Coeducation

COEDUCATION, a term meaning joint education, has come to be specifically.applied to, the instruction of both sexes, as a smgle body in the same classes of the same educational institutions. Coeducation was first tried on a large scale in the United States and has reached its fullest development here. Indeed until very recently it 'has been regarded as a peculiarly. American system of education, but its economy and simplicity, and the difficulty of providing equal educational opportunities for girls by any other method, have led other countries, especially within the last decade, to adopt coeducation in some form or other. This tendency may be' expected to show itself more clearly after the close of the great war. The general shortage of men, including of course men teachers, will create a demand for the training of women to fill their vacant places that cannot be resisted by boards of public education. Also the many countries winch have recently adopted (or which will soon adopt) woman suffrage will be compelled by the pressure of public opinion backed by women's votes either to open their elementary and secondary schools and univer sities to girls, or to maintain at almost prohib-' itive cost equally good separate secondary schools and universities for girls. The expense and impracticability of duplicating higher education have already brought about the admission of women to colleges and universities not only in the United States but elsewhere, and will tut doubtedly make the .secondary school systems of other countries coeducational as soon as the necessity of educating women is seriously. faced. In Great Britain all Scottish universitieS are frankly coeducational; all the newer English and Welsh universities are coeducational, such as London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Durham, Bristol, and the Uni versity of Wales. Oxford and Cambridge open their lectures and examinations, but not their, degrees, to women, and various privately sup ported women's colleges in their immediate neighborhood prepare women for their exam inations, but this last discrimination against women may be expected to disappear now that the votes of British women will directly in, ffuence grants to higher education. In Ireland, the National University of Ireland, the colleges of Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Queen's Univer-' Belfast, are coeducational, and even Trinity College of the Catholic University of Dublin admits women to all lectures except those in divinity, engineering, and anatomy. All the universities of South Africa are co-educa tional. The four universities of India give degrees and open many of their classes to women. In general it may be said that all British and colonial universities, except Oxford and Cambridge and a few native colleges and divinity schools, are open to women on the same terms as men. But, with the exception of the elementary schools in Scotland which are coeducational, state-supported primary and secondary education in Great Britain is still conducted separately for boys and girls. Only small village board schools not attended by sufficient children to form two classes and a few experimental private schools are coedu cational. But it is safe to predict that the whole question will be taken up afresh after the war and in all probability solved in the American way in as far as state-supported secondary schools are concerned. Coeducation is the prevailing system in the public schools and uni versities of the Dominion of Canada and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the only exception to university coeducation being the Catholic University of Ottawa. The same is true in the Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, and Finland. In Norway women are admitted to the universities and co education is being experimented with in some of the "people's high schools" In all other civilized European countries, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Greece, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, all the universities are open to women, apart from a few unimportant exceptions such as theological and technical departments where few, if any, women wish to study. Before the Revolution, Russian universities were closed to women, but separate women's university classes were main tained by the government in Petrograd and Moscow, and more or less consistently in the other university towns. By the law of 1912 girls were admitted to the so-called "higher ele mentary schools° and private persons or agen cies were permitted to establish coeducational secondary schools, the principle of coeducation in the higher schools being thus for the first time publicly recognized. Complete coeduca tion of the sexes may be expected to be among the permanent results of the Russian Revolu tion. Outside of Russia, Great Britain and her colonies, Switzerland, and Germany, there are very few women studying in the universities. In most countries the preparation of girls for the universities is left entirely to private initiative. For example, even so enlightened a country as France in its higher secondary schools for girls (lycees and colleges) provided before the war no instruction in Latin which is required of all candidates for French uni versity degrees. Since 1914, however, girls have been admitted to the higher classes of some of the boys' lycees and women teachers are of necessity teaching in the boys' lycies. Coeducational primary schools are also per mitted in French villages where there are not enough boys and girls of primary age to justify the appointment of two teachers. Coeducation is, therefore, fast becoming an educational question of the first importance in other coun tries as well as in the United States. The United States, however, differs from all other countries in that its experience includes all kinds of coeducation, primary, secondary, and university, given to many thousands of boys and girls and men and women for nearly half a century. During this time coeducational schools and colleges have greatly increased, while separate schools and colleges have pro portionally decreased and the whole question of coeducation has recently become an inter national issue of such importance as to justify a fresh study of the way in which it has worked in the United States. America is trying separate education andcoeducation on such a vast scale that statistics cover ing so many years may be trusted to indi cate results clearly. Also, three generations of women have now been subjected to coeduca tion and sufficient time has elapsed for its results, whether good or ill, to make them selves felt. The statistics of American co educational high schools will be of special in terest because provision must be made by foreign countries the next few years for the secondary education of girls, and more especially for the preparation of girls for the universities. Coeducation began in the United States as an almost accidental consequence of the endeavor of the American colonists to carry on the English educational tradition and pro vide their children with free education in a newly settled country. During the great school revival of 1830-45 and the ensuing years until the outbreak of the Civil War, in 1861, free elementary and secondary schools were grad ually established throughout New England and the middle States and in such western States as existed in those days. It was a fortunate circumstance for girls that the country was at that time sparsely settled; in most neighbor hoods it was so difficult to secure pupils for even one grammar school and one high school that girls were admitted from the first to both. In the reorganization of lower and higher edu cation that took place between 1865 and 1870 this same system, bringing with it the complete school coeducation of the sexes, was strength ened and enlarged in New England and the middle States and was extended to every part of the west. It was also introduced throughout the south both for whites and negroes. For more than 50 years this great American system of state-supported coeducational primary, gram mar, and high schools has withstood all hostile criticism and has spread throughout the whole United States. In no part of the country, except in the conservative east, is any distinction made in elementary or secondary education between boys and girls. Only in a few large cities of the Atlantic seaboard, such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, CharleSton, and in some of the larger cities of the southern States are separate boys and girls' high schools included in the public school system—in almost every instance to the detri ment of girls' education. The second fortu nate, and in like manner almost accidental, fac tor in the education of American women was the occurrence of the Civil War at the forma tive period of the public schools, with the result of placing the elementary and secondary education of both boys and girls overwhelm ingly in the hands of women teachers. This effect proved not to be temporary, but perma ment, and from 1865 until the present time the relative proportion of women teachers in the public schools has steadily increased from year to year. In 1880 women formed 57.2 per cent; in 1890, 65.5; in 1900, 70.1; in 1910, 78.9; in 1914, 80.2 of all teachers in the public schools. It is significant that the percentage of women teachers is, highest (86.5) in the earlier settled North Atlantic Division (Maine, New Hamp shire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Penn sylvania) where the public schools have been longest in operation. (Report of the United States Cotinnissicmer of Education, 1916, Vol. II, p. 29). Lace coeducation, the teaching of boys by women in the public schools has hew bitterly attacked, especially by German educa, tional authorities, but none of the objections urged against it seem to be supported by ex, perience. American men educated by American women are so far from being feminized thereby that it is generally admitted they can hold their own in competition with men of other countries in athletics, games, daring sports of all kinds, in business enterprise, invention, sci entific research, and technical skill. Fifty years of experience in coeducational schools seems, to prove conclusively that women teachers of first rate mental ability and training succeed better with boys, as well as with girls, than sten teachers of second or third 'rate intelli gence; and further, that while business and professional life offer to men so much greater rewards than the public schools, only such second rate men can be induced to teach in them in considerable numbers. The increase of women teachers is already manifesting itself itt other countries and as in the United States is noticeable first in primary schools. For example, in 1915, women formed 85 per cent of all teachers in the elementary schools of Can ada and Newfoundland, arid 71.3 of all teachers in the primary schools of Norway. The great war now in progress will undoubtedly accelerate the falling percentage of men teachers in the United States and will create in Europe a much greater shortage of men public school teachers than existed in Atnerica after the Civil War. As in the United States, in 1865-70, an over whelming increase in women teachers may be looked for in all the warring countries. It is probable that a similar situation will bring about similar results and that as one of the by products of the present war coeducation will be introduced very generally into all state-sup ported schools, especially in the more expen sively organized higher schools for boys which prepare for the universities. Whenever women teachers are in the majority it is clear that they must receive the best possible training to teach the children of a nation, and their claim to be admitted to state-supported schools and universities becomes irresistible. In the United States coeducation spread from the public schools tO the State universities of the west and from the State universities to the more conservative private unjversity foundations of the eastern States. 'Mien most of the State universities of the west Ntere founded they were in reality scarcely more than secondary schools supplemented in most cases by large preparatory departments. Girls were already being educated with boys in all the high schools of the west, and not to admit them to the State universities would have been to break with tradition. Women were also firmly estab lished as teachers in the secondary schools, and it was patent to all thoughtful men that they must be given opportunities for higher educa tion, if only for the sake of the secondary edu cation of the bbys of the country. The co education of men and women in colleges, and at the same time the college education of women, began in Ohio, the earliest settled of the western States. In 1833, Oberhn Collegiate Institute (not chartered 'as a college tmtil 1850) was opened, admitting from the first both men and women. It was the first institution for collegiate instruction in the United States where large numbers of nten and women were edu cated together, and the uniformly favorable testimony of its faculty exerted great influence on the side of coeducation. In 1853, Antioch College, also in Ohio, was opened and ad mitted from the beginning men and women on equal terms. From this time on it became a custom for State universities as they were opened one after another in the west to admit women. The State universities of Utah, opened in 1850, Iowa, opened in 1856, Washington, opened in 1862, Kansas, opened in 1866, Minne sota, opened in 1868, and Nebraska, opened in 1871, were coeducational from the first. In diana, opened as early as 1820, admitted women in 1868. The University of Michigan, at this time the most important western university and the only western university well known in the east before the Civil War, opened its doors to women in 1870 and admitted them for the first time to instruction of true college grade. This step was taken against the wish of the faculty as a whole in response to public sentiment as is shown by the action of the Michigan legis lature. The example of the University of Michigan was quickly followed by all the lead ing universities of the west. In the same year women were allowed to enter the State universities of Illinois and California; in 1873, the only remaining western State university closed to women, that of Ohio, admitted them. Wisconsin, which, since 1860, had given some instruction to women, became in 1874 un reservedly coeducational. All the State univer sities of the west, organized since 1871, have admitted women from the first. In the 23 States which, for convenience,_ are classified as vrestern, there are novr 23 State universities open to women. The College of Hawaii and Porto Rico University are also coeducational. The 16 States included in the South Atlantic and South Central Divisions by the United States Commissioner of Education, all of them southern in' sympathy, admitted the claims of women more slowly, as was to be expected. Missouri, the most western, became coeduca tional as early as 1870, and the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma were opened in 1883 and 1892 respectively, as coedu cational institutions; Mississippi admitted women in 1882; Kentucicy, in 1889; Alabama, in 1893; South Carolina, in 1E394; North Carolina, in 1897 (but only women prepared to enter the junior and senior years) ; West Virginia, in 1897; Delaware College, the one State college of Delaware, as recently as in 1914 opened an af filiated college for women, supported by the State legislature. The state-supported universi ties and colleges of Maryland, Virginia, Georgia and Florida are all still closed to women, but strenuous efforts, which may be expected ulti mately to succeed, have been made at the last three sessions of the Virginia legislature to secure the admission of women to the Univer sity of Virginia, which is the most conservative and also one of the best of Southern universi ties. In the States enumerated earlier in this article as belonging to the North Atlantic Di vision all the State-supported colleges are open to women although these institutions are rela tively unimportant as compared with the privately supported colleges in this section. This brief review of educational conditions in the United States shows conclusively that pub lic opinion based on 48 years of experience has definitely settled the question of coeduca tion, i.e., the right of women to share equally with men the instruction given in schools, col leges and universities supported by the state. Whenever State agricultural, technical or me chanic arts institutions are not coeducational it is safe to conclude that women have not yet wished to be admitted to them. The few at tempts that have been made to segregate men and women in State universities have failed. For example, a proposal made in 1907 to section the large elementary classes of the University of Wisconsin on the basis of sex rather than of ability, or alphabetically, was effectively dis posed of by the 1909 act of the Wisconsin legis lature depriving the board of regents of the power to introduce sex discrimination into the instruction of the university. It may be urged, however, that coeducation has been universally adopted in state-supported schools and univer sities under the compulsion of public opinion operating through public boards of educa tion and State legislatures and not by reason of the genuine success of coeducation itself as a system of education. From this point of view the adoption of coeducation by privately endowed colleges and universities, especially by the older men s colleges in the east which were founded long before women were allowed to teach, or even to study, in American schools, is more convincing. Moreover, the education of young people in school and college is car ried on in private institutions to a much greater extent in the United States than in any other country except Great Britain. Our independent schools and colleges founded by private or denominational initiative and main tained by voluntary gifts were originally modeled on similar English foundations and have in the past reached a great development. Of the 569 universities, colleges and technical schools tab ulated by the United States Commissioner of Education (including six affiliated women's col leges omitted from his tabulation) 473 are pri vate foundations teaching 140,371 students as compared with 96 state or municipal institutions teaching 96,797. Of these 473 private colleges and universities, 19 are technical or industrial schools where women do not as yet wish to study, five are military schools, and 62 are col leges under the control of the Roman Catholic Church, which in the United States is opposed on principle to the coeducation of the sexes and is impervious to argument. Of the remain ing 387 institutions of liberal arts, 62 are sep arate colleges for men, 56 are separate colleges for women, nine are colleges for women affiliated to colleges for men, and 260 are frankly coeducational, i.e., even of all pri vate colleges of liberal arts where men study, only 20 per cent teach men sep arately from women, and nine, including some of the most important of these 62 separate men's colleges, share their professors, and in some cases their endowments, with an affiliated woman's college. All separate universities for men maintaining graduate schools of art and science of any importance except the Uni versity of Virginia and Princeton University, open their graduate schools to women. All university schools of medicine, law, and theology either now admit women or will soon admit them. Of the 95 medical schools tabu

lated in the 1916 Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 67 were coeduca tional, including four of the most important private university schools, John Hopkins, Cornell, Rush, and the University of Pennsyl vania. The private medical school of Tulane University admitted women in 1915 ; the private medical schools of Columbia, Yale, and Wash ington universities have announced that they will admit women, and the medical school of Harvard is expected to follow their ex ample. Of 29 State university medical schools, 22 are coeducational. Professional schools of law in all State universities are either opened, or will be opened as soon as women wish to study in them, and three of the most important private . university law schools in the United States, Pennsylvania, Columbia and Harvard, are already open, or have announced that they expect to admit women. Coeducation has steadily increased in favor from the beginning of the experiment on a large scale in 1870 until the present time when an insistent public opinion enforces the claim of women to their share in the education given to men even in privately endowed universities. This public opinion is all-powerful in the case of public foundations and cannot be disregarded by private educational institutions dependent for support on private gifts. It has already compelled all the leading graduate and pro fessional university schools to admit women and has established side by side with men's undergraduate colleges co-ordinate, or affiliated, women's colleges in eight privately supported men's universities and colleges and in the State college of Delaware, all except one (Western Reserve) situated in the east of the United States. Separate colleges for men will continue to exist in the eastern States only as long as through their strongly developed dormitory and campus life they partake of the nature of pri vate clubs. Their separate existence has in a sense compelled the foundation of the great women's colleges in the east with the same highly organized social life and college tradi tions and customs. The extravagance of such duplication, however, has limited the spread of separate men's and women's colleges, which show even now a tendency to attract as students specially selected men and women whose parents are able to pay for the combination of high academic standards with a peculiarly attractive social life. Much of the culture and many of the priceless associations of college life are to be obtained only by residence in college halls. Coeducational colleges have not as yet suc ceeded in offering their students such a com plete college life as the separate men's and women's colleges although the progress made in this direction within the last 10 years indi cates that there is no reason why it cannot be organized both for men and women equally well in coeducational universities. All the arguments against the coeducation of the sexes in colleges have been met and answered by experience. It .was feared at first that co education would lower the standard of scholar ship on account of the supposed inferior quality of women's minds. The unanimous expenence of coeducational colleges goes to prove that the average academic standing of women is slightly higher than the average standing of men, that women win proportionally more pnzes given for scholarly excellence and obtam pro portionally higher examination marks. Many explanations of. the greater academic success of women students have been suggested but the fact, however it be explained, remains. None of the serious difficulties have arisen that were feared from the association of men and women of marriageable age. The question of health has also been finally disposed of. Thousands of women have been working side by side with men in coeducational institutions for the past 48 years and undergoing exactly the same tests without a larger percentage of withdrawals on ac:count of illness than men, or any appreciable bad effects on health after graduation. A sta tistical study (made in 1900 and privately printed by the Association of Collegiate Alum me) of 3,636 women graduating from college between 1869 and 1898 furnishes satisfactory evidence as to their length of life, present health, rate of marriage, number of children, number of living children, etc., as compared with their sisters and cousins who are not college grs duates. A larger percentage of women graduates of coeducational colleges 'are married, and. their average age of marriage seems to be about a year earlier than that of graduates of separate colleges, but both•these facts may be due to the difference in local customs between the east and the west. A college edueation, whether obtained in separate colleges for Antomen or in, coeducational col leges, justifies itself in many surprising and rather unexpected ways. College women as a whole seein to marry on an average two.years later than their sisters who have not received a college education; hut as they have on an average more children than their sisters, and succeed in bringing up a few more crf the children born to them, this would seem to be rather an advantage than otherwise, especially as they also seem to make slightly better mar riages financially than their sisters. The four careful statistical studies that have been made of the after effects of college education on women indicate clearly that vitally important racial matters, such as the marriage rate, the number of children born per marriage, the health, the occupations of men and women, etc., are controlled not by the (from this point of view) relatively unimportant question of whether or not they have spent four years in college, but by the cuttoms. and ideals of the social and financial groups to which they and their families belong.. It has been observed that women and men in western coeducational colleges tend to choose different subjects of study, for example, more men than women elect econonucs, mathematics, physics, and chemistry, and MOre otm ti)(1, elect Latin, Eng lish, French, and Gerinan. In the separate men's a.nd women's colleges in the east, how ever, the popular electives are the same for men and woineu, women crowding into eco nomics, and men into English, and both de serting mathematics and Greek for French and Spanish. It is probable that the difference in the choice of electives, where it exists, is chie not to sex preference but rather to the more strictly vocational character of college courses in western universities and to the difference in the occupations to be engaged in after grad uation by men and women students. Up to the beginning of the great war teaching has been the chief profession of college women. From 60 to 65 per cent of all women in western co educational colleges have expected to teach and consequently have taken the college courses that best fitted them for this occupation; whereas men have elected courses to prepare them for business, industry, politics, and the school posi tions in science which are as a rule filled by men in western high schools. Also many more women than men the college departments of coeducational western universities are taking a college course for the purposes of general culture and consequently tend to select the same studies that are taken by both men and women students who are studying in the sep arate men's and women's colleges in the east with a similar purpose. That coeducation is regarded favorably by men and women (or at least that it does not in any way interfere with their preferring 'coeducational to separate col leges), is shown by the strilcing increase of co educational colleges, and of men and women students studying in them, as compared with the decrease of separate colleges for men knd women and of students studying in them. In the 45 years that have elapsed between 1870 and 1915, 235 higher educational institu tions classed as colleges and, universities by the United States Commissioner of Edu cation have been founded., Of these, 21 (19 mens' and 2 women's) are Roman Catholic, 14 are schools. of technology and mechanic arts in which women do not as yet desire to study. Of the remaining 200 colleges giving, a liberal college education 156 colleges are co educational, only six are separate colleges for men, 29 are separate colleges for women, and nine are separate colleges-for women affiliated to•separate undergraduate colleges for men; or 78 per cent of the whole number are co educational, only 3 per cent are separate col. leges for men, and only 19 per cent are sep arate women's independent or affiliated colleges. Of ail liberal arts undergraduate colleges open to men founded since 1870 (excluding Roman Catholic colleges) 96 per cent are now co educational and only 4 per cent teach men separately from women. Of the above six sep arate men's colleges 3 are situated in the south ern States, and in the case of two only (Johns Hopkins in Maryland and Clark College in Massachusetts), is the exclusion of women from their college departments of any special moment, and both these institutions admit women freely to all their graduate and pro fessional work. Only 1,156 men were studying in the year 1915 in the college departments of these six college as compared to thousands studying in the college departments of the 156 coeducational colleges. The trend toward co. education has become still more marked since 1900. Only one separate college for men, Clark College, Massachusetts, with 141 stu dents, has been opened since 1900. Of the 29 separate women's colleges only six have been founded since the year 1900, four of the six being situated in the southern States, and three being under denominational control. Apart from Simmons College, which is more of a technical or vocational school than a liberal arts college, and should be classified rather with the nine technical schools for men omitted from these statistics, no one of the other five separate women's colleges is of any considerable academic standing and only 699 women students of college grade are studying in them. Of the nine separate affiliated women's colleges only four (affiliated to Tufts, Hobart, Richmond, and Delaware,) have been opened since the year 1900 and only very few women are studying in them. Since 1870 only one of the smaller eastern coeducational colleges (Wesleyan, with 454 men college students) has excluded women and become a separate men's college; only one small western college, Downer (now Milwaukee-Downer, with 198 women students) has excluded men and be come a women's college, and only two (Western Reserve University, with 426 women, and Tufts, with 92 women) have segregated their women students in affiliated colleges; while on the other hand during the same period of time large numbers of private men's colleges have become coeducational. Including the two above mentioned colleges there were in 1915 only nine such affiliated colleges in the United States. Only one private university, Leland Stanford Junior, has limited the number of women undergraduates and only two other private foundations (Chicago University in IIIi aois and Colby College in Maine) make any attempt to segregate women students in certain elementary classes. Colby teaches its 155 women separately in the first two years of the college course but Chicago, which has been experi menting with segregation since 1902, has practically discarded it, and in April 1918, taught its great body of over 4,000 women sep arately from men in only 4 out of 52 classes offered to first and second year students. All other classes in the university were coeduca tional. In 1870, when coeducation was first generally adopted in State universities, co educational colleges formed only 30.7 per cent of all colleges and universities in which men were studying. Since then the increase of coeducational colleges and the decrease of separate men's colleges have been extraordinarily rapid, as follows: 1870, percentage of co educational colleges to whole number of liberal arts colleges open to men, 30.7; 1880, 51.3; 1890, 65.5; 1900, 70; 1910, 70.7, or (omitting Roman Catholic colleges) 80.7; 1915, 76.5, or (omitting Roman Catholic colleges) coeduca tional colleges formed 88.3 per cent of all liberal arts colleges open to men and 91 per cent of all such colleges open to women. (Consult col kge and university statistics published in Re ports of the United States Commissioner of Education for the corresponding years, it being noted that military and technical colleges, and in some cases, when stated, Roman Catholic colleges, have been omitted in calculating these percentages). The 1915 statistics have been cor rected throughout by the addition of the five affiliated women's colleges (College for Women of Western Reserve University, Women's Col lege in Brown University,• Jackson College of Tufts College, William Smith College of Ho bart College, Westhampton College of Rich mond College, Women's College of Delaware State College) omitted by the Commissioner of Education and by the transfer of the six corre sponding men's colleges from the group of co educational colleges to the group of separate men's colleges. In 1915, 71 per cent of all men undergraduate students and 76 per cent of all women undergraduate students were study ing in coeducational colleges and universities. This cannot be explained by the fact that for financial reasons students prefer public univer sities, which offer education free of charge and are also with very few exceptions coeduca tional, because the greater number of men and women are still studying in private colleges and universities which offer the choice of a sep arate or coeducational college education. In 1915 women formed about 35 per cent of all graduate and undergraduate college students in the United States, but, • if the students of Roman Catholic, military, and technical colleges be omitted, women studying in -undergraduate coeducational colleges of liberal arts formed 42 per cent of the total number of men and women in coeducational colleges. In many co educational colleges women now equal and sometimes exceed men, and their numbers are steadily increasing. In 1915 there were 79,763 undergraduate and 5,098 graduate women stu dents, in all 84,861 women, studying in American colleges and universities. The United States is the only country in the world where many thousands of women are receiving a university education. This statistical study speaks for itself and shows clearly the overwhelming trend toward coeducation in the college education of both men and women. It shows also that the tendency toward coeducation has become even more marked since the year 1900, that is, after 30 years of successful trial of the system. In like manner the school statistics published by the United States Commissioner of Educa tion prove that coeducation in primary and secondary schools has been equally successful. The common school system of the United States is uncompromisingly coeducational. No dis tinction between coeducational and separate schools is made by the United States Commis sioner of Education in giving the statistics of public elementary schools, presumably because they are all coeducational. In 1915, of all children in elementary schools 91 per cent were in public elementary schools. Not only are practically all public elementary schools co educational, but almost all privately sup ported elementary schools are coeducational. Public high schools also are almost en tirely coeducational. In 1915 there were 11,674 public and 2,248 private high schools. Of the 11,674 public high schools all except 63 were coeducational and only 37,043 girls were studying in separate high schools for girls, as compared with 690,497 studying in coeducational high schools, i.e., only 5 per cent of the total number of girls studying in public high schools were in separate girls' high schools — an altogether negligible quantity. In the 25 years froth 1890 to 1915 the percentage of pupils studying in private high schools as compared with pupils studying in public high schools has steadily decreased, as follows: in 1890, private high school pupils were 39.25 per cent of all high school pupils; in 1900, 17.59 per cent; in 1910, 11.37 per cent: in I915, 10.45 per cent. During these 25 years the number of public high schools has increased from 2,526 to 11,694 while private high school's have not even doubled themselves, increasing only from 1,632 to 2,248, and of all the boys and girls studying in high schools in 1915 only 10.45 per cent were studying in private high schools. The great increase of public high schools, which are practically coeduca tional, as compared with private high schools shows the success of high school coeducation in the United States. Moreover, 44 per cent of all private high schools are also coeduca tional and 42 per cent of the girls receiving a private high school education, and 45 per' cent of the boys, are studying in these coeducational private high schools. In 1915 boys and girls in public and private separate high schools formed only 12 per cent of all pupils in public- and private high schools. the other 88 per cent were in public and private coeducational high schools. In the larger high schools, and girls are frequently separated in athletics, gym nastics, recreation, and to some extent in study 'periods, but the few attempts that have been made to segregate them in separate classes have not succeeded. In vocational work espe cially when organized in special trade or voca tional high schools boys and girls naturally tend to elect different vocational work in order to be fitted for the different occupations open to men and women, but during the present war girls are being trained to undertake men's jobs and after the conclusion of peace the tendency will be to continue to give boys and girls the same vocational work in the high schools. The numbers of both boys and girls studying, in high schools in the United States are increasing at a faster rate than the There are slightly more girls than boys studying both in public and private high schools, and more girls than boys complete the high school course and graduate. In 1915 girls formed 54.54 per cent of all high school pupils. The extraordi nary success of elementary, secondary, and col lege coeducation in the United States cannot fail to exert a profound influence on the de velopment of the education of girls and women in all European countries. After the Conclusion of the present war all other civilized countries must make immediate provision for the higher education of women who will greatly outnum ber men in this generation and must conse quently receive the best preparation for self support and national service. As is shown by the experience of the United States women in considerable numbers will be unable to obtain higher education unless like boys they can be prepared for admission to the universities in state-supported schools. The experience of the United States also shows that only compara tively few children of rich parents can afford to study in separate private schools, even if they wish to do so, of which there is no indica tion. .Only 12 per cent of all girls and boys in the United States are studying in 'separate high schools. There is reason to believe that within the neilt half century coeducation will ,become the universal system of school, college and professional education, not in the United States, where it is now the prevailing system, but also in all other civilized countries.