Table showing the distribution of school boards making specified provision for religious instruction.

CHAPTER XVII (A).

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES.

SUBSTANCE OF AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY P. VOSS before the SIXTH SCANDINAVIAN SCHOOL CONFERENCE IN COPENHAGEN, AUGUST, 1890.

In his introduction the speaker made humorous reference to the "squinting pedagogues" of the eighteenth century, as he called them, or pedagogues who did not look at a thing from the standpoint of the laws of nature and of life, but according to artificial cut-and-dried theories. The practical and progressive ideas of the eighteenth century did not harmonize, he said, with the pedagogical ideas with which that generation was penetrated.

In the judgment of the speaker, the means of escaping the tendency to narrow views are observation and experience.

With regard to co-education, Dr. Voss said that probably he was chosen to introduce the subject on account of the larger experience of Norwegian educators in this matter. But as that country's own experience is only of short duration, he found himself obliged to lead his hearers over the ocean to the great Republic of the West and eastward to Finland, which nations for some time have followed the same road as the Norwegians.

To my knowledge, he said, co-education as a makeshift in public schools with slender resources has been practiced in all European centers of civilization ever since schools existed, or at least from the moment when nations became conscious that women have a right to education as well as men. Starting from this historical beginning the question arises: Is co-education also admissible in the higher schools, or do their more complicated courses of study, differing according to the future positions and vocations of students, offer decisive obstacles to co-education?

At present, he said, I will treat in particular of the elementary schools, i. e., schools for children up to 15 to 16 years of age, that period when interior and exterior circumstances, as a rule, naturally prompt the youth to think of his future career, his means of livelihood, and consequently of the great importance of directing his school education to a definite end. It would be useless to enter particularly upon the question of the proper status of co-education in universities and gymnasia, in normal schools, in a word, in all classes of higher institutions, which as a general rule are designed to be for males or females alone ("separate" schools). As soon as the conditions and facts which determine the place of co-education in the public schools are made sufficiently clear, the pedagogical problem will be solved in its most important part. It is principally from the elementary schools, or as we say in Norway, the middle schools (middelskoler) that we Norsemen have gained our experience.

The number of higher schools, middle schools, and gymnasia, in Norway, where co-education in a greater or less extent has been tried up to the present time may be put down at forty. In about thirty middle schools (with mixed schools belonging thereto) the practice has been fully carried out. The number of pupils in these schools ranges from 40 or 50 up to 250. In general the male sex furnishes the majority of pupils, but little by little this excess is diminishing. In the largest school known to me, i. e., Sandefjord's middle school, I found an almost equal distribution; in one class the boys predominated, but in another the girls. In a few of these schools, originally a kind of lower burgher schools, co-education was introduced at their first establishment, about twenty years ago; but in most of them co-education has been actually practiced only five or six years.

Co-education in middle schools received the approbation of the authorities first after a preliminary debate in the Storthing (legislative body) in the spring of 1884, which was occasioned by a request from the commercial city Brevik, for a public contribution to a communal middle school for boys and girls. That broke the ice. A few years later a departmental circular opened also the gymnasia for female pupils, and the example of Brevik found many followers. Under the financial pressure of the decade 1870-80 numerons middle schools were established, both in cities and in the country, which in the following straitened years weighed hard upon the communal budgets. For several of these schools co-education with its great economical

advantages offered the only security from financial ruin. That the higher school education has become so deeply rooted in as it is among our population is essentially due to co-education.

We should also notice how coeducation, step by step, has gained its way. This system was first cautiously introduced in the small lower classes; to these in time were added the lowest middle classes; and after an interval the girls, on account of their standing, received admittance to the graduating classes, and finally people came to the conclusion that coeducation would be the most practical and satisfactory system. Only in a few communities, which for a longer period have had wellequipped girls' schools, the matter is so arranged that these schools transfer the girls who want to take the higher courses to the highest boys' schools or to the next highest classes. While in this manner some schools stopped half way, on the other hand no retrograde steps have been taken. Coeducation, where it has once found entrance, has steadily gained ground. I am in possession of statements, the speaker continued, from the leading men of our mixed schools, and I will take advantage of this opportunity to give hearty thanks for the full, clear, and suggestive answers sent to me. The statements therein also refer to public feeling both against and for the system. It is repeatedly mentioned that coeducation has met with doubt and opposition. But at present it appears to me that dissatisfaction has subsided; nowhere do people wish a change; on the contrary, lively expressions of satisfaction frequently occur.

It is easily understood and is emphatically expressed in many of the statements that economical interests carry special weight in the eyes of the treasurers in favor of coeducation. Apart from a few theorists it was doubtless everywhere at first on account of economy that a general sentiment was aroused in favor of mixed schools. Parents preferred to have their children instructed together, instead of having only one part, the boys, taught, or of having them instructed separately at twofold expense. Some add that they prefer this system instead of having their children inefficiently instructed. The mixed school renders it possible to make a more complete grading. A generation ago it was thought natural in all public schools of our cities that the boys and girls should be separated as soon as the number of the pupils was large enough to support two schools.

A reaction has been brought about in many places, and more weight is attached to classifying the pupils according to ability and age than to sex. In this manner several of our schools have been reunited, and I have only heard of favorable results. The questions I have presented to my Norwegian colleagues can be condensed as follows:

1. How do the mixed schools affect the health of the girls?

2. How does coeducation accord with the programmes and methods of study? 3. What influence has it upon morality in school?

Or, in other words, what is thought of coeducation judged from the standpoint of the school's triple duty as a physical, intellectual, and ethical training school.

I. EFFECT OF MIXED SCHOOLS UPON THE Health of the girls. Thanks to the investigations of Prof. Axel Key and of the Danish commission on hygiene, relative to the sanitary conditions of the school population, which have attracted attention even outside of the Scandinavian countries, we are better acquainted with the sanitary condition of Swedish and Danish schools than of those of any other country. As to Norway, we have no data to present, but it is supposed that the conditions are analogous to those in the neighboring countries. From the reports of the Swedish and Danish investigations mentioned it is evident that the sanitary state of the school population is not good, is worse in the schools for girls than in the schools for boys; and worst in the higher schools for girls in Sweden. The percentage of ill health, which in the total number of boys' schools in Denmark amounts to 29 per cent., rises in the Latin schools to 32; in teachers' seminaries in Sweden to 39; and finally, in the thirty-five higher girls' schools which were investigated, the enormous proportion of 61 per cent. is found (shortsightedness not included). Both the Danish school committees assert that the percentages of ill health stated represent the minimum number. If we schoolmen now refer to expert physicians in order to find out how far the school is at fault with regard to this precarious condition, we shall be left in the dark. They mention a number of hygienic disadvantages, as insufficient light and air, inadequate heating apparatus, school material, etc.; too long school hours with too short recesses; objectionable distribution of lessons with too many studies at home; insufficient hygienic control by the school authorities; the teachers' lack of hygienic physiological education, etc. But, although these evils are bad enough and should impress all who are connected with schools, the physicians seem to agree that "the factors of sickliness are generally of a most complicated nature, so that it is impossible to isolate them from each other, and that every attempt to prove that the children's sickliness depends, e. g., on the longer or ED SI——30

shorter school hours, must be condemned." (Statement of the Swedish school committee for girls.)

The Alsace-Lorraine hygienic commission in its report of 1883 attributed the sad sanitary condition of young people principally to the existing social conditions; the sedentary life and impracticable dresses of girls; the influence of exciting literature upon the nervous system, public dancing, light theatrical plays, etc. And the Swedish school committee further specifies hereditary tendencies, abuse of alcohol, etc. Professor Key says, "Schools are as we want them to be;" and he explains with regard to girls, "It is the extra housework which produces overexertion, there where the burden is already heavy." The Swedish girls' school committee sympathizes in this with Professor Key. The following remarks are worthy of notice: "According to the Danish school commission, in the Danish schools for girls the daily study hours are longer than with us (in Sweden), the vacations are much shorter, gymnastics are on a low level, and there are no regular lunch hours; the school grounds are usually not as well located as in our country-a natural consequence of the lower school fees in Denmark. But in spite of these unfavorable conditions, the sanitation in the Danish schools for girls is 22 per cent. better than in the Swedish."

Thus, although we know very little of the actual effect the schools in general have upon the health of the children, one thing is certain, the health of school girls is on an average worse than that of boys. It is evident that girls' schools have had less attention paid to their hygienic arrangements than those for boys, and they are even in our day treated as of secondary consequence by the state. Physical training has only slowly gained its way. Grown-up persons, the educated-one-sided educatedand learned people have measured the child with their own measure and have made the erudition of the mind, which in many respects would have been a natural object of their own wishes, the only aim of early school education. The education of boys in and outside of the school is fortunately improving. The boys take the lead and the girls follow at a distance.

Many expressions of fresh child life, which for centuries were permitted to boys, have not been considered decorous for girls. A recently published work by Pinloche, a French writer, relating to Basedow and philanthropy, furnishes a retrospective view of the school affairs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which is anything but inspiring. Only think, in a regulation of a gymnasium in Eisenach, 1676, we read: The boys are forbidden to bathe and wash in cold water "because it is a very dangerous thing to do." They shall refrain from skating on the ice, from snowballing, from ball games. Paragraphs upon paragraphs follow, beginning with the significant words of that time, “ustineant," "fugiant," etc. These paragraphs have long since been struck out of the school regulations for boys, but they were retained for girls in Scandinavia until late in our century; and as antediluvian as it may appear to many, nevertheless it is certain that education in school and house still utters in many instances to the weaker sex Hamlet's words to Ophelia: "Frailty, thy name is woman."

If woman is frail by nature and education, we are so much the less entitled to push from us the favorable means by which to improve her health by offering her when a child the opportunity to play with the boys, to take walks with them, to engage in skating and sleighing parties, wood and field excursions. A frail boy will always improve in company with stronger boys and under proper care. Why should this not be the case with the sex that has been named the "weaker?" But a true fellowship between children, which in our days consists chiefly in their school interests, requires school companionship, school partnership, coeducation.

But we meet with the objection that what we gain in one respect through coeducation, we lose in another. The feebler strength of girls will not permit them without overexertion to bear the same amount of work as the boys; the girl's brain will not be able to assimilate the same amount of learning as that of the boy, or if so, it will be at the expense of her physical development, which with respect to women requires many peculiar considerations.

In this way many people find an obstacle to coeducation. Unfortunately, we schoolmen are not, as we should be, physiologists, and professional physiologists are not as a rule pedagogues; and, as scientists so often disagree, it is hard for a layman to form a proper judgment. The information I received from several learned and experienced physicians can be condensed as follows: Up to twelve years of age all agree that the mixed school can not endanger the health of the girls; after twelve years many physicians express themselves doubtful, but think it justifiable to proceed tentatively, keeping the ears open to the voice of experience in whatever direction its utterances may tend. Some physicians declare decidedly that from the physical standpoint no objection can be raised against the same studies for girls as those laid down for boys, provided that the girls are brought under the same favorable hygienic conditions as the boys. "If you can provide the girls with the same physical exercises as the boys, there will be no danger," I heard one physician say.

Another physician said, "Do away with the corset and that will more than counterbalance the difference in lessons." With regard to the Norwegian mixed schools, the school committees have tried to forestall every danger and have made arrangements by which the work in mathematics is somewhat reduced for girls, the division of · middle-school examinations is transferred to an earlier school grade, and finally the course for girls in the highest class of the middle schools may last two years. These measures permit "at the critical age" both a shortening of daily school hours and a decrease of the general home studies, leaving some spare time for household work. The arrangement has of course disadvantages; a two years' course in which a class of girls is associated in turn with two different classes of boys is not a perfect system of coeducation.

But let us look around in other parts of the world. In several States of the United States coeducation has for generations been practiced, though not without opposition. The physical capacity of the female sex has especially been a burning question. It is well known that American physicians in medical journals have ascribed a poor standing to American women of the better classes, as wives and mothers. One especially, the late Dr. Clarke, of Boston, in a manner that attracted attention on this side of the ocean, attributed this evil to coeducation, and prophesied as a consequence thereof a general degeneration of the female sex. I followed the movement as far as was in my power at such a distance, and in the year 1884 I furnished in Vor Ungdom an account of some contemporary documents, especially of a complete official report of the spread of coeducation in the United States with the prevailing opinion on that subject. The report was prepared by the Commissioner of Education in Washington, Hon. John Eaton, partly on account of repeated requests for information from Europe. Mr. Eaton's investigation comprised more than three hundred large and small cities of the Union, and furnished on the whole remarkable testimony in favor of mixed schools. The following sentence expressed the general sentiment of the time: "We are created male and female; all the impulses and activities of nature enforce coeducation; if we must live together we must be educated to that end; to educate separately is an attempt to change the natural order of human economy." This information from America contributed to a certain degree to the advancement of coeducation in Europe. From the same report, however, it appears that the system met with considerable opposition in the West, an opposition which in the eyes of some people received a certain official stamp two years later (i. e., 1885), by a publication of the Bureau of Education. This publication was a circular by Mr. Philbrick, who for one generation had a great influence upon education in Boston. Mr. Philbrick's writing is an earnest and distinguished work, the testimony of an experienced schoolman, who regarded the school system of his country more critically than Americans usually do; it treats more of other subjects, however, and speaks of coeducation only occasionally and somewhat critically, as if it were less appreciated in America than formerly. "Coeducation makes it harder "-this is in short lis conclusion-"to remedy the reigning overpressure in the schools and it prevents 'specialization' of schools." Mr. Philbrick is no partisan of the movement which at present is called "mixed schools." Commissioner Eaton introduces Mr. Philbrick's circular with many complimentary words, but at the same time he takes care to make it plain that the Bureau by publishing this work does not indorse all the opinions expressed therein. As nevertheless the people in Norway and of late the Swedish girls' school committee have construed Mr. Philbrick's writing as an official retreat from the standpoint regarding coeducation which the Bureau of Education commended in its publication of 183, I consider it opportune to-day, with reference to the conception of Mr. Philbrick's writing as it has been understood in the Scandinavian countries, to take as a guide in our discussion the recent authentic statement from the Bureau itself. The explicit answer of June 17, this year, from the Bureau, has been prepared by the present Commissioner, Dr. W. T. Harris. It states his thorough personal experience of both systems, i. e., the mixed school and the separate school; he enters upon the essential features of the question and sets forth, forcibly and decisively, in the light of experience, the acknowledged advantages of coeducation. This important document will be published in Vor Ungdom (Our Young People). At present I confine myself to the following extract:

"I think the overwhelming majority of all persons engaged in education in the United States are in favor of coeducation. With regard to Mr. Philbrick's judgment on the subject of coeducation, I think that he stood almost alone among our ablest writers on education in his opinion. The Boston schools under his charge educated the sexes separately. It may be that his experience in that city had undue influence on his opinion. At present, with the extension of the city limits, so that new suburbs have been taken in, there are now in Boston very many primary and grammar schools (pupils from 10 to 14 years of age) and also secondary schools (so-called high schools) now in Boston which have coeducation. The prophecies of Dr. Clarke, of Boston, to the effect that coeducation would prove injurious to the health of women, have not been fulfilled. A very active society of graduates from universities educating women