segregation of interests but which are devoted throughout to joint work or
enjoyment.
A typical contemporary writer[1] thinks the question whether a girl shall receive
a college education is very like the same question for boys. Even if the four K's,
Kirche, Kinder, Kuchen, and Kleider (which may be translated by the four C's,
Church, Children, Cooking, and Clothes), are her vocation, college may help
her. The best training for a young woman is not the old college course that has
proven unfit for young men. Most college men look forward to a professional
training as few women do. The latter have often greater sympathy, readiness of
memory, patience with technic, skill in literature and language, but lack
originality, are not attracted by unsolved problems, are less motor-minded; but
their training is just as serious and important as that of men. The best results are
where the sexes are brought closer together, because their separation generally
emphasizes for girls the technical training for the profession of womanhood.
With girls, literature and language take precedence over science; expression
stands higher than action; the scholarship may be superior, but is not effective;
the educated woman "is likely to master technic rather than art; method, rather
than substance. She may know a good deal, but she can do nothing." In most
separate colleges for women, old traditions are more prevalent than in colleges
for men. In the annex system, she does not get the best of the institution. By the
coeducation method, "young men are more earnest, better in manners and
morals, and in all ways more civilized than under monastic conditions. The
women do more work in a more natural way, with better perspective and with
saner incentives than when isolated from the influence of the society of men.
There is less silliness and folly where a man is not a novelty. In coeducational
institutions of high standards, frivolous conduct or scandals of any form are
rarely known. The responsibility for decorum is thrown from the school to the
woman, and the woman rises to the responsibility." The character of college
work has not been lowered but raised by coeducation, despite the fact that most
of the new, small, weak colleges are coeducational. Social strain, Jordan thinks,
is easily regulated, and the dormitory system is on the whole best, because the
college atmosphere is highly prized. The reasons for the present reaction against
coeducation are ascribed partly to the dislike of the idle boy to have girls excel
him and see his failures, or because rowdyish tendencies are checked by the
presence of women. Some think that girls do not help athletics; that men count
for most because they are more apt to be heard from later; but the most serious
new argument is the fear that woman's standards and amateurishness will take
the place of specialization. Women take up higher education because they like it;