CO-EDUCATION.
149
One amount» to a practical prohibition, for the present at least, of the experiment of the special and appropriate co-education of the sexes ; and the other is an inherent difficulty in the experiment itself. The former can he removed whenever those who heartily believe in the success of the experiment choose to get rid of it; and the latter by patient and intelligent effort.
The present practical prohibition of the experiment is the poverty of our colleges. Identical co-education can be easily tried with the existing organization of collegiate instruction. This has been tried, and is still going on in separate and double-sexed schools of all sorts, and has failed. Special and appropriate coeducation requires in many ways, not in all, re-arrangement of the organization of instruction; and this will cost money and a good deal of it. Harvard College, for example, rich as it is supposed to be, whose banner, to use Mr. Higginson’s illustration, is the red flag that the bulls of female reform are just now pitching-into,— Harvard College could not under-