"It is not hard study that breaks down the health of our girls, but the circumstances under which they study, the demands of society and its thousand social follies, with all their excitements. It is the foolish ambition of parents to have their daughters accomplished before they are out of their teens, often allowing them to carry on five or six branches at a time instead of two or three. These, and some other like causes, as I think, do more towards breaking down the health of girls at school, than much study. The ability on the part of the girls to master the several branches, is fully equal to that of the boys, and when an amount of study is reached that is injurious to girls, we have gone as far as is profitable for boys. Boys also break down in study, from some of the evils of society. As to co-education of the sexes, my experience, observation, and reading, all convince me that it is the best way. If there are incidental evils in such a course, they are only incidental, and I can find those of equal, or, I think, of greater magnitude in separate schools."
Michigan has tried the experiment of co-education perhaps as thoroughly and extensively as any State in the Union--as any territory of equal extent in the world. Her six colleges, her University, her Normal school, all her higher institutions of learning--with the exception of the Michigan Female Seminary, on the Mt. Holyoke plan, and some young ladies' private schools--are open to young men and to young women on the same terms. There are no separate roads for the sexes up the Hill of Science, from the lowest primary, to the highest professional school. Kalamazoo College, against the opinion of many educated and educational men, admitted women to a full curriculum, twenty years ago. And classes, about equally divided, have been graduating from the college ever since, confirming the authors of the movement and the whole Faculty, during these twenty years, in the practicability and the many advantages of the plan. The young women have always averaged as good scholarship and health as the young men. A _smaller_ number of women than [Transcriber's Note: missing word "men"? ]have abandoned their course on account of ill health. During the period of my own connection with this institution, many young women pursued there an extended elective course of study, who did not graduate. It was not their plan to do so when they entered the preparatory department. Many graduated from a course quite as extensive, requiring as persistent study, though not in all respects like that of the young men. They did not usually study Greek, though some did, and were leaders of their classes. They did not pursue Latin quite so far, but more than made up for this in a far more thorough study of French and German, History and Literature. There is scarcely a week in the year but I receive communications in some way from some of these old pupils. They are among my most enjoyable, intellectual, and literary correspondents. With few exceptions, they are _growing_ women. Having learned how to learn--which they will all remember, was the most I ever professed to be able to teach them--they have instituted schools for themselves, compelled sometimes very hard circumstances to become their best teachers, and learned to draw lessons, as Mr. Emerson once said in a lecture to them, from "frost and fire."