Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/20

14 there is a group larger than either of these groups made up of young women who are neither hopelessly flippant nor distressingly utilitarian in their intellectual interests. Moreover, if the venue be changed from the mere fact of sex to the possession of such characteristics as have been described, it would require a buoyant and oblivious nature to deny the counterpart of just such persons in the male portion of any large undergraduate body. It is certainly a cheering thing to think that no considerable number of young men in our colleges for the male sex are ever guilty of frivolity in their attitude toward academic opportunities. But such thinking has no special connection with fact, and is of a speculative rather than of a scientific character. Nor are there lacking in men's colleges those who toil unprofitably and overmuch to the end of attaining some mundane prize not wholly superior to the school teacher's stipend. Even the women's colleges produce these types.

Coeducation is often charged with an insidious suppression of freedom of expression in the class room. Academische Freiheit is endangered, therefore, by other enemies than college presidents and boards of trustees. Some subjects are evidently ill qualified for discussion in mixed classes. But it may be doubted whether the restrictions emanating from this source have been unmixed evils. The meritricious and obscene jests of literature, which some eminent scholars in men's colleges delight to dwell upon, can perhaps be spared. Surely there is no serious reason to fear that the male youth of the land will fail to secure outside the class room all the really indispensable development on this side of his appreciation for humor. In the fields of biology, where embarrassments might be supposed most inevitable, the difficulties have by no means proved so serious as anticipated. Nevertheless it must be admitted without scruple that women cause some restraint upon freedom of speech as charged in the indictment.

Although we have had constantly in mind undergraduate conditions, a word may be dropped in passing as regards the criticisms upon graduate work. There is undoubtedly an almost universal willingness among even the most acrimonious critics of coeducation that the few women who desire it shall be allowed the best possible opportunities for graduate work. The only exceptions are found among the small but aggressive group of interesting pre-raphaelite dogmatists who would do away with all collegiate education for women. There are plenty of scholarly men who insist that women will never become investigators of any consequence, but who admit their capacities for assimilation and who feel that as there must under existing conditions be some women teachers in both schools and colleges, it is desirable that they should receive the most thorough possible discipline. Women must expect to