The courier., 1902-04-12
Co-Education

The first women who desired to go to
college were regarded with horror by
the same kind and quality of people
who now aim coarse, trite jokes at the
women taxpayers who claim a right to
express their choice in the admins
tration of their own property. The OPP
ponents of higher education said then,
as the anti-suffragists say now, that
a college education would unsex wom-
an, make her masculine, unfilial, scorn-
full of men, undutiful and disobedient
wives and unloving mothers, poor
cooks. slovenly housekeepers, and rem
der them altogether unlovely. Woman
is. to speak temperately, as good-look-
ing as ever. That is. pretty women are
as pretty as they were before they were
allowed to study anything not taught
in the high-schools. Women in gen.
eral are as heroic as the mothers of
the Gracchi who could neither read nor
write, but spent their lives before a
broidery frame. The truth Is that the
tendency to become a woman is firmly
fixed In a little girl, and the knowledge
and training attained in a college
makes her more Of a woman.
But ali this has been abandoned long
ago. The average male college under
graduate has been in the same col
lege with young women long enough
to discover that il there are any hon
ors, the girls are more than likely to
take them; and that he has not the
same chance he would have in a col
lege for men. There is much fearful
talk about the Termination of our
learning; but that phase is not what
displeases the average undergraduate.
There are many college women who
shrink from frankly considering wom-
ans rights and from those who be-
lieve that women are individuals and
are entitled to at least a voting share
tives believe in higher education for
women. But unless it is REINFORCED
by larger civil rights, it is not impos-
sible that some of the present co-edu-
women.
Stanford has already limited the
number of female students who can be
admitted. Professor James Of North
western university ambiguously ap-.
proves Of the education of women, but
Enthusiastically deprecates that un-
known and unaccomplished effect
called Termination from which male
students are fleeing to colleges devoted
to the hard task Of civilizing man in
his most brutal period. To be sure
state universities are supported by the
taxation Of the entire people. Sc much
value to the state Cor education. The
property is sexless. 1t may be owned
by a man; II may be owned by a
woman. 1t is dollars the state collects
ard the sex of the individual who pays
TIE tax Is Of no import.
Suppose the voters of Nebraska con-
clude that all the teachers, books, ap-
paratus and rooms at the university of
Nebraska are needed for the education
of other voters. According to the logic
of the anti-suffragists such a conclu-
sion is inevitable. II a woman's in
terest in public affairs is impertinent
and unwomanly, the less education she
has the more likely she is to be sat-
isfied with the role assigned her by the
hard and unjust conditions. supersti-
tions and conventions of today. Un-
less woman is to vote she certainly
should not be educated. The slave
holders Of the south were right when
they made 1t a crime to teach a negro
how to read and write. Catholicity