FIXING THE RESPONSIBILITY

The relative immunity which the principle of coeducation has enjoyed, in the guerrilla warfare against American learning has been shattered almost beyond repair by Mr. Rollo Brown, of the English Department, in the current number of Harper's Magazine. In asserting that the liberal arts are being slowly driven into obscurity in coeducational institutions, because men do not care to participate in classes in which women predominate, Mr. Brown has raised a question of distinctly more than passing interest.

In spite of the superficial lightness of his indictment that "young men are not going to lay bare their hearts, or give expression to convictions that are very sacred, if women are sitting promiscuously about in the classroom," Mr. Brown's analysis contains a very perceptible measure of truth. Not even the years which a majority of college students have spent in coeducational secondary schools can wholly obliterate for some a feeling of repressive embarrassment in the presence of women as fellow students.

That this state of affairs may have a devitalizing effect on the liberal arts by driving sensitive men into science and economics courses which have not yet become fashionable for women, is obvious. Many minds for which literature and allied subjects have at first only a slight appeal, are later, drawn thereto, after preliminary examination, with compelling force and all these potential adherents are repelled at the outset, the loss to the beaux arts is quite apparent.

At the same time it is possible that Mr. Brown, in his enthusiasm, has stressed his cause too far. The wide spread tendency to take up utilitarian courses, particularly in the state universities, may also be an explanation for the present scarcity of men in the field of letters. It requires an active imagination to believe that the presence of women in classrooms is wholly responsible for a condition that seems symptomatic of some deeper, more fundamental cause. And even if there is no other immediately apparent reason, it is somewhat unkind of Mr. Brown to shed tears over the degeneracy of the liberal arts simply because they seem for the moment to be appealing more to women than to men. He might have been more chivalrous.