Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/17

Rh long established, and the pressure toward the obviously practical is inevitably far greater. The astonishing development of technological schools in western universities affords striking confirmation of this last named tendency—a tendency by the way which finds a counterpart in the rapid growth of the so-called scientific schools in great eastern universities.

The final explanation which some misogynists would offer for the predominance of women in English courses, i. e., that English literature is ordinarily the easiest of college courses unhappily proves too much. Such statistics as are available tend to show that were this generally conceded, women would rarely preponderate in such classes. On the whole, therefore, it seems probable that although the taste for literature is more largely developed in the women of our coeducational colleges, while the taste for exact science is largely the property of the men, the factor which has produced the most extreme and anomalous conditions of sex segregation, is, especially as regards the men, professional, economic and social in character. Moreover, that which passes as native taste is itself often a mere expression of social and domestic pressure, emphasizing with relentless insistence certain interests as sexually appropriate or practically valuable.

Opinions are somewhat divergent touching the desirability of this educational situation. The instructors of the classes largely dedicated to women are sometimes a trifle violent in the expression of their views. The instructors of the men's sections are, on the other hand, generally complacent. The unbiased spectator is perplexed and baffled. Evidently the advantages and disadvantages of these extreme cases must be weighed in terms of the general educational effects of the system as indicated by its results throughout these institutions as a whole. It is necessary, therefore, to review briefly the current criticisms upon the system, most of which, be it said, are hallowed by age, and many of which are evidently trivial.

A warning hand must be held out at this point against the amiable and ubiquitous inconsequentialist who insists on confusing the problem of coeducation with the problem of the higher education of women. The two are indeed connected, but by no means identical. Collegiate coeducation as a system assumes as a premise that women are to receive collegiate education, if they so desire, and a study of the curricula of women's colleges indicates that women generally wish to pursue those branches offered in the colleges for men. The coeducational problem is not, however, fundamentally one of curricula. It is a problem of determining the conditions under which men and women shall study in any curriculum whatsoever.

The criticisms of the present day upon coeducation dealing in part