Co-education

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

The term is now generally reserved to the practice of educating the sexes together; but even in this sense it has a variety of meanings.

• Mere juxtaposition; this implies the use of the same buildings and equipment under the same teaching staff for the education of both sexes, but does not oblige the sexes to follow the same methods or to live under the same regimen.
• Co-ordinate education; the students are taught by the same methods and the same teachers and are governed by the same general administration; but each sex has its own classes and, in the case of a university, its separate college.
• Identical education; both sexes are taught "the same things, at the same time, in the same place, by the same faculty, with the same methods and under the same regimen. This admits age and proficiency, but not sex, as a factor in classification" (Clarke, op. cit. below, p. 121). It is in this third and narrowest sense that co-education has been the subject of widespread discussion for some time past. In the United States especially the practice has grown rapidly during the last fifty years, while in European countries it has developed more slowly.

EXTENT

Elementary Schools

At present co-education is practically universal in the elementary grades of the public schools of the United States. It also prevails to a large extent in the elementary grades of private and denominational schools, including those which are under Catholic direction, notably the parochial schools.

Secondary Schools

According to the Commissioner's Report for 1905-6, there were in the United States 40 public high schools for boys only, with 22,044 students, and 29 schools for girls only, with 23,203 students; while the co-educational high schools numbered 7,962 having on their rolls 283,264 boys and 394,181 girls; the difference indicated by these last figures is noteworthy. During the same year there were under private direction 304 high schools for boys only, with 22,619 students; 500 high schools for girls only, with 27,081 students; while the private co-educational schools numbered 725 with an attendance of 26,487 boys and 25,568 gifts. From these statistics it appears that even in private high schools the number of boys is larger where co-education prevails than it is in schools exclusively for boys; and that the number of girls in co-educational schools is not very far below the number in schools exclusively for girls

Higher and Technical Educational Institutions

Of 622 universities, colleges, and technological schools reporting to the United States Bureau of Education for the year ended June, 1906, there were for men only, 158; for women only, 129; for both men and women, 335. Comparison with earlier statistics shows a decided advance in co-education. In 1889-90 the women in co-educational colleges numbered 8075, in schools of technology, 707, and in colleges for women only, 1979; the men in all colleges numbered 44,926. In 1905-6 there were 31,443 women in co-educational colleges and 6653 in colleges for women only; the number of men students was 97,738.

The tendency in Europe, generally speaking, is to admit women to university courses of study. but under restrictions which vary considerably from one country to another. In Germany, women, for the most part, attend the university as "hearers", not as matriculated students. The custom in England is that women should reside in colleges of their own while receiving the benefit of university education. There is also considerable variety in the regulations concerning the granting of degrees to women. Replies to an inquiry issued by the English Department of Education in 1897, with later revision (United States Commissioner's Report for 1904, chap. xx), showed that of 112 universities on the Continent, in Great Britain, and in the British colonies, 86 made no distinction between men and women students, 6 admitted women by courtesy to lectures and examinations, 20 permitted them to attend some lectures only; of these 20 universities, 14 were German and 6 Austrian. The proportion of women students to the total enrollment in the universities of Central Europe is shown in the following table:--