THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 103 



doing poor work in poor ways. It is true that most of these are 

 coeducational. It is also true that the great majority of their students 

 are not of college grade at all. In such schools low standards rule, both 

 as to scholarship and as to manners. The student fresh from the 

 country, with no preparatory training, will bring the manners of his 

 heme. These are not always good manners, as manners are judged. 

 But none of these defects is derived from coeducation; nor are any 

 of these conditions made worse by it. 



Very lately it is urged against coeducation that its social demands 

 cause too much strain both on young men and young women. College 

 men and college women, being mutually attractive, there are developed 

 too many receptions, dances and other functions in which they enjoy 

 each other's company. But this is a matter easily regulated. Further- 

 more, at the most the average young woman in college spends in social 

 matters less than one tenth the time she would spend at home. With 

 the young man the whole matter represents the difference between high- 

 class and low-class associates and associations. When college men stand 

 in normal relation with college women, meeting them in society as well 

 as in the class room, there is distinctly less of drunkenness, rowdyism 

 and vice than obtains under other conditions. And no harm comes to 

 the young woman through the good influence she exerts. To meet freely 

 the best young men she will ever know, the wisest, cleanest and strong- 

 est, can surely do no harm to a young woman. Nor will the association 

 with the brightest and sanest young women of the land work any harm 

 to the young men. This we must always recognize. The best young 

 men and the best young women, all things considered, are in our col- 

 leges. And this has been and will always be the case. 



It is true that coeducation is often attempted under very adverse 

 conditions. Conditions are adverse when the little girls of preparatory 

 schools and schools of music are mingled with the college students and 

 given the same freedom. This is wrong, whatever the kind of disci- 

 pline offered, lax or strict; the two classes need a different sort of 

 treatment. 



When young women have no residence devoted to their use, and 

 are forced to rent parlors and garrets in private houses of an unsym- 

 pathetic village, evil results sometimes arise. Not very often to be 

 sure, but still once in a while. These are not to be charged to coeduca- 

 tion but to the unfit conditions which make the pursuit of personal 

 culture difficult or impossible. Women are more readily affected by 

 surroundings than men are, and squalid, ill-regulated, Bohemian con- 

 ditions should not be part of their higher education. 



Another condition very common and very undesirable is that in 

 which young women live at home and traverse a city twice each day 



