Not to pursue this subject further here, it is probable that many of the causes for
the facts set forth are very different and some of them almost diametrically
opposite in the two sexes. Hard as it is per se, it is after all a comparatively easy
matter to educate boys. They are less peculiarly responsive in mental tone to the
physical and psychic environment, tend more strongly and early to special
interests, and react more vigorously against the obnoxious elements of their
surroundings. This is truest of the higher education, and more so in proportion as
the tendencies of the age are toward special and vocational training. Woman, as
we saw, in every fiber of her soul and body is a more generic creature than man,
nearer to the race, and demands more and more with advancing age an education
that is essentially liberal and humanistic. This is progressively hard when the
sexes differentiate in the higher grades. Moreover, nature decrees that with
advancing civilization the sexes shall not approximate, but differentiate, and we
shall probably be obliged to carry sex distinctions, at least of method, into many
if not most of the topics of the higher education. Now that woman has by general
consent attained the right to the best that man has, she must seek a training that
fits her own nature as well or better. So long as she strives to be manlike she will
be inferior and a pinchbeck imitation, but she must develop a new sphere that
shall be like the rich field of the cloth of gold for the best instincts of her nature.
Divergence is most marked and sudden in the pubescent period—in the early
teens. At this age, by almost world-wide consent, boys and girls separate for a
time, and lead their lives during this most critical period more or less apart, at
least for a few years, until the ferment of mind and body which results in
maturity of functions then born and culminating in nubility, has done its work.
The family and the home abundantly recognize this tendency. At twelve or
fourteen, brothers and sisters develop a life more independent of each other than
before. Their home occupations differ as do their plays, games, tastes. History,
anthropology, and sociology, a well as home life, abundantly illustrate this. This
is normal and biological. What our schools and other institutions should do, is
not to obliterate these differences but to make boys more manly and girls more
womanly. We should respect the law of sexual differences, and not forget that
motherhood is a very different thing from fatherhood. Neither sex should copy
nor set patterns to the other, but all parts should be played harmoniously and
clearly in the great sex symphony.
I have here less to say against coeducation in college, still less in university
grades after the maturity which comes at eighteen or twenty has been achieved;
but it is high time to ask ourselves whether the theory and practise of identical