Women's studies

“ 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. ”

“ This tendency of women is evident in co-educational institutions where their selection of studies shows their object in the main to be the acquisition of knowledge of a cultural rather than a practical nature. This choice is most suitable to their object in life assuming that object to be matrimony. The other activity followed mostly by college bred women—school teaching, makes little demand outside of the lines of work pursued by most women.
Men long ago learned that there is a demand for highly trained minds in fields other than that of teaching. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long—a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the full-grown man, who is man in the strict sense of the word. ”

“ Those accustomed to value ideas according to their intrinsive power, as shown by their originality and their fruitful result, should admit that there was real grandeur in this thought: the thought that the entire sex might be lifted upon a higher intellectual plane, by means of a practical work, for which, at the moment, not half a dozen people in America discerned the opportunity. “The thorough education of a class of women in medicine will exert an important influence upon the life and interests of women in general.” ”

“ When we remember the institution she founded and conducted; the six thousand young women whom she educated, many of them gratuitously; when it is borne in mind the numerous books she wrote to be used in schools and the great favor with which these books have generally been received; when we think of the zealous energy in various ways which she put forth for more than half a century to elevate the standard of education of her sex, it would be difficult to find a woman who, in her age or country, was more useful or will longer be remembered as both good and great. ”

“ Her memory is kept especially fresh from the interest she took in the education of her sex, and from her wise and sage counsels, based on religion and a wide experience. No woman ever had better opportunities for the study of her sex, or more nobly improved them. She was the most enlightened advocate of a high education for women that her age and even her century produced. ”

“ Among the controversies to which the movement for improving the education of women has given rise, there is one which presses for settlement. The question has arisen and must be answered—Is the improved education which, it is hoped, is about to be brought within reach of women, to be identical with that of men, or is it to be as good as possible, but in some way or other specifically feminine? The form in which the question practically first presents itself is—What shall be the standards of examination? ”

“ One is that spread of knowledge and that accompanying change in moral attitude which is more and more sterilising the once prolific American home, and the second is the rising standard of feminine education. There has arisen in this age a new consciousness in women. ”

“ The whole idea of women's position in social life, and their ability to take their place, independently of any question of Higher education and its results. sex, in the work of the world, was radically changed in the English-speaking countries, and also in the more progressive nations beyond their bounds, during the 19th century. This is due primarily to the movement for women's higher education and its results. ”

“ Nor can any one question that the so-called higher education of women is a very large and increasingly large fact in the history of womanhood during the last half century in the countries which lead the world—whither it were perhaps not too curious to consider. ”

“ Specific schemes, adapted to circumstances, will be devised as occasions arise. In the meantime, any kind of recognition of the fact that the education of women is a matter worth thinking about, is of the utmost practical value. ”

“ In a book devoted to womanhood, and written at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the reader might well expect that what we call the higher education of women would be a subject treated at great length and with great respect. ”

“ What has apparently happened, then, in the history of feminine education and influence is that, whenever women became occupied with such modes of education, or the cultivation of phases of feminine influence that took them out of their houses, away from family life and far from the hearthstone, the particular classes of women who thus became interested did not propagate themselves, or propagated themselves to such a limited degree that, after a time, their kind disappeared to a great extent. ”

“ I saw that it would be impossible, if I were to do justice to the subject, to compass in a single volume anything like an adequate account of the contributions of women to the advancement of general knowledge. I accordingly resolved to restrict my theme and confine myself to an attempt to show what an important rôle women have played in the development of those branches of knowledge in which they are usually thought to have had but little part. ”

“ That any scheme of education which might tend to foster them, ought to be energetically resisted, will scarcely be disputed by any—least of all by the advocates of extended mental culture for women.
It may be well to examine first that theory of the difference between manhood and womanhood which underlies most of the objections commonly brought against the thorough culture of women; and which, if it were true, would render all further argument superfluous. The differences between a man and a woman are either essential or conventional, or both. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lucretia Mott and some other really fine women were advocating the wider education of the sex. Women were being brought to the fore as teachers in schools, and higher institutions were being discussed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it is very questionable, whether certain theories respecting the comparative value of modern female education, to which all this sixteenth century galaxy has given rise, be not founded on misconception partly of the value of the learning possessed by these ladies, and more still of the circumstances and appearance, under which it presented itself to them. ”

“ Young feminists to-day would be the first to admit that it would probably have paid us to go further. There never has been a period when education has trained women for the possibility of motherhood, and it is time that such training was begun. There never was a period when the education of women was completely honest, and it is time that that training was begun. What knowledge is of more vital importance to women than anatomy and physiology? ”

“ The beautiful devotion of her long and honorable life to the cause of teaching, and the widespread interest which, by her writings, she attracted to the subject both in Europe and America, place her at the source of one of the mighty streams of pervasive influence that have ever permeated human society. So great was her appreciation of the character and the position of woman, that she was able to forecast well-nigh everything that has been enunciated in modern times with regard to the place of the sex in education and in society. ”

“ As women do a large proportion of the teaching in public schools as well as in colleges for both sexes, the education of the citizens of the 20th Century depends largely upon the opportunities available to women in the past, present and future. ”

“ We have made such rapid strides in the direction of women’s education, that we almost forget that our ladies’ colleges, higher examinations, and the various honours for which women compete so gallantly with men, are but of yesterday. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ By the admission of women to your degrees you have supported the view that the gentler sex are capable, not only of severe competition in science, but of enjoying the benefits and using the power which a well-considered scientific education bestows. ”

“ At the same time it must be contended that no considerable alteration in the careers of women in general can be, or should be, so produced; and, further, that any extensive change in the education of women, made with the view of fitting them for businesses and professions, would be mischievous. ”

“ With equal need, if what Lord Russell says is true:—‘As it is at present, there is no doubt that women of the higher ranks have much more knowledge and information when their education is finished than men have. ”

“ FEMALE EDUCATION. The great question of the day is education. Daughters, as well as sons, are born with faculties capable of improvement; and the claims of the former to as good an education as the latter are beyond dispute. Indeed, some are of opinion that if either of the sexes ought to have a superior education, that boon is the birthright of females. Certainly, women have as important duties to perform as men, and therefore their discipline ought at least to be as strict.
In the more usual sense, education is the art of drawing out, or developing, every part of your many-sided nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Female education, in the best families, went no further than writing and [94] arithmetic; in some few and rare instances music and dancing."
On another occasion she said that female education had been everywhere neglected, and female learning ridiculed, and she speaks of the trifling, narrow, contracted education of American women. ”

“ Mechanics’ institutes and lyceums have their female classes, where you may get valuable instruction, have access to books of every description, and thus at pleasure hold intercourse with the best and wisest of your species; hear all the wit, and serve yourselves heir to all the wisdom, which has entertained or enriched successive generations. By-and-by we hope to see working women’s colleges established in all our great cities and manufacturing centres, where special education shall be given about all that a maiden ought to learn, a wife to know, and a mother to practise. ”

“ There are not many instances of the thorough and elegant female education, which the higher classes of French and English receive; but women are generally intelligent and well informed; a good knowledge of history, the popular sciences, Latin, French, and Italian, are common acquisitions ”

“ Thus misunderstanding or antagonism, or at least disharmony, prevails in relations in which there should be perfect harmony of ideals and purposes, and productive [300] activities of the highest nature. The education of women, whether for the domestic life or for the life outside the home is plainly but a part of the educational problem. The sexes have different desires, and it is precisely the work of harmonizing these desires, and regulating and coordinating activities and functions, that is the most important part of social education in regard to the sexes. ”