Library Collections: Document: Full Text

In the first place, the general debility of women, be it greater or less, is not due to coeducation in higher knowledge; for such an education has not existed among us to a degree sufficient perceptibly to affect the general constitution. It is due to an ignorance and inattention to physiological law that have characterized all our action in business, social, and educational relations, in the former even more than in the latter. Separate training, as that at Mt. Holyoke, has been as deeply affected by it as joint education, like that at Oberlin. The point raised by Dr. Clarke bears on all our action, not pre-eminently on one part of it, and that hitherto a most insignificant part, the portion expressed in conjoint higher education. To give the hygienic considerations involved this peculiar and limited application is illogical and unfair. The reform called for will effect this method in common with a hundred other things. If the conclusions already reached by us in this paper are to be altered by the considerations presented by Dr. Clarke, it must be by showing that co-education is inconsistent with a proper regard of the hygienic rules involved in sexual development. The present debility of women goes for nothing in the argument. This debility, as due in given cases to a false training, goes for nothing, since our inattention has been general, and covers this field with many another. We might as well argue against social intercourse, since this, even oftener than lessons, has been the provocation to excess. The only real question, then, between Dr. Clarke and co-education is this: Can co-education be so altered as to respect, in both sexes, the laws of development? He himself practically concedes that it can 'be. He only objects finally and peremptorily to identical Co-education; that is, to precisely the same tasks, at all times, for all parties. To this we also object, as unfitted for the best development of boys and girls alike. The active and the inert, the bright and the dull, cannot be harnessed together without loss on one side or the other. Our education, in the interest of boys as well as of girls, calls for more elasticity, less pressure, more variable and proportionate stimulus. Construct a method good for boys of all kinds, pliant to their wants, keeping up with the best, and falling back to the poorest, and we shall have a system sufficiently flexible to include girls, under their own law of development.

Indeed, the rigidity of college courses is precisely that which needs modification; and, if this is to come with co-education, so much the better for the joint discipline. The average girl, carrying weight as she does in the laws of her constitution, is not as far off from the average boy as the stupid boy. from the quick-witted one. Unite these two well in one system, and that system will have play enough to embrace girls also advantageously. Our present difficulties are due to bad education, not to co-education; to an ignorance of the laws of hygiene, not to a knowledge of these and their witting violation. Educate women more thoroughly, and they will be more cognizant and observant of these conditions of success. As things now are, they owe their disease to their ignorance: they are not weak because they are wise, but weak because they are not wise.

The critical period, according to Dr. Clarke, is found between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. This is a period for the most part prior, and may to advantage be always prior, to that given to higher education, and one covered by the kind and accommodating provisions of home. I have not the slightest doubt that, if the general temper that is encouraged by Dr. Clarke's essay, were left to shape a sexual curriculum for women, it would issue in a feeble intellectual mood, a proportionate diversion of time, strength, and interest to society, -- sure to absorb unoccupied powers, heedless and headstrong in its use of them, -- and thus ultimately in strengthening the very evil warred with. Society is more to be dreaded than education. On the other hand, devote attention to a complete elastic common curriculum, and the tastes will be elevated, the judgment sobered, the conditions of success made more apparent, and ultimately that breadth and strength of character reached which are sure to express themselves in a wise mastery of natural law. If we are bound to have a thoroughly flexible and fit discipline for boys, in reaching it we shall also furnish appropriate conditions for girls, and all the reasons for co-education urged by us will apply in full force. The transition from a rigid to a pliant method will necessarily take place slowly but we do well to remember that the cast-iron mode is as firmly wrought into separate as into conjoint education, and constitutes no ground of choice between them. Both are to be reformed, both are capable of reform, and in the interests of all parties. Dr. Clarke's criticism is destructive, not constructive. Let him undertake to build up a curriculum, and the advantage will at once pass to his opponents.