Woman's unfitness for higher coeducation

Front matter

WOMAN'S UNFITNESS FOR HIGHER COEDUCATION

FOR HIGHER

COEDUCATION

Preface

The following pages were written in the interest of the higher education of women. It is the sincere belief of the author that the method of coeducation, as realized in practice, has been brought to its logical conclusion. The commingling of the sexes on an educational basis was at one time a matter of education of the higher kind; but so energetically has the idea been forced into college life, and so deeply have thinking people been stirred by a discussion of its relative merits, or possible dangers, that it is now a problem in sociology. It has got beyond the grasp of the educator, who has heretofore claimed the right as such to decide upon its merits, and has passed into the hands

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of those who, with a broader and deeper knowledge of human Hfe, must give the verdict of its fitness and utility as a form of education.

The writer will never forget the picture of a woman who, in 1819^ sought education under that wonderful educator, Emma Willard. This woman lived to the closing decade of the last century, and throughout that long life the culture there gained, and the inspiration to always seek the true and the beautiful, never left her. The high ideals acquired there sustained her throughout a life of self-denial and toil. Is not this the best that education can do to elevate and dignify the work that lies ready for willing hands, with hope blossoming perennially in a sane and healthy mind? A few more years will complete a century since this woman sought and found higher education at the Troy Female Seminary. Has coeducation anything to offer that will equal it in

Preface

results? Is it not the truth that higher education for women has fallen back a century in utility and fitness, if coeducation is to represent its best form?

This book is offered as a document to that great and discriminating public to whom must be referred all questions of public policy, and upon whose judgments coeducation must either stand or fall.

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WOMAN'S UNFITNESS FOR HIGHER COEDUCATION

CHAPTER I The Commercial Element in Coeducation

The commercial character of coeducation, considered as a business enterprise, cannot be brought against the method as such. No pubhc effort, it matters not how beneficent, but what has its business side, that must be wisely handled and fostered that the greatest good may accrue to the philanthropic enterprise. When it is claimed that the idea of coeducation was gradually evolved from the necessities of the people, that it was a normal development that grew out of the social complex, more is claimed for the method than the facts justify.

Oberlin, where the two-sex college originated in 1833, was for forty years regarded as an eccentricity. The idea did not take root until it was followed in the order of events by the State Universities of Iowa and Wisconsin, endowed by the ancient Government reservation of 1787. The great grant of 1862 had but little effect on higher education, probably due to the disturbance of the Civil War, imtil in the early seventies the so-called colleges and universities of the West were started under the stimulus of the grant. From 1833 until 1870 there was no demand for the coeducational college. In the East, where colleges were endowed, or were aided by private gifts, no demand [2]

for the college for both sexes existed at all. The conclusion is a fairly reasonable one, that the people of neither section was clamoring for the coeducational college. These colleges were not of normal growth, and were not the slow accretion of public sentiment in their favor. The method was not submitted to a careful test of fitness and expediency, but suddenly, by a general concurrence of feeling, rather than conviction, it sprang into existence throughout the West and the great American experiment was declared a success. On the strength of it. Doctor Dewey, in his Boston address, made the assertion that the West was a generation in advance of the East.

The motive force back of this was simply a grant of 10,000,000 acres of land rather than the needs of the people for coeducation.

It is not asserted that it is wrong to take advantage of this gift, as it was very properly made to encourage education, but it was not made to promote the method of education that resulted. The purpose of the act of 1862 is expressed in the following preamble : " To teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts in such manner as the Legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life." There was evidently no intent to found the present coeducational college with uncontrolled social relations as a coordinate department of the training. Young women had a right to share in the benefits of the grant. The attitude of the promoters of the two-sex plan said then, as they say now, if we give women separate colleges, or coordinate institutions, it will cost too much, hence the college for both sexes. There was money enough for both plans, but not enough to found colleges and satisfy the greed of the political grafter. This sacred trust was bandied about between the upper millstone of political chicanery and the lower of ill-advised and amateur educators, without shame and without remorse, so far as known. Enough is known to warrant the assertion that if the secret history of that grant could be given in detail, after each State had received its due share, it would form one of the most disgraceful records in the political history of the West.

Has the West applied the proceeds of the liberal grant wisely? This is what President Jordan says about it in his Popular Science Monthly article : " It is true that untimely zeal of one sort or another has filled the West with a host of so-called colleges. It is true that most of these are weak and doing poor work in poor ways. It is true that most of these are coeducational. It is also true [5]

that a great majority of their students are not of the college grade at all. In such schools low standards rule, both as to scholarship and as to manners. The student, fresh from the country, with no preparatory training, will bring the manners of his home. These are not always good manners as manners are judged." President Jordan ought to know what constitutes a good college, with an efficient faculty and effective equipment in libraries and laboratories, of which these alleged colleges have none. He ought also to be an excellent judge of what is implied by students of college grade, who fail to appear in the student body of these institutions. Commercialism cannot be carried further in educational enterprise. That the people who have been responsible for this ill-advised effort to realize upon an investment are not imconscious of their mistake, will appear from the following extract from Professor Slosson, of [6]

the University of Wyoming; " The other charge, that economy was the dominant motive in estabhshing coeducation colleges, ought to be prohibited under the rules of the Geneva Convention, because it inflicts unnecessary suffering. It is not only false, but it hurts. Our fathers may have been mistaken when they founded coeducational colleges, but they were not stingy." Why could not Professor Slosson have been consistent as well as generous by conceding something to our fathers in Congress, who made Wyoming University possible in 1862, when, at that date, the paternal relation in Wyoming, if not unknown, had but little to do with coeducation. Business considerations have had more influence in founding the college for both sexes than any other factor* Numerous extracts could be made from the literature of the subject, proving that the segregation plan, while desirable, was too costly to maintain, as it would require [7]

a duplicate equipment. The objection on this ground was carried so far as to allow young men and women to take the physical exercise together, as was the case at one time in Chicago University, where economy ought not to govern. To the rank coeducationist it has always been too costly to make coeducation wholesome and decent. The commercial spirit has been the ruling one in establishing colleges of this kind in the East. After the Legislature passed the enabling act, making Ann Arbor a two-sex college, the faculty objected to the expense caused by extra instructors to meet the demands of women students. The women of Michigan raised $100,000, and women were admitted. The same sum of money was given by women, mostly feminine suffragists, to purchase the admission of women to the Medical School of Johns Hopkins University. Half of this sum subsidized the University of Rochester, the raising of which, says [8]

Mrs. Harper, nearly cost Miss Susan B. Anthony her hfe. Cornell University, after being liberally treated by a generous benefactor, condescended to admit women. The Hst could be extended further, but enough has been given to show that good business enterprise has underlaid the whole superstructure of coeducation. This is not written in a captious spirit. Money must be had to promote education and its growth. But it is stated in order to prove that coeducation in the offensive form, which is said to be its best expression, did not naturally grow out of the necessities and demands of the people. That the demand for it, and the money which purchased for it a place, came from the women who were exploiting the equal suffragist movement.

The standard of success of a college

for both sexes is the realization on the

investment. In other words, the size of

the class. This measure of success is endorsed by all who have approved the method. President Butler says: "From 1890 - 98 the number of men in coeducational colleges increased 70 per cent., while in separate colleges for men the number increased only 34.7 per cent." In the same paragraph he admits that among communities well to do, separate colleges for women are flourishing, " chiefly for social reasons." There are pecuniary reasons why the number of young men has increased in the mixed college over that in the men's colleges. The tuition fees in the former are nearly 100 per cent, less, while the annual living expenses, taken on an average, are 30 per cent. less. (Report Commissioner of Education, Washington, 1900, p. 1926.) Presidents Butler and Jordan, who are presumed to be fair men, take no notice of such an important factor of growth, but endeavor to lead the reader to believe that it is due to the general popular approval of the [10]

method itself. Instead, the commercial spirit has induced the authorities of these institutions to offer the public a cheap article in the way of education. Ignoring governing conditions, as stated above, the coeducationists, with an air of boasting hardly credible in sober-minded people, call this progress, success, and higher education, based on large classes and cheap fees, and the matriculation of half -prepared boys and girls.

Against the abandonment of the coeducation method in favor of segregation or coordination, we have the trade spirit presenting itself in opposition. An ardent advocate of the method alludes to the fate that overtook Adelbert College, in Cleveland, Ohio. Fourteen years ago this department of the Western Reserve University segregated its classes. Of course, the result has been a commercial failure. " Adelbert College now rejoices in the magnificent number of 206 male students.

The Women's College has 222 students. Thus all this special and expensive double equipment is maintained, and necessarily at a lower standard for each, for two colleges of only 200 students apiece, with the sole purpose of preventing the girls from coming in competition with the boys in class-room work." This bold conclusion is given just after the writer had stated that both received the same degrees, and did the same laboratory work. ( New York Sun, August 10, 1902.) If the claim of popular approval was justly predicated on sound reasoning, we might overlook indiscretions such as this, but when it is pointed out that the mixed college is coming nearer to a self-supporting stage than the college for a single sex, serious doubts arise whether it is education for trade purposes or for culture's sake. A college that hopes to support itself from students' fees, or one that strives to do so, ought to close its doors in the interests of humanity. [12]

The cost is yearly growing more onerous. The laboratories, the libraries, the increasing corps of instructors and professors, make the tuition income of these institutions appear as nothing by the side of the aggregate expense. The true college spirit, that signifies serious work, that gives up all for culture and training, has so enlarged educational equipment, that the larger the attendance the greater the individual cost ; while in the mixed college the larger the attendance the greater the profit. A singular feature of the cheap, badly equipped mixed college of the West, is the misuse of the word university. With resources only large enough to maintain a college of low rank for unprepared boys and girls, the university name is tacked on without any regard to what the word implies. The authorities of these institutions cannot possibly be ignorant of the scope and aim of a university, and they also must be conscious [13]

of the fact that university rank is impossible to them. There must be a reason why this name is so generally misappropriated. Here also the trade spirit has left its finger-marks. A supposititious rank would appeal to the uneducated boys and girls from whom the classes are recruited. The people at large are ignorant of college or university organizations. It might safely be left to any farmer or mechanic, who has an ambition to have his boys and girls receive an education, if the name university did not have more educational significance than a mere college, and if he would not prefer the former to the latter. If, as a matter of fact, well known to the founders, an alleged university is no better than a college, has not the name been appropriated as a trade-mark in a business enterprise? The actual founders of the so-called colleges and universities of the West, the Congress of 1862, never intended, as the reader al- [14]

ready knows, to found institutions to be known by such names. On the contrary, they were to be trade and agricultural schools, for the benefit of the " industrial classes." Legislatures of the States to which the grant was allotted had no power to act outside the terms of the grant, although they were given power to use their own discretion, but always within the limitations of the law of Congress. Under the conditions it is not an unwarranted conclusion that these institutions were created by a misappropriation of public money. Had they done better with it, the offence might be condoned, but with President Jordan's evidence as to the character of these institutions, it is painfully evident that irreparable wrong has been inflicted upon communities that were greatly in need of good education. When a commercial spirit invades educational matters, it is worse than politics. Of the two evils, it [15]

is the lesser one to give up to the grafter a percentage on text-books, than to give up an entire system of what ought to be higher education to an abject spirit of trade. It may be objected that a body of men capable of uniting together as trustees and faculty of a college could not be guilty of so prostituting a sacred cause. When it is remembered that ten years ago scores of medical colleges were founded, which were purely private and business enterprises, enabled by acts of Legislatures to confer M. D. degrees, with faculties and boards of trustees always made up of the best men of the locality, and that these colleges were shams, it becomes less surprising to see the same spirit active in the creation of other institutions. It may have no special significance, but it was in the West that these inefficient trade medical colleges were more numerously exploited.

It is very noticeable that in coeduca- [16]

tional colleges where the social line is strictly drawn, as in Rochester University, Middletown, and Cornell, there is a small attendance of women students. It is in the institutions where the social bars are let down that the large aggregation of young girls is to be found. It is to be hoped that the faculties of these institutions have ignorantly assumed the truth of the fiction that these immature and un-» sophisticated people can be safely given the social freedom of mature men and women. It is a charity to assume that the authorities of the mixed college, on such a basis, are not taking advantage of one of the inherent traits of young girls with a view of attracting large classes. One of the most alluring sides of a young woman's traits is her fondness for the society of the other sex. It is but natural that a college on the most liberal co-sex plan would attract the largest attendance of young women, not from any spirit of [17]

wrong-doing, simply in compliance with a physiological law. If college authorities are not taking an unfair advantage of women, they are at least satisfied with the results financially. To satisfy the growing distrust of parents and guardians, they invent the ridiculous claim that such social freedom is in itself an education and a wise preparation of the young woman for her after-career. Young men are also attracted to these colleges for the same reason that women are, and, as is proudly pointed out, in rapidly increasing numbers. It cannot be denied that it is good business policy, the result of a liberal trade spirit. There is reason to hope for better things when it is remembered that in the space of ten years the number of trade medical colleges was decreased 75 per cent, as the result of public opinion.

Higher coeducation now means speed, not culture. It is the outcome of the intensifying nature of the national life, [18]

which finds its most characteristic expression in the ruhng commercial spirit. It may be a sad thing to say to those who reverence learning for its own sake, that the most typical form of this spirit is found in higher education. There is hardly a trace of it in primary and secondary education, unless it be in the more than liberal expenditure of money on the part of municipalities and States to educate the children and youths. This is an education for citizenship, and not for culture. It is in higher education that the dominant business animus rules both the methods and the results. It is made cheap, but price is nothing without speed. It is business with the same meaning that gives to the shipper a better freight rate from Omaha to New York than from Buffalo to New York. It is the long haul as against the short haul in education as in trade. Harvard University already allows its students to specialize in the direction of [19]

professional work, and thus cut out a year from their hberal training. The senior year, during which so many young men learn to find themselves, counts for nothing if he can save one year out of eight in his total educational work. What Harvard does, many other colleges will do, also. How many students has this pet scheme of President Eliot's drawn away from other institutions? It is very likely that he was not conscious of it, but he was catering to the lowest form of the trade motive, as we know it, in education.

By viewing the extreme forms of coeducation as business enterprises, an explanation is furnished of many things that are difficult to understand. These institutions are, almost without exception, denominational in character and control. They stand for education as far as their means will allow, but they must exploit the tenets of the religious bodies that founded them. The central idea seems to be to educate [20]

young men for the pastorate in these societies. This is well; it is too early in the twentieth century to separate religion and higher education. It is better to combine religion with the humanities, than not to have it at all. But it is religion at a price. Higher education must be animated by a simple purpose ; it cannot be made to serve two masters, and to serve both with profit. Whicji pays the price will depend upon the proselyting energies of the religious founders. If they 'demand more of religion than they do of education, the latter is reduced to a minimum. It recalls to mind the affair of Vanderbilt University, where ihe professor of geology was made to resign on account of a little book which he had written, entitled "The Pre-Adamite Man." The trustees imagined that it differed slightly from the Mosaic account of the creation. This is not an extreme case. Professor Haeckel teaches at Jena because the clergy at Berlin would [21]

interfere with his freedom of investigation and teaching. This is commonly called intolerance on the part of college faculties. It is good business practice not to antagonize any of the sectarian societies that the college may represent. That religion should be an agent to reduce a college from a purely educational status to a business enterprise, is a matter of serious regret, but when it goes further, and allows business considerations to dictate the method and kind of instruction, the freedom and liberality of education in denominational colleges are placed in jeopardy.

The independence that ensures the truth and liberality of education is less evident in the mixed college. Women are more passive in religious matters than men. It is doubtful if the action of the trustees at Vanderbilt University would have been tolerated in Eastern colleges for men by the student body. A coeducational college [22]

could be handled much more easily in prompting the business interest of sectarianism than a college for men only. Colleges of this type have a double burden of commercialism, not the least of which is given to increasing the influence of the religious body which it represents. There will be no reform in this direction until the State takes charge of higher education, just as it has in primary instruction in behalf of all the people. Something may be said of the direct bearing of the trade spirit in lessening the opportunities of women for education in colleges for both sexes. Sound methods of instruction ought to allow women the benefit of professors of her own sex, if the eternal fitness of things is to be respected. Women | stand on a higher plane than men do as \ instructors. In colleges for women they have proven their fitness as instructors. In the coeducation college she is given scant recognition. A tabulation of the sex [23]

of professors in colleges and universities is almost barren of women. Taking Table 29 of the Report of the Bureau of Education at Washington for the years 1899 - 1900, at random among 46 colleges, 5 of which are for men, there are 600 men professors and instructors, and 57 women in like positions. This is the fairness shown to women on the part of men who do not hesitate to claim that their method is the only one that gives to women a privilege equal to men in education. There can be no question that the woman professor can get in closer touch with the young women students, both in sympathy and instruction, than the male professor. If there was a fair division of the chairs in colleges where there is an attendance of 500 to 1,200 women students, the gross social license that has disgraced many colleges could not have occurred. Women professors are not given a place in these colleges, for the reason that young men [24]

would find the instruction of women professors irksome, and would leave for institutions where men professors are employed. It is good trade policy, which the authorities of these institutions would regard as hardship to defend. The question is a reasonable one, in view of the facts, does not coeducation cheapen the policy of the college in the matter of instructors ? This cheapening of education is taking an unfair advantage of women, it is disposing of them at the least possible cost, and giving them the least possible opportunities, after bestowing upon them an alleged education of the higher kind. It would cost money to give young women professors whom the college could not make useful with men.

One more matter that concerns the commercial idea in the mixed college, is the gift of scholarships for women in colleges for both sexes. In Table 30 of the report referred to, and leaving out the [25]

University of Chicago, the Northwestern University, and the University of lUinois, there are only 106 scholarships, for any of which women have no more rights than men. Women attend college with as many personal hardships as men, and with many less opportunities to earn money. Out of that scant number of scholarships, you can count upon the fingers of one hand those given in aid of women students. She is educated as cheaply, and given as little help as possible during her student life, denied all chance for position in her alma mater, and turned out upon the world as a sort of by-product in the education of men. She contributes 34 per cent, toward the total expense of the institution by her tuition, in return for which she receives an education of doubtful utility and uncertain culture, because it would cost too much money to give her more.

CHAPTER II The Literature of Coeducation

We have only two criteria by which we may estimate the honesty of men, namely, by what they say, and by what they do. Simple as this standard is, by it we may often pierce to the hinterland of act and motive. Apply this measure to the public statement of those who are in favor of the education of the sexes in mixed colleges, we find a mass of so-called literature unique as emanating from men whom by courtesy we must call educated. It is of such a character that it forms a serious indictment of the sincerity of its authors. They seem to have made a fetich of coeducation, and, like a jungle priest, [27]

fly into a rage when its right is questioned. A man who is sincere in his convictions, who beheves that he is on secure ground, welcomes a discussion of his postulate. Not so the coeducationist. He is intolerant ^/land abusive. He treats a serious social problem with levity, and with what he evidently believes to be wit. He forgets that this is not an age of intolerance, but that of free discussion. He is misplaced in the order of time, and is generations behind the spirit of free thought and interrogation that environ him; he repudiates the first, and resents the latter. He claims supremacy in deciding a great question of sociology. He tries to obliterate the laws of human life, and calls it progress. And yet, his aim is to secure the happiness and efficiency of an army of men and women, and he asserts his , ability to do this by a common education I in an atmosphere of the closest social relations. Touching this, his best claim to [28]

respectability is the fact that he forgets. Humanity cannot be made happier by being ground down into a mjass by the same machinery, neither can men and women be given the same point of view, the same interests, by social relations, however intimate, on the basis of a common education. The coeducationist forgets that men and women are at opposite poles in the ellipse of natural law, that they touch only on the periphery of thought and emotion, and that they are merely gyrating human atoms about the central pivot of sex, differentiated by laws of growth, maturity, and intellection that are growing stronger as our modern civilization gives individuality and intensity to life.

It would be amusing, if it were not disgusting, to give at length some of the many notable examples of irony and sarcasm, mixed with a peculiar form of wit as misplaced as hilarity at a funeral, flung [29]

at the opponents of coeducation. A few examples must suffice. A first place in this style of argument must be given to President Butler, of Columbia University. In an article in Collier's Weekly, for June 2, 1902, " It would need the pen of Swift," he says, " to portray the absurdities of those who resist the movement to open wide to women opportunities for higher education." This quotation gives point to another method of impaling their adversaries on a point of false logic. If you are opposed to coeducation, you are opposed to the higher education of women. The ridiculous charge is at all times brought against those who only ask for sane methods in education, and for an even chance for woman as against man. It is manly and honorable, however, from their standpoint, to falsely charge a wrong motive to any one who opposes you. President Butler continues: " They are quite beyond Dooley's reach. One who is blessed [30]

with a sense of humor, even in modest proportions, is unable to treat these arguments seriously." The narrow strip of States lying along the Atlantic seaboard " is about as provincial as Honduras." The ordinary relations between men and women he stigmatizes with rare judgment as " artificial and absurd." The only conceivable association with the other sex are those of love and marriage, " anything else is bad form, or distinctly suspicious; this seems to me utterly absurd, and that it is fraught with danger, every one knows." It would be better for President Butler to speak for himself, but it would have been still better, before writing this last sentence, to have consulted some good and wise female relative. What he says about society here is false, and one cannot resist the conviction that he knew it to be false, and invented it to point his argument. When he strikes a serious vein, it is to wave the whole matter of " solemn [31]