in favor. In all the primary schools,
and in most of the high schools, boys and girls study in the same
class-room, and girls are admitted as students even in some colleges
and universities. This principle of admitting the fair sex to equal
educational privileges is slowly but surely being recognized
everywhere. In some universities the authorities have gone half-way;
lectures are given to the girl students in separate rooms, or separate
buildings, or halls, are provided for the girl students. With regard
to the teaching staff, in the primary schools nearly all the teachers
are women, and in the high schools their number is at least half, if
not more. In some of the universities there are lady professors or
tutors. It goes without saying that girls have the natural talent for
learning everything that boys can learn. The objections raised by the
opponents of co-education seem to rest chiefly upon the danger of the
intellectual or physical overstrain of girls during adolescence, and
upon the unequal rate of development of boys and girls during the
secondary school period. It is further alleged that in mixed schools
the curriculum is so prescribed that the girls' course of study is more
or less adapted to that of the boys, with the result that it cannot
have the artistic and domestic character which is suitable for the
majority of girls; but why should not the curriculum be arranged in
such a way as to suit both sexes? Is it not good for both to learn the
same subjects? That which is good for a boy to learn is it not equally
advisable for a girl to know, and vice versa? Will not such a policy
create mutual sympathy between the sexes? The opponents of the
co-education policy assert that it makes the girls masculine, and that
it has a tendency to make the boys a little feminine. It cannot,
however, be doubted that the system reduces the cost of education, such
as the duplication of the teaching staff, laboratories, libraries, and
other equipment.

It is objected that the system has done more than anything else to rob
marriage of its attractions, by divesting man of most of his old-time
glamour and romance. It is claimed that this early contact with the
other sex, on a footing of equality, and the manner in which the
majority of the girl students more than maintain their intellectual
standing with the boys, has tended to produce that contempt of the
much-vaunted superiority of man, that, as a rule, is reserved f