Recently, as one separate college after another has announced the addition of either men or women students, there have been frequent rehearsals of the arguments for coeducation. The students want it. Even Hamsphire, born coeducational, should be self-conscious about its sex. The case for coeducation, then, is an important beginning for this report.
Coeducation is the general pattern for education in America.
The public school system has always been for both men and women, and most students at Hampshire will come from it. Graduate and professional schools, not to mention working life, are for men and women together. Students who have been used to coeducation should not face a major readjustment to separate education and then another after their brief three or four years, particularly since the shifts would come during years when students most want to learn about themselves in relation to the other sex. Also, all the forms of education outside the classroom that Hampshire PAGE 9 supports, such as field-work, study abroad, work semesters, and the like, are coeducational. Although Hampshire will often want to work outside of given patterns, coeducation is one it should keep.