CO-EDUCATION

is the instruction in schools and colleges of pupils of both sexes together, boys and girls, and young men and women being taught on the same footing and in the same cla es. A co-educational institution is therefore one in which there is no set discrimination or division as male and female students mingle in its cla es on equal terms. Co-education in its present development is an outgrowth of the liberalizing tendencies that have directed modern educators along th path laid by the femininst movement an its demands for affording the same educational facilities for women as for men. The system had been established in the United States long before the progre of women in all walks of profe ional and busine life had reached its present stage, but there is little y | doubt that its early adoption, providing as it did the same educational advantages for a girl as for a boy, operated to lay the ground for what has been called © woman’s emancipation. ‘ The colonies started co-education by — establishing free education under the — disadvantages of the restricted institutional facilities of a newly settled coun- — try. That condition brought pupils of both sexes together for joint instruction in one room as a matter of convenience and economy. Therein lay the origin of co-education in the United States, where its development has made it a decidedly American institution in that it has grown with the country and acquired a national character as it grew. Up to the Civil War period co-education in sparsely settled districts might be said to have become sanctioned by the accidental circumstance that free elementary and secondary schools lacked pupils and girls were admitted from the first to both to fill the gaps. Education figured as an important element in the reconstruction policy, under which instruction of the young became reorganized and co-education of the sexes strengthened and enlarged in New England and the Middle States, besides being extended to the west and south. Today, except here and there in the eastern section, especially in the larger cities, no distinction between boys and girls is made in imparting elementary or secondary education. Co-education has spread from the public schools to State universities of the west and to some privately endowed eastern universities. Among colleges it first obtained a foothold in Ohio (the earliest settled of the Western States) in 1833, when Oberlin Collegiate Institute—later Oberlin College—was opened and admitted both men and women from the start. Thereafter, as other States became settled, they established universities and it became the custom to admit women into them as they opened. In fact, all the State universities of the West have admitted women from the first. A number, but not all, of Southern universities admit women. The growth of co-education in colleges throughout the country has made the United States the only nation in the world where a university education is within the reach, not of a privileged few, but of many you sands of women from all walks of e. The objections to co-education have been disposed of by experience. If its operation be judged from the date when it became more or le systematized (about 1870), its supporters can point to a test of its working that extends over fifty years. Fears that co-education would lower the standard of scholarship on account of the supposed inferiority of feminine mentality were dispelled by the discovery that women reach as high an academic distinction as men, and frequently higher. No difficulties arose through men and women of marriageable age. It was found that students, on attaining maturity, acquired a greater sense of responsibility, and pursued their studies with a definite career in mind, preparation for which sufficiently occupied them to the exclusion of sex attractions during their studies. Opposition to co-education has been confined to the secondary or higher school period, beginning from the age of twelve. Under twelve there are no material physical differences between the two sexes. The system, therefore, proceeded with the recognition that the education of boys and girls side by side called for our safeguarding of those physical, intellectual and social differences that are due to sex. Inits other aspect it made economy of expenditure of school or college plant and equipment, provided for the natural a ociation of boys and girls as in the family, created an intellectual stimulus which reacted from one to the other, discouraged the exhibition of too much femininity in girls and exce ive masculinity in boys, and it especially induced a refinement of atmosphere and manners. 1623), Fr. Catholic divine; wrote Histcry of Rome. VAN (1641-1704), Dutch soldier and military engineer; took part in war against France, 1673 onwards; distinguished himself under Marl borough, especially at Namur, 1692, and at capture of Bonn and siege of Huy, 1703; wrote works on fortification (q.v.),