COEDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES OF THE UNITED STATES.

By ANNA TOLMAN SMITH.

TOPICAL OUTLINE.

Coeducation of the sexes a characteristic feature of public education in the United States, and closely related to the democratic ideal of progress; not wanting in private institutions; affects at least 93 per cent of all children and youth under instruction in the schools and colleges of this country.

The West the field for the highest development of State education and consequently of the typical feature, coeducation; extent and population of this section; distinctive contributions to education.

The ordinance of 1787 the initial provision for public education in the West; elementary schools and higher institutions alike included in its scope. Spirit of moral earnestness manifest in the early institutions of the West. State universities as national types. Unity of higher and elementary education in the West.

Interrelation of States in the formative period of national life. Local circumstances a determining factor in the conduct of schools. Rapid development of public school systems in the West.

Influence of high schools in promoting coeducation; causes of separate high schools in the East. State normal schools coeducational even in the East.

Relation of public education to the political and industrial revolutions of the early part of the nineteenth century. Women affected by the transfer of industries from home to factories seek new careers. Congress meets the demand for a new order of education for the industrial classes by the land-grant act of 1862. Effect of this measure in promoting coeducation. Endowment of special colleges for women in the Eastern States increases the sectional tendencies toward separate education for men and women.

The year 1870 a memorable date in the history of education; outlook at that time in our own country as regards coeducation; change in eastern tendencies through the action of Cornell and Boston universities in admitting women; arguments pro and con foreshadowing the lines of all future discussions of the policy.

Organic relation of all parts of public education. Formative period completed by 1870. Survey of the period 1870 to 1902; public high schools, increase in number; per cent of pupils in coeducational schools; separato high schools, location and causes; effect upon higher institutions through large proportion of pupils in college preparatory courses..

Coeducation in colleges and universities: Increase, 1873-1902, in proportion of coeducational institutions and proportion of women students; large proportion of institutions of first order included in those that are coeducational; increase of numbers continues up to 1690; since that date increase chiefly in resources and power; effect of coeducation upon (1) attendance of men as indicated by statistics; (2) choice of colleges by women students.

Special policies growing out of coeducation movement: Separate colleges in one university organization; annexes for women. College residence for women. Bearing of elective system upon coeducation. Recent reactions. Choice of studies as influenced by sex. Women in graduate courses and professional departments Concluding reflections.

Appended matter: Segregation at Chicago University; status of women in foreign universities; selected bibliography.

Coeducation, or the instruction of both sexes in the same schools and classes, is a characteristic feature of public education in the United States. As such it impresses all foreign students of our institutions, and it is largely from their comments that we ourselves have come to realize its importance as a factor in our social life. Mr. Bryce, who has discussed the policy in his American Commonwealth, notes among its effects that it tends to place "women and men on a level

as regards attainments and to give them a greater number of common intellectual interests." Our national impulse in this matter was discerned by De Tocqueville, writing sixty years earlier, when as yet our school policies were not well defined. "The Americans," he says, “have done all they could to raise woman morally and intellectually to the level of man; and in this respect they appear to me to have excellently understood the true principle of democratic improvement." His acute mind penetrated thus to the underlying motive of the whole vast work of public education in this country. The impulse of democracy unrestrained by conventional or traditional modes of action has shaped its forms in the spirit of freedom and equality.

While the United States has no national system of education in the sense of an official system under centralized authority, after the manner of the French system, it presents the nearest approach to that ideal of a national system expressed by Huxley under the figure of an educational ladder reaching from "the gutter to the university." No one is excluded from its provision by reason either of social condition or of sex. As in other countries, public and private institutions have flourished here side by side. But the United States affords the unique example, among the principal educating countries, of a great preponderance of free public agencies over private agencies up to the college and university grade. Even on this highest plane State institutions show an ever-increasing proportion of both ́ students and resources. Statistics alone indicate the full extent of this public education. In the elementary grade it amounts almost to monopoly, above 15,000,000 children (15,375,276) being enrolled in public schools against a little more than 1,000,000 in private schools. Of pupils in secondary studies, public high schools enroll 566,124 against 168,636 in private schools. Public universities and colleges claim 39,487 students (33 per cent) out of a total registration of 119,496 students. Even professional education, which meets the demands of special classes, has its quota of publicly supported schools, which registered in 1902 nearly one-sixth of the students (10,726 in a total of 61,499) preparing for the liberal professions.

As to the prevalence of coeducation throughout this public system, the statistics are convincing. Of elementary pupils at least 96 per cent are in mixed schools, and of secondary pupils 95 per cent. Altogether, on a total enrollment of 15,990,803 pupils in public schools (elementary, secondary, and normal), 15,387,734 are in schools attended by both sexes.

The very general favor with which the coeducation policy is regarded is indicated also by its extension to private schools. Thus of the pupils enrolled in private secondary schools 43 per cent are in mixed schools. As to higher institutionscolleges and universities-62.5 per cent of all undergraduates are in coeducational institutions. The proportion would doubtless be much higher if only State universities and land-grant colleges were considered. Summarizing, we may say, in round numbers, that 153 million children and youth of the country are studying in public coeducational schools and colleges. The number in private schools and colleges would raise this total to at least 16 million, or 93 per cent of the total school and college enrollment.

THE WEST THE FIELD FOR FULLEST DEVELOPMENT OF STATE EDUCATION AND OF

COEDUCATION.

To realize how deeply this policy is involved with the spread of democratic principles, we have only to recall the past history of education. This relation is emphasized in our own country by the marked extension of the policy in the Western States, the section in which, as Professor Ely has observed, "the whole education of the citizen has been conceived as a public function." Under this conception women have been freely admitted to all provision by which the State

seeks to foster intelligence and high ideals. Hence to understand what coeducation implies as a matter of public policy we turn naturally to this section of the country rather than to the older Eastern States.

What is here termed the "West" includes two great divisions of our country, the North Central and the Western, having to-day a combined population of 30,424,000, or 40 per cent of the total population. It is worthy of note also, since cities shape public opinion, that this number includes 38 per cent of the urban population of the country.

This vast section received its first intellectual impulses from the Eastern States and is one with them in respect to the essential principles of an educational system. It has, however, made some distinctive contributions to the work, which have in turn reacted upon the East, enriching its ideals and liberalizing its methods. From a city of the West emanated a philosophic movement which, starting with a few earnest minds, has spread throughout the country, and by its effect upon teachers and educational leaders has helped to fortify secular education against the insidious influence of materialism. The West furnished the type of a university founded upon State and national endowments, and gave also to this country the first example of a university open alike to men and to women.

Two great events mark the early history of this region. The one was the initial measure in our whole policy of expansion; the other was the first formal expression of our national concern for popular education.

The Louisiana purchase of 1803, which added to the national domain 1,171,931 square miles and secured to the United States absolute control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, had been preceded by a national measure of scarcely less importance. This measure, a legacy from the Continental Congress, was the ordinance of 1787 for the government of the North-West Territory-that is, the territory extending north of the Ohio River to the Great Lakes and westward to the Mississippi River. In the memorable passage "religion, morality, and knowledge being essential to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged," the ordinance embodied an idea which had been reiterated again and again in the constitutions of the original States, but which received in this new form the force of national sanction. The constitution of Massachusetts (1780) had in particular declared: "Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them." The document further specified as institutions to be cherished, “the University at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools." The language of the ordinance of 1787 quoted above is less specific than that of the Massachusetts constitution, but its very vagueness proved significant. As events showed, it was not only held to sanction in perpetuity the clause of a previous ordinance of 1785 reserving "the lot No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within the said township," but also the reservation of lands for university endowment, a provision which it had been vainly sought to embody in the earlier ordinance.

At its first practical application the ordinance was taken in its largest scope. The Ohio Company, formed for the purpose of settling in the Territory, had been active in securing the provisions of the ordinance with respect to education. Before the purchase of the lands was consummated, the agent of the company, Doctor Cutler, in his negotiations with Congress, insisted that the conditions of purchase should include not only the reservation of lot No. 16 for schools, but also

the reservation of two townships near the center of the tract and "of good land, for the support of a literary institution." The conditions were approved, and the work of settlement went vigorously forward. Other purchases followed upon similar terms, and in 1803, the very year of the Louisiana purchase, Ohio was admitted to statehood. A university had already been chartered by the Territorial legislature on the basis of the land grant, and one of the earliest acts of the general assembly of the State was the granting of a new charter to the institution under the name of the Ohio University. The two reserved townships of land were given as an endowment to the university by the act of incorporation, which contained also specific directions for the disposition of the lands. Thus upon the very eve of Jefferson's transaction with Napoleon, which gave immense expansion to our domain and our resources, a policy was stamped upon our national laws and wrought into the sentiments and activities of pioneer settlers which made for the highest ideals in individual character and citizenship. The Louisiana purchase and all subsequent areas secured by annexation or treaty came under its beneficent influence. Every State formed in this boundless territory has been met by provision for common schools and provision for the higher education, which gives vigor to the common school.

For upward of twenty years the Ohio University was the only institution of collegiate rank west of the Alleghenies. Even in those pioneer days-days of hand-to-hand struggle with the wilderness, of exhausting efforts for the supply of the primitive wants-it had its roll of students, and in 1815 graduated two men, one of whom, Thomas Ewing, was destined to achieve national distinction.

For several years, outside the lands of the Ohio Company and the Cincinnati district, settlers in the Territory were few and isolated. In the census of 1810 the North Central Division, the only portion of the West included in that census, shows a population of 293.169, of which 78 per cent was credited to Ohio. In 1820 the population of this division had increased to 859,305 and the era of phenomenal growth had set in. In the next two decades (1820-1840) the population increased to 3,351,542, a gain of 290 per cent. Of the twelve States and Territories comprised in the division, four had acquired, prior to 1840, the full rights of statehood. The educational record for those years is meager and scattered, but one fact is noticeable-everywhere as population increased, colleges multiplied. In 1820 the Ohio University was the only representative of the higher learning in the whole region. In 1824 Miami University, in Ohio, and Indiana University were both chartered; the University of Michigan followed in 1837, all drawing their original endowment from the national land grant. Around them sprang up in the brief space of twenty years within the limits of the North-West Territory no less than seventeen additional colleges, which are still in operation. Many of these early foundations were mere preparatory schools strugging bravely up to the college plane, but they never lost sight of the moral purposes of education. Over and over again the convictions that were expressed in the ordinance of 1787 meet us in their charters or acts of incorporation. This is noticeable alike in church and in state foundations. The act establishing Miami University declares it to be "for the promotion of good education, virtue, religion, and morality." The act to incorporate a university in Indiana, passed in 1806, was introduced by a preamble which declared that the independence, happiness, and energy of every republic depends (under the influence of the destinies of Heaven) upon the wisdom, virtue, talents, and energy of its citizens and rulers," and further that "learning hath ever been found the ablest advocate of genuine liberty, the best supporter of rational religion, and the source of the only solid and imperishable glory which nations can acquire." The objects proposed by the founders of Western Reserve University were "to educate pious young men as pastors for our destitute churches, to preserve the present literary and religious character of the state and redeem it from

future decline; to prepare competent men to fill the Cabinet, the bench, the bar, and the pulpit." These declarations, which might be indefinitely multiplied, were not empty words. They reveal the spirit of moral earnestness which pervaded teachers and students and which explains undoubtedly the high proportion of forceful characters among the graduates of that early period.

Although the development of the region embraced in the Louisiana purchase belongs to a later period than that of the North-West Territory it has followed for the most part the same course. Missouri shows, indeed, modifying influences from the old French occupation, and Louisiana, both by reason of its earlier history and its geographic position, has had a distinctive history. These two States represent the only portions of the domain purchased in 1803 that were included by name in the census of 1810. At that time the population of Louisiana, which was admitted as a State two years later, was 76,556, and that of Missouri (admitted in 1821) was 20,845. Missouri shared in the advancing population of the NorthWest Territory, as is shown by the fact that it increased from 140,455 inhabitants in 1830 to 682,044 in 1850, an increase of 385 per cent. It is interesting to note here that the act of Congress of 1812, organizing the Territory of Missouri, reiterated the language of the ordinance of 1787 with amplifications, as follows: "Religion, morality, and knowledge being nece sary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be encouraged and provided for from the public lands of the United States in said Territory in such manner as Congress may deem expedient." Subsequently Congress provided that two townships of land in the Territory should be devoted to a university and "one thirty-sixth of the entire public domain, together with saline and swamp lands, to township (nondistrict) schools." The first constitution of the State ratified these provisions, and thus the.policy which had been initiated in Ohio was transferred beyond the Mississippi.

It would be impossible at this date to estimate even approximately the money value of the university lands reserved under the ordinance of 1787 and the acts extending its beneficent provision, as State after State was admitted to the Union. Much of the precious endowment, it is well known, was lost by bad management, but this waste does not detract from the importance of the policy, which is to be measured rather by its inspiring influence than by its financial outcome.

The precedent established in 1787 has been followed by Congressional appropriations of much greater value, notably those made under the land-grant act of 1862 and the supplementary acts of 1887 and 1890, and this national policy has been supplemented by extensive grants on the part of the State legislatures. It is this whole princely endowment which must be taken into account when the value of the initial act is in question. a

We are reminded in this consideration of the peculiar character of our Republic, which gives more complex meaning to the term "national" than is suggested merely by relation to the Federal authority. Government with us is a union of State and Federal action, springing from and embodying the will of the people. The extent to which a particular policy is supported by the people is the measure of its claim to be regarded as national. It is indeed true that only measures which emanate from Congress are applicable to the entire country, but so closely interwoven are the States that measures passed by the legislature of one State are often adopted almost simultaneously by other State legislatures, and thus rapidly spread throughout the country. This is so true, in respect to education, that although there is no national system of education in the United States, the expression is current among us and carries to all minds a very definite idea. This interplay of Federal and of State policies in that complex whole which we call

a The total land appropriations under the ordinance of 1787, the act of 1862, and supplementary acts amount to 86,084,879 acres.