Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/248

244 larger than that of all the woman's colleges combined. That is, the majority of these college women were educated in institutions where their instructors were almost exclusively men. If then colleges and especially woman's colleges play so small a part in the success of the women who have been invited to enter the doors of 'Who's Who,' the question naturally rises, where have they received their education?

The prevailing idea seems to be that the private school is all very well for the girl who wants some knowledge of the so-called 'accomplishments' and a sufficient amount of general knowledge to make her fairly intelligent, that they are of value only to those parents who wish the school associates of their daughters to be as nearly as possible among their own social class, but as for giving a pupil anything like thoroughness in the subjects studied, that the private school standards are far below those of the public school. A glance at the table, however, seems to tell quite another story.

The scientists educated in the public school stand to those educated in the private school in the ratio of 5:4, but in every other profession the number educated in private schools far exceeds that of the public schools. Even among educators where thorough knowledge is certainly essential to success, the ratio of those educated in the private school is to those educated in the public school as 6:5; the journalists over 3:1; the physicians 7:2 and the authors over 4:1.

While the public school should not for a moment be undervalued, these figures would seem to give one a reason to believe the private schools of the country to be a valuable educational factor in fitting a woman for a successful career.

It is greatly to be regretted that the biographies investigated are in many cases so incomplete. The results of the investigation are therefore only partly conclusive, or perhaps suggestive. But so far as they go they speak with a degree of authority and nothing is true beyond that point.