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The Phi Beta Kappa Tempest

J. H. DOYLE, PH. D., FORMERLY CONSULTING PSYCHOLOGIST CULVER MILITARY ACADEMY.

A

RE women mentally superior to men?

This may seem a very strange question to ask, in view of the fact that not very long ago it used to pass for good current public opinion that women had neither souls nor minds. At least, old Diogenese would probably have had slimmer picking with his lantern anywhere up to the eighteenth century looking for a man to admit the presence of these attributes in women than he did have in his original piece of research work, looking for an honest man. In spite of this, however, that strange question is now really being asked: Are women mentally superior to men?

The reason that it is being asked is, that women students in our colleges and univérsities seem to be attaining to higher scholarship than men students. This fact seems thoroughly established as a result of the figures made public in 1917 by the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, a scholarship organization which is open equally to men and women. It seems that during the three years, 1914-17, women won won an aggregate of 1,979 places in this honorary organization, to 2,202 for men. But the number of men students available in the competition was much greater than the number of women students, since while twenty-seven chapters admitted men only, there were but six that were restricted to women, fifty-three (the remaining chapters) being in co-educational institutions. There can be no question, therefore, concerning the superior scholarship grades of the women students.

And this fact is concerning Phi Beta Kappa immensely, fearing, as they do, that the organization will become overrun with women-and, by no means incidentally, feeling mortified that men are unable to cope with women in competition for an honor

whose one basis is scholarship. In fact, a tempest has been raging in Phi Beta Kappa circles to the extent that "the powers that be" have been considering what can be done to limit the number of women that are admitted to the organization. The nature of such limitations would evidently be the imposing of other bases of admission to Phi Beta Kappa than scholarship-bases perhaps having to do with male characteristics, avenues in which women could not compete successfully as in scholarship.

But the interesting thing is, just why Phi Beta Kappa is concerned at all about the matter. What difference does it make if on past records men have failed to compete successfully with women in the field of scholarship? Does such failure on the part of men indicate that men are inferior mentally to women? Phi Beta Kappa seems to think so down deep within, and so does the general school public, if one is to accept the tone of the press, and particularly the comment that is to be heard in college and university circles. There seems to be lurking a something which is considerably stronger than suspicion, which confesses that women's scholarship records stamp her as mentally superior to

men.

But does scholarship necessarily indicate mental superiority? My position is that it does not. I do not believe that the Phi Beta Kappa figures on membership constitute any basis whatever for concern, much less a basis for the conclusion that mentality parallels scholarship. I purpose to show in the following lines that the Phi Beta Kappa tempest is "much ado about nothing." I hope to establish this fact by submitting those points which appeal to me as being a complete explanation as to why the Phi Beta Kappa ranks are being filled up more rapidly with women than with men. All of the points in question will center about the words "interest" and "application," for it is my conviction that within these two elements is to be found the complete secret of women's apparent mental superiority over men. Let us see

wherein.

I. THE BIOLOGICAL INDEX.

By

Biologically men are much more dynamic than women.
nature, men are more muscular and more active bodily. As a
defender of women, men are larger, stronger and rougher. This
super-physical tendency men inherit. Women, on the other hand,
are comparatively static by virtue of a physical inheritance of
their own. This biological difference between the two sexes is
attested even among children, where the differences are always less
along all lines than in maturity. A girl of five, for example, is
satisfied with the relatively static activity of caring for her doll,
while a boy demands playthings which afford a greater muscular
expression, such as wagons, tools, guns, bows and arrows, and

so on.

Now, the point that I am making is, that by nature, men care
less for book education, and especially Phi Beta Kappa education,
than women do. The reason is, that book education is relatively
a static affair. Muscularly, education is exceedingly tame for
men, but not for women. Reduced to its lowest terms, this means
simply that application to books is less natural for men than it is
for women.

And I say this in spite of the fact that education is newer for
women than it is for men, the reason being that woman's static
tendencies are age-long, while throughout all the centuries man's
world has been pretty largely a wild, roving, muscular one. This
fact crops out today in terms of such institutions as military
academies for boys, regulation high schools being too tame for
them. The military academy is fundamentally biological in its
origin. Girls' schools, on the contrary, are not biological in ori-
gin; they are social. I would repeat, therefore, that on the bio-
logical basis men have less natural interest in the typical college
and university education than women have.

II. THE SOCIOLOGICAL BASIS.

On sociological grounds the compass points in the same direc-
tion. This is for the reason that the sociological stream of the
various activities of men's lives runs approximately parallel to

their biological nature. Both in the avenues of industry and in the avenues of leisure-those of work and those of play-men are to be seen playing more dynamic roles than women. In the field of college and university work, for example, academic honors are about the only ones that are open to women, or at least the only ones that make any universal appeal to them. Women, therefɔre, are in a position to centralize all their energies toward their one accessible field-scholarship. But with men it is far different. The populace still demands athletics, even as in the days of Greece and Rome--yea, even the Phi Beta Kappa girl demands athletics, for her dreams and her admiration are universally for the dynamic hero emerging from some arena of physical contest rather than for the typical man who wins scholarship honors in Phi Beta Kappa! How naturally, therefore, all forces combine to set up and perpetuate for men social institutions which strongly divert their attention from scholarship. And yet no one doubts for a minute the appeal that athletics makes to men-and on purely sociological grounds, why shouldn't the appeal be responded to when the ordinary inter-collegiate athletic contest is surrounded by ten thousand surging vocal demons, in contradistinction to the corporal's guard of placid attendants ordinarily to be found "enduring" an inter-collegiate debating contest? Is it any wonder, I repeat, that the mere sociological lure of athletics is enough to render the majority of men unconscious of such static performances as the winning and the wearing of Phi Beta Kappa pins? I think not; and even if it is, the fact remains; and the pointed significance of that fact is, that while women are working with a focused attention on one field, that of scholarship, men are working with an attention which is dispersed over several fields. The immediate application of this argument is, of course, again that Phi Beta Kappa is only a side-show when it comes to claiming the attention of men students generally.

III. THE ELEMENT OF SOCIAL AGGRESSIVENESS IN MEN. In social affairs men are the aggressors. Men possess the initiative by virtue of custom. They go to more shows than

women, and to more athletic events. On carousing men have a monopoly, and accordingly they lounge around the streets more. Men visit one another more, and they "rough-house" far more than than women. It is also perhaps safe to say that men "squander" far more time in association with women than women do with men. In addition to this, their hours are far more irregular than those of women. They are free to come and go whenever they please. They may come in at midnight, or at three in the morning and through it all in the past they have been pretty free to play cards, gamble, or even drink. But women are under the ban of authority and convention. Aggression socially is denied them even by their own natures, in comparison with the lure that leads men on. The sum and substance of the matter is, that too often while women are engaged in evening study, men are not. They are doing something else, whether it is indulging in a moonlight serenade, or whether it is responding to some other "call of the wild." One thing is sure, however, and that is, that the element of social aggression in men does not lend itself readily to rooting for Phi Beta Kappa.

IV. THE ELEMENT OF CHARM IN WOMEN.

How does the element of charm in women students who make Phi Beta Kappa compare with the same element in women students who do not make the organization? It is my conviction. that the former suffer by comparison. I do not know that I would want to go so far as to say that women are social favorit with men in inverse proportion to their Phi Beta Kappa quaiities, but it is something like that, even though it might be ever so little. It is undoubtedly true, I believe, that by virtue of this fact or supposition, women students who are Phi Beta Kappa timber have less demands made on their time by men than do the women students who are less mentally inclined. If this be true, then the Phi Beta Kappa women are favored in their pursuit of scholarship by being let alone somewhat by men, to say nothing of their own possible preference to be let alone perhaps somewhat more than the typical woman student. But if men

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