28 AUGUST 1909, Page 2

The Westminster Gazette of Tuesday published a despatch from its

Berlin correspondent giving a remarkable account of a Referendum as to the value of co-education in which all the teachers in the high schools of Baden took part. The general result is markedly unfavourable to the new system. "Most of the teachers deny emphatically that there is any useful sense of competition between the sexes, adding that on the contrary the general level of classes containing many girls rather tends to fall. Reference to the better records of girls has only the effect of making indigent boys more indolent." The reports generally agree tbs e male pupils disliked the presence of the girls. "The girls had no effect

upon the copduct of the boys, but the influence of the boys on the girls shown in displays of morbid ambition and rough conduct." Something very similar is, we believe, the "better' opinion" among American observers.