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The inherent difficulty in the experiment of special and appropriate co-education is the difficulty of adjusting, in the same institution, the methods of instruction to the physiological needs of each sex; to the persistent type of one, and the periodical type of the other; to the demand for a margin in metamorphosis of tissue, beyond what study causes, for general growth in one sex, and for a larger margin in the other sex, that shall permit not only general growth, but also the construction of the reproductive apparatus. This difficulty can only be removed by patient and intelligent effort. The first step in the direction of removing it is to see plainly what errors or dangers lie in the way. These, or some of them, we have endeavored to point out. "Nothing is so conducive to a right appreciation of the truth as a right appreciation of the error by which it is surrounded." (32) When we have acquired a belief of the facts concerning the identical education, the identical co-education, the appropriate education, and the appropriate co-education of the sexes, we shall be in a condition to draw just conclusions from them.

The intimate connection of mind and brain, the correlation of mental power and cerebral metamorphosis, explains and justifies the physiologist's demand, that in the education of girls, as well as of boys, the machinery and methods of instruction shall be carefully adjusted to their organization. If it were possible, they should be adjusted to the organization of each individual. None doubt the importance of age, acquirement, idiosyncrasy, and probable career in life, as factors in classification. Sex goes deeper than any or all of these. To neglect this is to neglect the chief factor of the problem. Rightly interpreted and followed, it will yield the grandest results. Disregarded, it will balk the best methods of teaching and the genius of the best teachers. Sex is not concerned with studies as such. These, for any thing that appears to the contrary physiologically, may be the same for the intellectual development of females as of males; but, as we have seen, it is largely concerned about an appropriate way of pursuing them. Girls will have a fair chance, and women the largest freedom and greatest power, now that legal hinderances are removed, and all bars let down, when they are taught to develop and are willing to respect their own organization. How to bring about this development and insure this respect, in a double-sexed college, is one of the problems of co-education.

It does not come within the scope of this essay to speculate upon the ways -- the regimen, methods of instruction, and other details of college life, -- by which the inherent difficulties of co-education may be obviated. Here tentative and judicious experiment is better than speculation. It would seem to be the part of wisdom, however, to make the simplest and least costly experiment first; that is, to discard the identical separate education of girls as boys, and to ascertain what their appropriate separate education is, and what it will accomplish. Aided by the light of such an experiment, it would be comparatively easy to solve the more difficult problem of the appropriate co-education of the sexes.

It may be well to mention two or three details, which are so important that no system of appropriate female education, separate or mixed, can neglect them. They have been implied throughout the whole of the present discussion, but not distinctly enunciated. One is, that during the period of rapid development, that is, from fourteen to eighteen, (33) a girl should not study as many hours a day as a boy. "In most of our schools," says a distinguished physiological authority previously quoted, "the hours are too many for both boys and girls. From a quarter of nine or nine, until half-past two, is with us (Philadelphia schools for girls) the common schooltime in private seminaries. The usual recess is twenty minutes or half an hour, and it is not filled by enforced exercise. In certain schools, -- would it were the rule, -- ten minutes' recess is given after every hour. To these hours, we must add the time spent in study out of school. This, for some reason, nearly always exceeds the time stated by teachers to be necessary; and most girls between the age of thirteen and seventeen thus expend two or three hours. Does any physician believe that it is good for a growing girl to be so occupied seven or eight hours a day? or that it is right for her to use her brains as long a time as the mechanic employs his muscles? But this is only a part of the evil. The multiplicity of studies, the number of teachers, -- each eager to get the most he can out of his pupil, -- the severer drill of our day, and the greater intensity of application demanded, produce effects on the growing brain, which, in a vast number of cases, can be only disastrous. Even in girls of from fourteen to eighteen, such as crowd the normal school in Philadelphia, this sort of tension and this variety of study occasion an amount of ill-health which is sadly familiar to many physicians." (34)

(34) Wear and Tear. Op. cit., p. 33-4.