certainly it is hard to believe that 

 in the long run the racial confidence in the value of the humanities, 

 shown by educational history, should not secure wider recognition than 

 it often does at present from some of the builders of required curricula 

 for the professions. It seems not improbable, too, that the reconstruc- 

 tion of the work of professional preparation both in school and college 

 with its tendency toward a shortening of the collegiate course, will 

 be accompanied by a disposition to include more of literature in the 

 early part of the training than is now the case. And, as in the case 

 of women just mentioned, there will unquestionably be an increasing 

 number of men in coeducational institutions whose means will per- 



