full of curious things, for Sweden is very old, but where else are there sunsets like this? Sweden is very beautiful."

With this we parted, echoing his thought that Sweden is indeed a land of great beauty and much interest, and realizing more fully that the student youth of Sweden is an intense lover of Nature.

"SHOULD THE COLLEGIATE AND SECONDARY EDUCATION PROVIDED FOR WOMEN BE THE SAME AS THAT PROVIDED FOR MEN "?

ARTHUR H. NORTON, PRESIDENT, KEUKA COLLEGE

Query: Ought female children to receive the same education as boys and have the same scope for play?

Answer: In their earlier years there should be no difference. But there are shades of discretion and regards to propriety which judicious and prudent guardians and teachers can discern and can adjust and apply.

The foregoing statement is quoted from Earle's Child Life in Colonial Days at page 95 and fairly represents the thought of education before the American Revolution.

I suppose the souls of men have been more or less disturbed by the question under consideration since Cain took his wife from the land of Nod and builded the city of Enoch.

In those days and for succeeding centuries the chief function of woman was to bear and rear children and minister unto the comfort and pleasure of her husband.

Socrates said: "The gods intended woman for work within doors." This may account for the shrewish temper which Xenophon attributes to Socrates' wife.

In this country the education of the women of the prerevolution period came as a result of local conditions. She worked and suffered as the helper, the companion and the equal with her Pilgrim husband in New England and her gallant Cavalier in the South. She guarded the home from beasts and Indians. She protected her children with her very life. She toiled long hours in the field, in the house and at the loom that her family might be fed and clothed. The writer of Proverbs in the last chapter of that book thus describes her:

A worthy woman who can find? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband trusteth her, and he shall have no lack of gain. She doeth him good and not evil all the days of her life. Give her of the fruit of her hands; And let her works praise her in the gates.

If you will read and study the chapter from which I have quoted you will understand exactly what most men coveted in women who were their wives. It was not a day of single standard, neither did men consider women their equal in some respects, but a good woman was counted most precious. Yet nothing was done to provide schools for girls and so girls counted themselves cut off from educational advantages This was perfectly natural as even yet we think of one who does not finish school and college as uneducated, forgetting that education is not confined to the school.

One of the distressing conditions in the country today is the fact that parents seem to feel that they can turn their children over to the school, the summer camp and other splendid agencies and thus do their full duty by them. If boys and girls could have more of "dad" and less of dance, we should have a better system of education right

now.

President Reinhardt of Mills College aptly states the situation after the Revolution:

They (women) had always been given instruction in religious thought and discussion and in a variety of occupational activities. Now they began to want knowledge of many kinds, so they consciously worked to found schools and colleges where women might enter to learn. It is disconcerting to the woman trustee of today to read the discussions in the town meetings of Gloucester as to whether females, "being a tender and interesting part of the population" should have any rights as pupils in the public town school.

So the struggle went on. Girls had actually to force open the schools and it was 1769 before Boston opened its schools to girls and it was 1893 before girls were prepared for college in the public schools of Philadelphia. As late as 1850 a young woman who sought a college education was thought a little queer, something of a freak and a character to be avoided by the lordly male of the species. still told that college women do not marry in the same proportion as other women. This of course may be due to the awe an educated woman inspires in man or because of their sharpened powers of discrimination and more accurate estimate of real values.

It was necessary at first for girls and women to prove that they could "learn" as well as men, that they could grasp facts and draw conclusions as quickly and as accurately as their brothers. The courses of study in both schools and colleges were planned for boys and men. A study of almost any college catalog will convince you that the courses offered are still based on the needs of the boys. The illustrations used in our textbooks and the experiments performed in our laboratories all bear the mark of the male. Some

institutions are making an effort to correct this condition. It seems to me we do not longer need to question even in our inmost souls the ability of women to cope with men in the intellectual realm. I remember being asked some years ago by a professor of mathematics in an engineering course, if I really believed girls in college could master analytic geometry. I told him I would match my girls against his boys and that I felt safe in saying that the results would not reflect discredit upon my girls. My observation leads me to believe that girls are better "lesson getters" than boys. It is folly, however, to waste time on such discussion. The women are presenting themselves in ever increasing numbers to our colleges and the question before us is just how to make the most out of the conditions as they are.

The women have come a long ways in their advance. They have fought for every inch gained. They have proved their ability. Now what shall be the policy for the future?

At the very beginning we must recognize that there are real differences of sex to be taken into account. Just how much of sex differentiation is due to sex and how much to tradition and environment is an open question. There has always been a division of labor between men and women based somewhat on sex, but at present men are doing many things formerly considered women's work and women are dressing and acting more like men, they are working in the shops at trades and in professions supposedly reserved for men and some women are quite manly.

Dr Edwin D. Starbuck in volume 42 of the National Education Association report, on page 79, states:

There is a consistent difference between the sexes as shown by most of the tests and that difference is probably fundamental in that it extends back to the earliest years and continues to the later. Boys and men are quicker mentally and physically, are less enduring. slightly superior in those 'senses naturally most exercised, slightly inferior in those in which girls have had larger experience, reason more alertly, come up to large questions more specifically rather than in a general way. Whatever differences exist are consistent. That is. they fall in line with each other and with certain physiological and biological differences in so far as we know them.

He goes on to say that the difference is small and I think we are coming to believe that the difference is very small. The second fact to be remembered is that a new world has just opened before women and they must be properly educated and trained. We have abundant evidence that woman's mentality is similar in character and equal quality as that of man.

Today woman is in close vital touch with social, intellectual, political and spiritual affairs and she can not be denied the privilege of preparing herself for service in these fields.

The Journal of Educational Research for September 1924, beginning at page 149, discusses at length the curriculum situation at the present time. Mr John K. Norton of the research division makes several "outstanding findings" which bear directly on our topic:

1 There is little uniformity in practice in the United States so far as the elementary school curriculum is concerned. Each state and, in most sections each local district, is a law unto itself. 2 So far as many courses of study disclose, education has no objective.

3 Recent courses of study do not support the claim of our contemporaries, who still live in the educational atmosphere of a generation ago, that the school is neglecting the fundamentals.

4 There exists no adequate clearing house through which the best thought and practice on the curriculum may be readily pooled.

From a careful study of the situation in this country, it seems to me that we are not just certain what the schools and colleges are trying to do. We are working in the dark, trusting that some kind Providence will lead us into the light. The need for a Federal Department of Education whose function shall be a thorough study and investigation of the present problems is more and more apparent. In 1919 I was invited to organize a new college for women and I accepted the invitation on the condition that I be given 2 years to study and investigate the field. This I did and I am convinced that there is abundant reason why we as educators should make a careful and prolonged study of the question before us. I have submitted this question to nearly fifty thinkers, including school principals, city superintendents, college presidents, deans of colleges for women, deans of coeducational institutions, heads of departments of education, inspectors and business men. Fully 80 per cent have replied and I take pleasure in quoting from several.

Mrs Gertrude S. Martin, formerly dean of women at Cornell University says:

My answer to your general question is this. I believe that in both secondary and collegiate schools the work for the two sexes — all of the required work, at least, the backbone of the course should be the same. To say that it should be the same for both sexes is, however, quite different from saying that it should be the same as it is at present. The present curriculum is very lopsided, much overweighted on the side of what have been traditionally the boys' interests, naturally enough, since it was devised primarily to meet his needs. Half conscious of this we have made what seems to me

largely a futile effort to secure a better balance by adding to the curriculum here and there special courses for girls, usually pretty poor in educational content, only partly thought out, badly organized and inadequately presented. What we really need, it seems to me, is something much more fundamental than the addition of special courses, nothing less, as a matter of fact, than a reorganization of our whole educational material to take account of the fact that we are now educating in the schools and colleges both boys and girls. The curriculum needs, in the interest of the boys quite as much as that of the girls, enrichment and diversification in the direction of what are usually considered the special interests of the girls.

My observation of the social movement leads me to believe that with the progress of civilization the traditional fields of activity of men and women become more and more freely interchangeable. It is not merely that there has been an incursion of women into men's work. With the development of industry there have been also enormous mass movements in the opposite direction, so that today the preparation of food and clothing for example, once exclusively the work of women. has passed very largely into the hands of men.

It would seem, therefore, as if the tendency of the social movement called for a reorganization of our educational material in the direction of integration rather than segregation.

This is what has really happened historically first, complete segregation of the sexes for educational purposes, education being as yet neither organized nor institutionalized for either sex; then the organization of education for boys through the institution of the school, segregation by sex remaining as complete as ever; next, ad.nission of girls to a share in the education thus organized for boys, no revision or adaptation of educational material being deemed either necessary or desirable; next, the provision of special courses, usually technical in character, to meet supposed special needs of girls.

These are just steps, it seems to me, in our progress from practically complete educational segregation by sex toward an integration of the educational process, within which segregation, where it occurs, shall be functional instead of an arbitrary sex segregation. That such functional segregation will frequently follow sex lines seems probable; but in view of what seems to me to be the clear tendency of the social process the tendency to shift or even wipe out the lines of demarcation between the activities of the sexes - it would seem increasingly important to provide for both sexes the same educational material, reorganizing it especially in introductory and elementary courses so as to provide a point of contact with the experience of both sexes and making as ample provision in advanced and technical courses in fields traditionally assigned to women as is now made in fields traditionally assigned to men, but giving to the individual student, whether boy or girl, every encouragement to cross these traditional boundaries, as inclination and aptitude may dictate.

The same curriculum, then, but with a shifting of emphasis and a widening of scope that shall recognize the interests of both sexes