e-sexed college, is one of the
problems of co-education.

It does not come within the scope of this essay to speculate upon the
ways--the regimen, methods of instruction, and other details of
college life,--by which the inherent difficulties of co-education may
be obviated. Here tentative and judicious experiment is better than
speculation. It would seem to be the part of wisdom, however, to make
the simplest and least costly experiment first; that is, to discard
the identical separate education of girls as boys, and to ascertain
what their appropriate separate education is, and what it will
accomplish. Aided by the light of such an experiment, it would be
comparatively easy to solve the more difficult problem of the
appropriate co-education of the sexes.

It may be well to mention two or three details, which are so important
that no system of _appropriate_ female education, separate or mixed,
can neglect them. They have been implied throughout the whole of the
present discussion, but not distinctly enunciated. One is, that during
the period of rapid development, that is, from fourteen to
eighteen,[33] a girl should not study as many hours a day as a boy.
"In most of our schools," says a distinguished physiological authority
previously quoted, "the hours are too many for both boys and girls.
From a quarter of nine or nine, until half-past two, is with us
(Philadelphia schools for girls) the common schooltime in private
seminaries. The usual recess is twenty minutes or half an hour, and it
is not filled by enforced exercise. In certain schools,--would it were
the rule,--ten minutes' recess is given after every hour. To these
hours, we must add the time spent in study out of school. This, for
some reason, nearly always exceeds the time stated by teachers to be
necessary; and most girls between the age of thirteen and seventeen
thus expend two or three hours. Does any physician believe that it is
good for a growing girl to be so occupied seven or eight hours a day?
or that it is right for her to use her brains as long a time as the
mechanic employs his muscles? But this is only a part of the evil. The
multiplicity of studies, the number of teachers,--each eager to get
the most he can out of his pupil,--the severer drill of our day, and
the greater intensity of application demanded, produce effects on the
growing brain, which, in a vast number of cases, can be only
disastrous. Even in girls of from fourteen to eighteen, s