1. We find that in educational conferences certain principles are being evolved from the normal and fundamental phases of experience, and that these are being adopted as the guiding principles in the training of those faculties and powers which are a common possession of the human race regardless of the individual or the sex.

2. There is no such thing as the college curriculum-a fixed course of study to which all must conform-in any of our best colleges at the present time. Men have outgrown that idea. On the contrary, we see a rapidly increasing opportunity given to the development of individual (which includes sex) gifts and traits.

3. Not only are forces at work leading to the enrichment of every particular branch of knowledge which has been proved to have value as a means of training, but new subjects are constantly showing themselves worthy of a place in the list. The time is easily within the memory of some of us when history and modern languages were first recognized as fit studies for the college. Biology, hygiene, sociology, economics, and other subjects are now gradually making their way with quite as great rapidity as is warranted by the newness and uncertainty of the facts and theories they aim to present. But the recognition given to these new fields of knowledge is a sure proof that educational leaders are seeking to adapt the college training, so far as it relates to the acquisition of facts, to the needs of the present conditions of life.

4. As the aim of bringing the disciplinary training into close relationship with the activities of the individual in the family and in society is gradually taking shape, we see that teachers are relating all subjects of study more and more to domestic, social, and political interests. I could give many instances where large classes of men are studying topics whose interest under an older order of things. would have seemed to be limited to women.

Bearing in mind those influences which are now at work and which seem to me to be tending in the right direction, what shall we be justified in expecting the college to offer a young girl?

First, from one to two years devoted to studies which are fundamental in training, such as language and literature, mathematics, science, and history, together with the cultural influences urged by Professor Smith, all presented in such a way as to furnish mental and moral enrichment, organized knowledge, love of learning, and the power to co-ordinate thought and action. Next, a period of free elective courses chosen under direction. During this period the individual needs of several different classes of students may be met.

There are those women who already feel sure of what their future destiny is to be, and wish to continue laying the foundation for the special training which is to fit them to enter on their vocation, be it that of teacher, physician, or wife. There are also those who have an eager thirst for some one kind of knowledge, purely theoretical, perhaps, and seemingly without any practical value, as mathematics, philosophy, or language. As I see evidences of this intellectual need and realize how often and how tragically it has failed of satisfaction in the past, I feel a sense of personal gratitude that the colleges of to-day are offering their rich stores of pure learning so generously to women. There are, besides, students slow in development, but with latent powers, who may make this a period of pure experimentation, and, under wise and sympathetic guidance, feel their way into the work for which they have hidden gifts. Finally, there is the constantly increasing class who are to prepare themselves for a life of general service; and just here comes the need for such general courses as Professor Smith has suggested, whose value for some students cannot be over-estimated.

In presenting this optimistic and conservative view of the subject, I realize fully how far the present collegiate training falls short of our ideals for women. I believe, however, that it will prove better for such an organization as this to lay hold on and foster the influences for good which are now at work than to cast them aside and seek new and untried methods based on sex distinctions. In this way we shall more surely hasten the day when our colleges will send forth students, both men and women, with more effective equipment for a noble service in life.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

MARION TALBOT

III.

One of the most interesting by-products of any educational discussion, but especially of a discussion concerning the education of women, is the distribution of those who conduct it into two classes -those to whom education is merely education, by which I mean the pursuit of culture, and those to whom it is also, and even primarily, a social process, affected powerfully by the demands of the environment as well as by the needs of the individual mind. In other words, some of us believe that our first business as educators is to give the student a chance to develop himself, holding that a certain discipline will enable his mind to find itself, and thus ensure his mental well-being, whether his life is to be spent in Wall Street or on a desert island; while others of us maintain that education is one of and perhaps the chief means of bringing the individual into harmony with his environment, and that if the environment is calling for a certain form of mental development the educational system should be judged according to the success with which it meets the demand. These opposing points of view are stated with intentional crudity, to give their opposition a stronger emphasis than we generally allow it. Most of us probably compromise between them, or, more probably, incline to each in turn by that rhythmic psychological habit which saves the most consistent of us against our wills. But in such a discussion as this the whole question reduces itself to a choice between these points of view.

The author of the essay under debate opened her paper by giving a rough definition of the term "college," which seemed to me to promise a most fruitful simplification of the question proposed. She said, in effect, that while the undergraduate may catch a glimpse of training as a specialist in some one subject, the average American college aims to do little more than provide a foundation of general knowledge to which must be added further years of special training to develop the professional and the savant. I am heartily in sympathy with this theory of the college, and if we all are, the question raised to-day is settled, for we shall no longer be concerned with fitting our students for this or that special line of activity, but only with turning them out as complete human beings as may be, tempering the metal merely, and leaving it to be shaped by other agencies. But it appears to me that the essayist let slip the great advantage gained by her

opening assumption, and argued throughout her very interesting paper as though the college were, after all, responsible to its students for a specific preparation for the various careers open to them.

If this be true, it needs no array of statistics to prove that a sufficient number of college women will marry to make it fit and proper that their future profession should be scheduled among the others, and the day may come when the Regents of the University of the State of New York will secure legislation prohibiting matrimony on the part of college graduates who have not obtained the grade of C or better in sanitary science and the physiology of reproduction. But I, personally, am deeply convinced of the falsity of the major premise, and I look upon the movement to differentiate the college course for women as one form of the dangerous tendency to allow the university to encroach upon the college, and that tendency is strongest in the minds of those educators whom I began by describing, those who look upon education as having an immediate rather than an indirect effect on society and on the individual's relation to it. There is a sense in which the higher education of women has a direct social effect that is at present one of its chief sources of interest. We must all admit, now that Karl Pearson has pointed it out, that the labor question and the woman question have more in common than a tendency to come into practical politics under similar conditions. Women and the laboring classes have this in common, that each is so handicapped as to be at the mercy of society, and that each must drive some bargain with the community in order to be allowed the chance for development and the exercise of natural powers. With this train of thought in mind no one concerned in the education of women can escape the feeling that it is a more interesting process than the education of men by as much as experiment is a more interesting process than verification of the already known. But I believe that the educator who allows his mind to become so preoccupied with the question of the social status of women as to attempt to answer it below the university is injuring the value of the experiment and vitiating his own results. For the woman who is going to become the typical case, who is going to make the best possible showing for her sex, whatever field she chooses, is the woman who, in the first place, has most of that common fund of knowledge which the essayist so wisely insisted upon. The content of that common fund varies from time to time, and though it is in itself a very important matter, I am inclined to say that what is after all of paramount importance is its commonness. It is the Volapuk of cultivated

society. Its possession amounts to freemasonry, and to fall in with people who have it is to have the sense of relaxation that comes of joining a group of friends in a room full of mere acquaintances. We hear some college men denying the value of their birthright, Louder than their words is their unfailing tendency to flock together. The present system of men's collegiate education is not ideal, but even if it were far more inconsequent than it is, I should be in favor of extending it unchanged to girls for the sake of the gain in sheer solidarity that society would draw from the arrangement.

But the strong woman of the future will not only have learned her Volapuk; the secret of her staying power will be the slowness of her growth. It happens at the moment that the baccalaureate degree is a great practical aid to women who have their living to earn. The heads of schools have found that one way of sifting the mass of applications is to insist on the degree. In spite of the compliment involved, I could find it in my heart to regret this attitude on the part of the schools, because it tends strongly to spread the utilitarian idea of the value of a college course, to perpetuate the notion that it should be something with an ascertainable market value. In fact, the college course should be looked upon as a luxury, not in the sense of being within the reach of the well-to-do only, but in the sense of not leading necessarily to any immediate practical end. The Greek word ßavavoikos has no modern equivalent. It used to be applied to any occupation, however useful or necessary, however unselfish; which yet sacrificed him who followed it, either by injuring his physical development or by so monopolizing his time as to leave him no leisure for liberal pursuits. We almost all follow banausic occupations to-day, men and women alike, the classical philologist as well as the artisan. All but the greatest show some taint of it as soon as they have selected the rut in which their lives are to run. The four years of undergraduate life are practically the only mature years left in which one may survey the world irresponsibly, pick and choose from no motive but healthy appetite, and feel the while that all is grist that comes to the mill. It is to preserve this little Eden of liberty that I should like to see an angel with a flaming sword stationed at the door that opens into the university, and I believe sincerely that efficiency in the real work of after life is best attained by those four years of indirect pursuit of it.

BARNARD COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

EMILY JAMES SMITH