Knowledge for professional ends. The second axiom is that a teachers' college should use knowledge for professional ends. A university department of education might conceivably pursue research and investigation regardless of its outcome, but a professional school for the training of educational experts cannot afford to neglect the practical application of approved facts. A teachers' college, in other words, must be a school of both pure and applied science. I have little faith in the ability of any one to draw the line between the two aspects of higher study, but if it can be done, then the teachers' college must be found in the field of applied science. Our success depends upon our ability to use correctly the knowledge of facts and processes concerned in education. Our work, therefore, has a twofold aspect — first, the pursuit of knowledge that will stand the test, and, second, learning how to use such knowledge skillfully for the benefit of society.

Cutting academic red tape. A third axiom relates to the conditions under which we work. A teachers' college must be free to pursue its work without overmuch regard to academic traditions. While some sort of connection with a university is highly desirable, both for the sake of the inspiration gained from workers in other fields, and the contributions that come from those not directly concerned in our work, there is danger, nevertheless, that too close a union may stifle the life of the young professional school with the windings of academic red tape. A teachers' college, if it deserves to exist as something apart from a collegiate course, must, like a university department, and every other professional school, be given freedom to develop

its field. The spirit of its work, its esprit de corps, and its mode of giving instruction must develop normally and naturally according to its needs. This can't be done if some extraneous power decides ex cathedra that certain lines of work, generally those nearest akin to those already in existence, are worthy of university recognition, and certain other lines to which they are strangers are unworthy of recognition. In a teachers' college the methods of teaching spelling, or memorizing a Latin declension, or cooking a beefsteak are as worthy of attention as a study of the principles of causation, the doctrine of evolution, or the history of coeducation. No one doubts that the expert surgeon does right in giving attention to methods of tying an artery and bandaging a wound. It takes time to learn the necessary details in professional practice, and a professional school is fully justified in giving the time and allowing credit for it. I mention this desideratum, seemingly so self-evident, because I have found it the chief stumblingblock in university circles. I would go further and say that the ordinary system of counting courses of instruction by the number of hours per week, or the number of weeks per year, should be abandoned in a teachers' college, or at least be modified in such a way as to permit of a combination of courses of variable length given by several instructors. Academic tradition assigns to a given faculty of a university certain functions, and credits only that instruction which members of the faculty may give. A teachers' college should be free to supplement the instruction of its own staff with the services of experts drawn from a wide circle, and it should not hesitate to send its students

into the field for study and instruction under recognized leaders who cannot bring their work to the college. We need something akin to the clinic and hospital service of the medical school. When academic tradition interferes with professional needs, away with red tape. When something can be learned from an expert in a few hours, why refuse to call in the expert or tie it up with a dozen other things in order to make out a two-hour course for a semester? A teachers' college supported by the state should have all the educational resources of the state at its command. Its students should be welcome in any schoolroom and have access to all the information possessed by any principal or superintendent of schools. Its invitation to any teacher in the state to share instruction for an hour or a week should be deemed both a professional honor and a patriotic duty. To one accustomed to the limitations placed upon a private institution, the opportunities open to such a state institution as this seem boundless.

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CHAPTER IX

COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS 1

OEDUCATION is a failure: The Horace Mann
School decides to abandon it."

This startling headline in a New York daily paper prefaced the announcement of a change in policy with respect to our college schools. The fact is that after twenty-five years of coeducation we tried the experiment of separating the sexes during the last six of the twelve years' course. The kindergarten and first six grades of the elementary school will remain coeducational. Beginning with the seventh grade, the boys go to a school at 246th Street, six miles distant, and the girls remain in the present building at 120th Street. The boys' school has a playground of four acres fitted for their use in all kinds of weather. The girls have the fine gymnasium and swimming-pool formerly shared with the boys. Material equipment, therefore, is about equalized. The special feature of the boys' school is its outdoor lifea country school for boys; the special advantages of the girls' school will be its facilities for teaching the household arts, fine arts, and music.

Is coeducation a failure? If a country school is good for city boys, why not for city girls? Can't the household arts and other technical subjects be taught as well in one place as in another? Why separate the boys and

1 A revised reprint from GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, October, 1913, used by courtesy of the publishers.

girls

unless, perchance, you think coeducation a failure? A matter of expediency. Those who believe that coeducation is a failure will not be changed by any explanation that I can give, but I insist that our action has no bearing whatever on the main question. We have done only what every good school and every wise community would do under similar conditions. When the present school building was erected it was surrounded by vacant blocks. Playgrounds were easily accessible. Now the city hems us in. Moreover, the school was much smaller than now. School life was simpler, and no such demand was made upon us for the technical training of girls as has come everywhere within the past ten years. Our policy is to keep the school to the front and make it in every way as good as we know how. Our present building and equipment represent an investment of upward of $500,000. It is too valuable to abandon, but it can be made into an ideal school for girls. For three years the boys have been going afternoons in good weather to the playground at 246th Street. The time spent on the trains twenty-five minutes each way—is a considerable loss, and in order to get in an hour or two in daylight the school has had to close at two o'clock. Under the new plan the boys will spend the day at the country school, and get their lessons and sports whenever each can be done best. The separation will give ample room for both schools, simplify the program, and make possible a more complete curriculum for each. These are the considerations which led us to change a policy of twenty-five years' standing. They are all matters of expediency, and say nothing of the success or failure of coeducation.