John Llewelyn Davies

“ I have no thought of contending that every girl who has no need to earn a living ought to study for a University degree; it is enough for me to plead that trivial reasons should not be allowed to stand in the way of so substantial a good as the prolonged and extended study which may make a life much happier and richer in itself and much more useful to other lives. ”

“ As to the system of Examinations, of which prizes form a natural part, there are few who would profess to regard it with unmixed satisfaction. But its immense development, keeping pace with the most earnest desire of improvement, is enough of itself to show that it meets some needs which are deeply and universally felt. Every one who has sought to spread education over some new surface, or to direct it into some new channel, has almost without exception had recourse to competitive examination as a practical means of attaining his end. ”

“ And for this reason it might be rightly desired that girls and boys, young women and young men, should have similar opportunities of education. But what is most important is, that either sex should have the teaching and the training which will do the most for it, and bring it forward to its highest possible life. It would be an unworthy aim, that we should be struggling to get for a girl just what a boy has, without considering whether it is good in itself, and good for her, or not. Such an aim we of Queen's College decisively repudiate. ”

“ It would be impossible for any one to desire more for the female sex in secondary or higher education than what has been conceded as a matter of course, and with confessedly the best results, in primary education. The old notion, that girls ought to have a totally different education from that of boys, has however lingered on with obstinate vitality. Nature itself seemed to many to prescribe that boys should learn the classics and mathematics, and girls the arts and modern languages; that boys should continue their formal studies to the age of 21 or 22, girls to the age of 17 or 18. ”

“ Is not the female nature slighter and weaker, it was asked, than the male? Then let girls have a light, and boys a solid, education. But suppose this reasoning transferred from the mind to the body. It is the physical nature that is so obviously less robust in women than in men. Ought there not then to be an entirely distinct diet for the two sexes, meat and beer for the male, pastry and creams and light wine for the female? Ought not their hours of taking food to be different? No one supposes that Nature prescribes these distinctions. ”

“ Of all the things that human beings would be the better for knowing, how many can we attempt to teach; and if we are to choose, which are to have the preference, which are to be left out of the curriculum? This problem is far from being solved yet. It still exercises the minds of those who have the control of education. ”

“ It was not any equality of women with men that they set before themselves. What they desired was that women should have the best and highest education which could be provided for them, and should not be debarred because they were women from any studies which might enlarge and inform the human mind, and give culture to human faculties. But, as a matter of fact, their plan was that the same Professors should give the same kind of instruction to young women at Queen's College as they were giving to young men at King's College. ”

“ A girl who discontinues regular study at seventeen or eighteen has not yet used her best opportunities. Look at the ordinary career of a young man: is it not universally understood that his college time has a much higher quality, as a period of study, than any part of his school time? Experience shows that, even if the female nature be somewhat more early in maturing than the male, the young woman has no more than the young man reached her most effective time for regular study before she is eighteen. ”

“ The question whether the existing methods of education were satisfactory, and what improvements might be made in them, was one which might be considered independently, and in the interest of both sexes; but every inquiry of this kind was sure to have boys and young men chiefly in view. It was an obvious policy for those who wished women to be better educated, to claim in the first place that they should be admitted to the studies, the teaching, the educational arrangements, which had the stamp of common approval upon them. ”

“ A generation, I believe, commonly means thirty years; and our College was established just thirty-one years ago. In looking back to its commencement, therefore, we are surveying a generation's progress; and we are justified in taking the establishment of Queen's College as the beginning of an epoch. The scheme of the College itself, the Lectures in which that scheme was expounded, and the actual teaching begun in the year 1848, presented to the public mind of this country an ideal of female education which was recognised as new and bold. ”

“ And we cannot do better, I believe, for our younger pupils than in seeking to establish a higher training for their seniors. It is a proved fact in education, that care for the higher and more advanced training draws up and benefits the lower at the same time. I like to think of a happy period of some twelve or more years spent under the fostering tuition of Queen's College. A child may come to us at eight years of age, or even earlier, into a school which our Cambridge Examiner of last year pronounced to be doing as well as a school could do. ”

“ A boy's education consisted till recently in learning what he could of the classics, which meant Latin and Greek, and of mathematics. When inquiry and reform entered this field, it was inevitable that it should be asked, "Why should classics and mathematics be the whole of education?" ”

“ In one household after another it has been felt, apart from the necessity of learning thoroughly in order to be teachers of others, that the interest and value of an advanced education were worth the sacrifices that might have to be made for it. ”

“ If we prescribe to our girls that they shall learn Latin as well as French or German or Italian, it is not simply because boys learn it, but because we are convinced that the learning of Latin is a most desirable element in a girl's education. ”

“ Others pleaded that a systematic study of history and literature was indispensable to one who would be a man of culture. The ancient classics themselves were quoted by others, to show the importance of including the arts, and music especially, in a scheme of general education. Most energetically the claims of natural science were asserted; it was proclaimed to be monstrous that educated persons should know nothing even of the elements of sciences which were revolutionising the external world and the world of thought together. ”

“ It has been the disappointing experience of Queen's College from the first that the majority of its pupils have left the College, or have ceased to be more than occasional attendants at its Lectures, before they have even passed through our Four Years' course. At seventeen or eighteen years of age, at the end perhaps of their second junior or even their first junior year, they have been taken away from study, to go into society or to be companions to their parents at home. ”

“ We often find in the history of social movements that for years and generations the influences in favour of some beneficial change have been at work, sapping and undermining the obstacles which oppose it, but with little apparent progress, and that at last the barrier gives way, and the stream flows on with a rapidity which excites astonishment. ”

“ Some of those who have already passed the Matriculation Examination, which has been open under another name to women for some years, may be living in London, and prepared to begin studying at once for the B.A. degree. But it is more probable that we shall not find for a year or two amongst those who attend the Lectures of our Higher Course any who are qualified by previous matriculation to seek the first degree. Whilst we shall gladly receive any who may come on to us from such schools as those to which I have referred, we look chiefly to the retaining of those who are now our pupils. ”

“ But success in an examination, as proved by marks or a certificate, is of the nature of an honorary prize, and Queen's College has not moved so high above the earth as to disdain examinations. The College was established and incorporated, "for the general education of ladies, and for granting certificates of knowledge." We have given, and continue to give, certificates to those who are proved by examination to be entitled to them. The general work of the pupils during the year is tested at the end of the Easter Term by Cambridge Examiners. ”

“ The sense of fellowship must be upheld against the competitive instinct with which one struggles to get before another. We need, in short, to keep up a perpetual protest and resistance against some of the influences of a system of Examinations. And it should be the constant aim of teachers to counteract by the spirit and tone of their teaching all that there is in this system to over-stimulate the mind, to present knowledge as a means of getting marks, or to promote ungenerous feeling. ”

“ In our primary school system, the education for the one sex runs side by side with that for the other, with very slight differences. Girls are taught very nearly the same things as boys, and examined by the same Inspectors in precisely the same manner; the pupil teachers of the one sex have a nearly identical training with that of the other; and there are female Training Colleges, very closely resembling the male Training Colleges. ”

“ And for the present year, at all events, we have thought that there are exceptional circumstances, affecting female education generally, and our own College in particular, which it is important to bring to the special notice of the students and their friends, which have therefore warranted us in inviting your attendance to-day.
You cannot be unaware of the great progress that has been made of late years by the cause of higher female education. ”

“ I need not say that there was nothing revolutionary in the manner in which the claim was affirmed by Professor Maurice and his colleagues; they were men of outspoken loyalty to the Church and the State, and rejoiced to be allowed to put their new College under the auspices of the Queen and of the Bishop of London—names which still honour our prospectus. But a College for women, seeking to stand side by side with King's College, and offering instruction of the same class, was far in advance of anything that had been done or even projected in that day. ”

“ But this is partly a confession of being baffled; and there is at the same time a conviction by no means declining in strength, that certain subjects ought to have precedence as elements of universal education, amongst which the old classics and mathematics ought to be well represented. The excellence of Latin and Greek, and of arithmetic and geometry and algebra, as instruments of culture and discipline, was probably never more intelligently recognised than now. ”

“ I need hardly say that those who may succeed in obtaining the B.A. degree of the University of London will secure evidence, both for their own satisfaction and for that of others, of their having received a very sound and superior education. ”

“ One could not wish that the real charities of home should suffer, even for the highest promise of intellectual improvement; and in many cases, I am ready to admit, there are domestic duties to be discharged which demand the abandonment of regular study. Multitudes of boys are obliged to leave school early in order to earn their living ”

“ When we look out upon the English world around us, we see that the relation of our College to the female education now going forward, is a very different one from that in which it stood to the same education in 1848. So great an advance has been made in lines independent of Queen's College. ”

“ It is difficult to draw a line between colleges and schools; but at Queen's College, certainly, whilst the methods of teaching have had in view students of more advanced years, the great majority of the actual pupils have been of schoolgirl age. I therefore mention here the creation of public girls' schools, such are becoming daily more numerous and more important. ”

“ Maurice would have reminded us, to the cultivation of a higher spirit, not to any rule or custom. But I am glad to think that the want of prizes has never been felt amongst us. Our girls are for the most part so willing to work, that there is more need to caution them against overwork than to rouse their energies by any stimulus. It may be a little disappointing to some of them to hear of nice prizes won elsewhere, by girls as well as boys, and to go home at the end of each year empty-handed ”

“ Women sit at the same table and have the same dishes offered to them as men. I do not say that they eat or drink as much; but they are under no formal restrictions; they partake of a common diet with men, in such proportions as Nature and their own discretion suggest. ”

“ I do not know how far the way may have been secretly prepared for the advance in the education of girls and women which our generation is witnessing, and how much may be simply due to the resolute and skilful and persevering efforts of the workers in this cause. ”

“ Its students have had the advantage of being taught by distinguished men, and many of them gratefully recognise the awakening and inspiration which have been still more valuable to them than the literary or other instruction which they have received in the College. I could recite a long list of honoured names, of women as well as men, associated in various ways with the work of Queen's College, but I leave them to your knowledge and memory. ”