Women's higher education

“ We have seen that there is just afoot a new tendency in the higher education of women, and it is indeed a privilege to be able to do anything in the way of directing public attention to this new trend. In reference thereto, it was hinted that though this newer form of higher education for woman is a great advance upon the old, and is so just because it implies some recognition of woman's place in the world, yet for one reason or another it falls short of what this present student of womanhood, at any rate, demands. ”

“ The higher education of women has been, in economic effect, a trade school for training women for the trade of teacher.
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But isn’t it the purpose of the colleges to avoid training their pupils for specific occupations? Isn’t it their purpose to give their pupils discipline and culture, pure and broad, unaffected by commercial intention? ”

“ Now you will argue, perhaps, and rightly, that higher education for women is not a modern idea, and that, if that is the means of setting free and invigorating the long desired feminine force in the world, it has already had a trial and should, in the past, have produced some of these glowing effects. ”

“ In Harvard and Columbia opportunity takes the form of annexes where women can secure almost any educational opportunities they desire. In other universities, like Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins, women are admitted to graduate study. Most of the institutions of higher education that do not yet admit women are theological and technical schools, or small colleges like Haverford, where there are equivalents in Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr, for women who wish to attend a Friend's College. A woman can work in almost any important university in America to-day if she cares to do so. ”

“ The sooner and the more clearly this is recognized as a universal rule, not, of course, without many notable and much vaunted exceptions, the better for our civilization. For one, I plead with no whit less earnestness and conviction than any of the feminists, and indeed with more fervor because on nearly all their grounds and also on others, for the higher education of women, and would welcome them to every opportunity available to men if they can not do better ”

“ The great movement for the higher education of girls secured, step by step, their instruction in the universities, their admission to degree examinations and, finally, their admission to degrees in all but the two most conservative universities. Of more recent growth is the inevitable development of postgraduate research among women. ”

“ At first it was asserted that woman was not equal, mentally, to the thorough mastering of the higher branches of study. Having been driven from that position by the indisputable evidence of percentages on written examinations, they have taken up their new position with the assertion that women are not able physically to pursue a thorough and complete course of study—for, I repeat again, that for the masses, co-education and higher education for women are practically one and the same thing. ”

“ This was not, in spite of the apparently very prevalent impression to that effect, the first time that women had been given a chance to secure the higher education, for on the contrary whenever there was a new awakening of educational interest, women asked and obtained the privilege of sharing in it and showed how thoroughly they could take advantage of such opportunities as were afforded them. In the early days of the universities women had been welcomed not only among the students but also the professors. ”

“ And clearly 'the education of a lady' ought to mean the highest and the finest culture of the time. The accurate habits of thought and the intellectual polish by which the scholar is distinguished, ought to be no less carefully sought in the training of women than in that of men. This would be true, even if only for the sake of the charm which high culture gives to social intercourse, a charm attainable in no other way. But apart from this consideration, the duties of women of the higher class are such as to demand varied knowledge as well as a disciplined mind and character. ”

“ When women begin at eighteen or twenty the earnest business of a collegiate course, for which they have slowly and thoroughly prepared while their physical organization was maturing in happy freedom, and when they give to this higher intellectual labor the strength and enthusiasm that are at that age of all the life preëminent and most perfectly balanced, then we shall know what educated woman is, and learn her possible capacities in all that makes for the noblest humanity.
I do not undervalue what Oberlin, Antioch, Mt. Holyoke, and other schools have accomplished for woman's higher education. ”

“ Therefore, surely, by far the most satisfactory function of higher education for women is that which it discharges in reference to these women. Their destiny being determined by their nature, and irrevocable by nurture, it is well that, though we cannot regard it as the highest, we should make the utmost of it by means of the appropriate education. ”

“ Many women not wishing to take the “tripos” examination or to become teachers attend the university to acquire a higher education. Others prepare themselves for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, or Doctor of Philosophy. These examinations are accepted by Oxford and Cambridge universities, but the women are not granted the corresponding titles, because the use of such titles would make the women Fellows of the University, which would entitle them to the use of the university gardens and parks, and to live in one of the colleges. ”

“ There is good reason to expect that public bodies will give their aid when the college is no longer an experiment. There are at present no considerable endowments for the higher education of women, but there are indications that the tide is turning. It is for the friends of education to take the preliminary steps. ”

“ The substitution of teaching as a profession did not extinguish the original intent, which was cherished as a possibility to be achieved when she should have opportunity and leisure; but it was the origin of the motives which led to her future investigation of the general status of women, especially the lack of advantages for higher education, and to the determination to use her influence for the establishment of schools which would afford women opportunities to prepare for professions or for any line of practical work. ”

“ The difficult first step has been taken,—there are women college graduates here and there, and it is no longer necessary to look upon them as monstrosities. In many a Southern family, the question whether a girl shall go to college or not has become, at least, a question to be discussed. It rests largely with existing college graduates to determine whether a sentiment in favor of the higher education for women shall grow rapidly or slowly, and whether schools for “superior instruction” shall be or shall not be improved in quality. ”

“ It shows that they have both the capacity and the desire for college training, that they can make profitable and approved use of it when obtained, and that they are eager for that broader and more original study after 349 college work is over which is at once the most novel and the most glorious feature of university education to-day. Indeed, women have taken more than their due proportion of the prizes, honors, and fellowships which have been accessible to them on the same terms as to men. Their resort to institutions of higher learning has increased far more than that of men. ”

“ Men’s colleges that have been opened to women have given them the same training as is provided for men, and the majority of the women’s colleges have patterned their curricula after the same assumption. This theory leads women to contemplate man’s occupations and professions as their only field of action, and, while it may be the best in many individual cases, it does not provide for the mass of women the kind of higher education mostly needed. ”

“ The line of common studies is adapted for man's work and programme of life. It has been made to fit woman's professional work, but the fit is not perfect. It has a marked unfitness in its adaptation for women to the real end of higher education, or university education, which is the perfecting of the individual mind, according to its kind, in surroundings favourable to its complete development. ”

“ One of the things which women asked in vain for many years was the privilege of higher educational opportunity. One hundred years ago there was not a single college in our country which opened its doors to women. All the arguments which are put forward against the enfranchisement of women to-day were put forward yesterday against the extension of their educational opportunities. Serious-minded and earnest men—and women, too—argued that women had no use for the higher education ”

“ And indeed there was nothing revolutionary in the movement towards higher education for women. True, the education of girls and women had not till then been considered an object to be sought on a large scale. ”

“ There are still many who, while advocating female education to a certain point, decry the necessity and the propriety of giving to woman what is known as the higher education. By this term we mean that education involving the same head-training, having for its basis the same general studies deemed essential to our brothers, that education acquired only at the college and the university.
The very fact that woman has a mind capable of infinite expansion is, in itself, an argument that she should receive the highest possible development. Man is placed here to .grow. ”

“ Perhaps the most defined and significant feminine movement which flowered it had long before blossomed at the death of the past century is that which is generally termed "the higher education of women." ”

“ In the most recent writers, the tendency to regard general theories of education as applying exclusively to that of men, is quite as strongly marked.
It seems, therefore, that in attempting to treat of female education, it is necessary once more to ask what we are aiming at, and to obtain, if possible, a clear understanding and agreement as to the end in view. What ought the educators of girls to be trying to make of them? What is the ideal towards which they ought to direct their efforts, the end to be desired as the result of their labours? ”

“ The rights of women to a higher education is distinctly a movement of the last half of the nineteenth century. It is true that throughout history there are many examples of remarkably well-educated women—Lady Jane Grey, for example, or Queen Elizabeth, or Olympia Morata, in Italy, she who in the golden period of the Renaissance became a professor at sixteen and wrote dialogues in Greek after the manner of Plato. ”

“ Some think that girls do not help athletics; that men count for most because they are more apt to be heard from later; but the most serious new argument is the fear that woman's standards and amateurishness will take the place of specialization. Women take up higher education because they like it; men because their careers depend upon it. Hence their studies are more objective and face the world as it is. In college the women do as well as men, but not in the university. The half-educated woman as a social factor has produced many soft lecture courses and cheap books. ”

“ So very recently, indeed, have women secured the rights to a higher education that many thousands to-day can easily recall the intensely bitter attacks which were directed against colleges like Wellesley and Bryn Mawr in their inception. ”

“ Whatever may be the effect of this in the future, it seems as if there were at present a moment of reconsideration as to whether we have been quite on the right track in the pursuit of higher education for women, and a certain discontent with what has been achieved so far. ”

“ The temperate, calm, earnest demeanour of women, both in the schools and in university life, awakened admiration and respect from all; and the movement brought into existence a vast number of women, as well-educated as men, hard-working, persevering and capable, who invaded many professions, and could hold their ground where a sound education was the foundation of success. The pioneers of female education spent their energies in developing their higher and more intellectual ideals, but later years opened up other positions which better education has enabled women to fill. ”

“ Meantime the struggle for the higher education of women went on. Controversy had raged for a century round the question of the exact kind of learning suitable for women. Step by step the young ladies, academies enlarged their sphere of work, and secured the services of visiting masters to teach extra subjects such as elementary geography, history, music, arithmetic, and the like. ”

“ She was the foremost instigator and influence for the higher education of womanhood. In that first fifty years of her Seminary, it was estimated that more than fifteen thousand young women were enrolled, a large majority of whom became teachers and directors, who carried the influence of the school far and wide, in Europe as well as in America. ”

“ Apart from immediate pecuniary necessity, is it desirable that the regular education of women should be considered as finished at the age of eighteen? If we are to take the almost universal practice as an answer, it is a very decided affirmative. Even girls whose parents must be fully aware that they will eventually have to maintain themselves, seldom receive any adequate training for their future work. Those whose fathers intend to provide for them, are still less likely to be supposed to want any further education after they leave school. ”