III.

THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN IN THE WESTERN STATES.

BY

MAY WRIGHT SEWALL.

No formal history of the movement in the West on behalf of the higher education of women has been published. The materials for this paper have been derived from the reports issued under the auspices of the Bureau of Education; from the catalogues of institutions open to women; from various monographs, some of which recite the history of a single college (like “Oberlin, its Origin, Progress, and Results,” by Pres. J. H. Fairchild), others of which present the educational history of a State (like “Higher Education in Wisconsin,” by Professors Allen and Spencer); from a miscellaneous collection of baccalaureate sermons and congratulatory addresses delivered before the graduating classes and the alumnæ associations of many colleges; from old files of newspapers, and from scrap books which for a series of years have been collecting the records of contemporary effort along the lines of higher education; from the biographies of distinguished educators in our country; and from scores of letters, many of which have been written by college presidents and professors in response to my own inquiries, while others have been placed at my disposal by Dr. Carroll Cutler, formerly President of Adelbert College. No stronger evidence of the interest felt in the higher education of women could be found than the cordial, generous answers to my inquiries, which have come from the officials of scores of institutions extending from the Ohio to the Pacific. I am withheld from naming gentlemen to whom I am so deeply indebted only by the fact that a list of those who have courteously replied to my appeals for information would occupy more space than I can afford to give out of the limited number of pages allotted me in this volume.

The Western States and Territories in the order of their admission into the Union under their present names, include Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington—eighteen States; and Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming—three Territories. The changes undergone and the relations sustained by each of the above in its progress toward its present independent condition are exhibited in Table I. given in Appendix B. In this vast territorial expanse, embracing communities just being born into statehood, together with others which have enjoyed that dignity for periods varying from ten to eighty-seven years, one has an opportunity to witness almost every phase of the struggle for the higher education of women.

Conditions that ceased to exist in one State so long ago that they had almost passed from the memories of their victims, arose at a later period to vex other States. Questions long settled in one community became living issues in another; and such is the reluctance of the human being to learn from the experience of others, that these questions are still discussed with as much vivacity, not to say acrimony, as if they had never been settled.

Higher education in the West has been fostered by the national government, by the governments of the separate States, by many different denominations of the Christian church, and by individual enterprise and devotion.

As a large number of the strongest institutions in the West, open to women, owe their origin to provisions made by the general government, it is fitting to direct our first inquiry to the relations of that government to education in the West. On May 25, 1785, the Continental Congress passed an ordinance disposing of lands in the Northwestern Territory, by which it was decreed that: “There shall be reserved Lot No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within said township.” On July 13, 1787, the famous Ordinance relating to the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio River was passed; in it occurs the passage which is so frequently cited in proof that the United States government stands pledged to aid the higher as well as the lower education: viz.,” Religion, Morality, and Knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Ten days later, Congress passed another ordinance fixing the terms of sale for the tract of land purchased by the Ohio Company. This ordinance stipulated not only that section 16 of every township should be reserved for the maintenance of schools, but also “that two complete townships shall be given perpetually for the purposes of an university, to be laid off by the purchaser or purchasers as near the center as may be, so that the same shall be good land, to be applied to the intended object by the Legislature of the State.”

In these ordinances of 1787, we find the germ of all our State Universities in the West.

Owing to the grant secured by Congress in its contract with the Ohio Company, the Ohio University at Athens, O., was founded. It was first chartered as the “American Western University.” The name implies that its friends expected it to supply the educational needs of the then vague “West”; but only a year after the admission of Ohio as a State, i.e., in 1804, the University received a new charter from the State Legislature, under its present name. This precedent of Congressional grants for the endowment of institutions of higher education has been followed by the government to the present time.

Sometimes the two townships of land have been given _en bloc_, and some times they have been so given as to permit the location of university lands in different portions of the State; sometimes they have been kept as an endowment of the State University; sometimes they have been in part devoted to the founding of the university. But in every State and Territory in the above list, a university exists which owes its origin and its maintenance in part to the government of the United States.

A study of the history of the State Universities shows that in many States a strange hostility existed toward them. A feeling that by appropriating lands for their endowment, the general government was encouraging the growth of an aristocratic class of learned men, seems not to have been uncommon in the early days. This appears to be one valid explanation of the reluctance of State Legislatures to make generous or permanent appropriations for the support of such universities.

The truth is, however, that the State Universities are the most democratic of all the institutions of higher learning; this truth is now generally perceived, and the institutions are growing proportionally popular. It is due to their necessarily democratic nature that they are now without exception open to women. Their chief feeders are the public high schools, with which they must maintain direct and constant communication. Their chief financial support comes directly and equally from all property-holding citizens; either by appropriation from the public treasury, varying in amount with each Legislature, or by a fixed, special tax, of a certain percentum of all assessed property. Finding their students in the public high schools, which in the West are almost universally co-educational, and their support in the public treasury, into which flow taxes upon the property of women and girls as well as upon that of men and boys, the wonder is that the State Universities did not from their origin admit women as students.

The following table will show when each State University was chartered, opened, and opened to women. The list of States in this table is presented as above in the chronological order of their admission to the Union.

CHARTERED. OPENED. ADMITTED WOMEN. Ohio Athens 1804 1809 1871 „ Columbus 1870 1873 1873 Indiana 1820 1824 1867 Illinois 1867 1868 1871 Missouri 1839 1843 1870 Michigan 1837 1841 1870 Iowa 1847 1860 1860 Wisconsin 1848 1849 1860, 1863, 1868, 1871, 1875 California 1868 1869 1870 Minnesota 1868 1869 1869 Oregon 1876 1876 1876 Kansas 1861 1866 1866 Nevada 1864 1874 1874 Nebraska 1869 1871 1871 Colorado 1861 1877 1877 North Dakota 1883 1884 1884 South Dakota 1862 1885 1885 Montana 1884 1883 1883 Washington 1861 1862 Utah, Deseret 1850 1850 1850

A glance at the table will show that the periods of time during which these universities received men only, vary from two to sixty-two years, that but one of those opened prior to 1861 has been from the outset co-educational; that all opened prior to 1861 became co-educational between 1861 and 1871: and that all organized since 1871 started as co-educational institutions.

National government made additional provision for higher education by an act usually referred to as “The Agricultural College Act of 1862.” By this act each State received 30,000 acres of land for each Senator and Representative to whom it was entitled in the United States Congress, “the proceeds to be applied to the maintenance of at least one college in each State,” “without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts.” Under this act there have been established in the territory discussed in this chapter, since 1862, fourteen colleges of the character indicated.

In Ohio, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Nevada, and Nebraska such institutions exist as Departments of the State University, and, like all its other departments, admit women.

In Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, and Colorado, such institutions, under various names, as “Agricultural College,” “Industrial and Mechanical College,” “College of Applied Science,” etc., enjoy an independent organization, in some States loosely connected with, in others entirely separate from, the State University.

These institutions are authorized to give degrees appropriate to the courses of study pursued in them, and they are likewise open to women. The act of 1862 gave a distinct impulse to the higher education of women in the West, for reasons to be hereafter mentioned.

Although the germ of a State University was secured by the national government to each of the twenty-one States and Territories in our list at or prior to the time of its admission, in many instances the State action relative to these institutions, upon which the government aid had been conditioned, was postponed for a long series of years. In the mean time the desire for the higher education was stimulated, and opportunities for obtaining it were provided by the churches.

Appendix B, Table II., to this article, gives a list of 165 institutions, within my prescribed territory, open to women, which are of sufficient importance to be included in the tables of “Colleges of Liberal Arts,” published by the United States Commissioner of Education, in his Report for 1888–89 (taken from the advance sheets). Of these, 45 are non-sectarian. The remaining 120 are distributed among the various denominations as follows:

Methodist Episcopal, 31; Baptist, 16; Presbyterian, 14; Congregational, 13; Christian, 10; United Brethren, 7; Lutheran, 6; United Presbyterian, 4; Reformed, 3; Friends, 3; Cumberland Presbyterian, 2; M. E. South, 2; Universalist, 2; Seventh Day Baptist, 1; Methodist Protestant, 1; Evangelical Association, 1; Brethren, 1; Church of God, 1; New Church, 1; Protestant Episcopal, 1.

At the present time one frequently hears people deprecate the effort to maintain so large a number of colleges. It is asserted truly that the distribution of patronage among so many, necessarily prevents any from attaining commanding influence. Especially do the advocates of non-sectarian education recommend that the weaker institutions be closed, that their properties be sold, and that effort be concentrated upon the few stronger ones. The arguments by which this recommendation is sustained are sound.

If the financial support, the love, the loyalty, the ambition, and the students that are distributed among the thirty-one colleges of Liberal Arts in the State of Ohio, could be united in the support of any one of the number, the fortunate recipient might soon rank with the great universities of our country, nay, of the world. But however desirable such a concentration of patronage ultimately may be, one cannot read the history of the educational work of the churches, without feeling that “Wisdom is justified of her children.”

It is true that many of these colleges were founded in the interests of sectarian theology, rather than of liberal culture; that they were all in some degree, some of them in very large degree, regarded and used by their supporters as the most available instruments in the labor of securing proselytes to the particular school of Christian faith in whose name they were planted. In the degree to which these institutions have nurtured sectarian zeal, emphasized distinctions in minor points of doctrine, and strengthened the barriers between denominations, it must be conceded that their influence has been benumbing and narrowing; and in this degree they have tended from instead of toward culture, whose mission is to broaden and quicken instead of to narrow and benumb.

In spite of this limitation upon the work of denominational colleges, they merit the profoundest respect and gratitude of the public. A large proportion of these institutions were established when the wilderness was being cleared and settled.

It is related by its historian that the site of Ripon College was chosen by two enthusiasts in the cause of higher education, in the year 1850, when the State of Wisconsin was but two years old, when “there were but fourteen rude buildings in the village of Ripon,” and when but a single year had elapsed since the first clearing on the village site had been made. At once these brave men applied for a charter for a college; and the purpose of the corporation was declared to be, “To found, establish, and maintain at Ripon, in the county of Fond du Lac, an institution of learning of the highest order, embracing also a department for preparatory instruction.”

This is hardly an exceptional, but a typical instance.

The people were few, scattered, and poor. Communication between places remote from each other was slow and uncertain. Means of travel and transportation were limited to the pack horse, the private wagon, the stage coach, and the flat-boat. If poverty had not rendered it impossible for the pioneers to incur the expense of sending their children on long and slow journeys, to distant colleges, the time consumed in such journeys, and the anxiety incident to separation, in the absence of any means of frequent and speedy communication, would have prohibited it.

Forty years ago, in all of the territory covered by the twenty-one States and Territories under consideration, twenty-five years ago in most of it, and so lately as ten years ago in much of it, the time, fatigue, and expense which a dweller in a remote corner of a county incurred in traveling to its county seat, was more than he will now expend to reach the State capital. Under such conditions the question with the pioneer was not whether he should send his children to a near or to a distant college, but whether he should send them to the near college or to none.

The influence of these 165 colleges upon the life of the Western States cannot be measured by the number of their graduates, nor by adding to this number those who have attended the colleges one or more terms.

The presence of a college, with its educated faculty, in any community, modifies the tone of its intellectual and social life. The colleges have been centers of leavening influence in the new States. While recognizing this with gratitude, one can also see that the conditions which justified and demanded the multiplication of these small colleges have ceased to exist, and that the different conditions which now prevail counsel denominations to consolidate their weak institutions, and to concentrate their dissipated forces upon a few strong ones. The present means of speedy and certain communication and transit enable a strong college, with high standards and an able faculty, to bring its influence to bear upon all parts of a State and to command the patronage of its remotest corner.

That the tendency is toward concentration of effort is indicated by the Year Books of the denominations for 1888–89.

In studying the educational work of the churches, one cannot fail to discern the results of creeds and habits of worship.

In a sketch of this character it would be unjust to withhold the fact that the colleges under Methodist control have been generally first and most generous in opening their opportunities to women; and that they are also conspicuous among the colleges that include women in their faculties and in their boards of trustees.

The progressiveness of Methodists in regard to the education of women is evinced not only in their co-educational colleges, but also in institutions founded by them for the exclusive education of women.

The latest report of the United States Commissioner of Education contains over two hundred institutions for the superior education of women. The list includes colleges and seminaries entitled to confer degrees, and a few seminaries, whose work is of equal merit, which do not give degrees. Of these more than two hundred institutions for the education of women exclusively, only 47 are situated within the territory here discussed. Of these 47, but 30 are chartered with authority to confer degrees. Of these 30, 7 are non-sectarian; the remainder are distributed among the denominations as follows:

Presbyterian, 7; Methodist Episcopal, 5; Baptist, 3; Christian, 2; Protestant Episcopal, 1; Congregational, 1.

The religious affiliations of the remaining four have not been ascertained.

The extent to which the higher education of women is in the West identified with co-education, can be seen by comparing the two statements above given. Of the total 212 higher institutions receiving women, and of the total 195 such institutions which confer the regular degrees in arts, science, and letters, upon their graduates, 165 are co-educational. Almost necessarily, therefore, the most important discussion in this article will be that of co-education.

Before approaching it, however, some space must be devoted to women’s colleges in the West. Almost without exception they include preparatory departments; very generally the attendance in the preparatory department exceeds that in the collegiate; frequently members of the faculty divide their attention between preparatory and collegiate classes; generally the courses of study offered are less numerous and less complete than those offered in colleges of liberal arts for men; most of these institutions have paltry or no endowments.

With all these limitations, some of them do much creditable work; but, at present, they occupy a rather vague, indefinite position between “the ladies’ seminary” of thirty years ago and the modern college. Quoting from the United States Commissioner of Education (Report for 1887–88): “The adjustment of studies is evidence of a double purpose in these institutions. On the one hand they have endeavored to meet the general demand with respect to woman’s education. On the other they have sought to maintain that higher ideal which would appropriate for women as well as for men the advantages of the kind of instruction and training approved, by wise effort and long experience, as the best for mental discipline and culture.”

A double purpose, when its parts are, as in this instance, to a degree contradictory, imposes impossible tasks. A process of sifting is now going on among these institutions. Some of the weaker will doubtless be absorbed by stronger ones having the same denominational support. Some, whose strength is chiefly in their preparatory departments, will find their ultimate place in the lists of secondary schools; and, ceasing to compete with colleges, will do an important and much needed work in preparing students to enter college. Others, already strongest in their collegiate departments, pledged by a noble past to achieve a corresponding future, will persist in emphasizing their real collegiate side until at last they secure an absolute separation between their preparatory and their collegiate work, and can take rank with genuine colleges of liberal arts.

In this sketch it is impossible to give the history of all these institutions; but among colleges characterized from birth by a liberal and progressive spirit may be mentioned “The Cincinnati Wesleyan Woman’s College.” This institution was chartered in 1842, and claims to be “the first liberal collegiate institution in the world for the exclusive education of women.” This claim sounds somewhat boastful, but a perusal of the discussions which were called forth by the establishment of this college, will convince one that its undertaking was novel and quite foreign to the thought of its public, if not, indeed, quite unprecedented in the world’s history. Dr. Charles Eliot, the editor of the _Western Christian Advocate_, heroically defended the project against the attacks of both the secular and the religious press. Rev. P. B. Wilber was elected president, and his wife, Mary Cole Wilber, was made principal.

The broad claim made by these enthusiastic educators was “that women need equal culture of mind and heart with men, in their homes, in the church, and in the state.” The enterprise was accused of “being counter to delicacy and to custom, as it was to orthodoxy.” Mrs. Wilber, who is still living (in 1890), writes that those who had upheld the college “were convinced that a higher intellectual and moral education for women was indispensable to the continued prosperity and existence of civilization, especially under our form of government. They believed it would be a powerful influence for good in the home, in social life, and in all benevolences and philanthropies. They believed in the elevation of women through education, which is development; through labor, which is salvation; and through legal rights, which should give freedom to serve and to save.” These sentiments do not seem antiquated in 1890, and must have seemed not merely advanced but dangerous in 1842.

Violations of precedent continued to keep the watchful eye of the public on the college. The college professed to give to women the same instruction which secured for young men the degree of A.B., and it obtained from the Legislature authority “to confer the degrees of A.B. and B.S.” The college held public commencement exercises, at which the graduates read their own productions, a performance that was the occasion of much scandal.

September 25, 1844, “The Young Ladies’ Lyceum” was organized in the college. This was a literary society, at the meetings of which debates upon current public questions were conducted and essays were read. Cuttings from contemporary newspapers show that this lyceum created no small stir.

In 1852 the graduates of the college organized an alumnæ association, which is claimed to be the first organization of the kind in this country. The preamble to the constitution adopted by this body begins thus:

“The undersigned, graduates of the Wesleyan Female College of Cincinnati, believing that as educated American women, society and the world at large have peculiar claims upon them, which they can neither gainsay nor resist,” etc.

The association at once decided to publish an annual which should contain only original articles from the pens of its members; and Article VII. of the constitution says: “The immediate object of this publication shall be to afford an opportunity for continued mental effort and improvement to members; and its ultimate aim shall be the elevation of woman,” Rachel L. Bodley, so long dean of the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia, was one of the original members of this association.

The professions, claims, and efforts above indicated, probably show the high-water mark of educational aspiration of women in the West in and before the middle of this century.

The college drew students from all parts of the country, and from Canada; and, at one time, according to one of its historians, there were in attendance upon it “representatives from every State in the Union, excepting New Hampshire, Delaware, North Carolina, and Florida.”

At one time this college enrolled nearly five hundred students; but, as seminaries and colleges for women have multiplied throughout the region from which it drew its patronage, and especially as more richly endowed colleges which were established for men have opened their doors to women, its numbers have diminished and its influence has waned. But such a past should compel its alumnæ and its friends to give it an endowment, a course of study, and a corps of instructors that shall make it the peer of its strongest young sisters.[10]

There is a function for the true woman’s college which the co-educational college does not and as yet cannot perform. To get one’s college education in an institution which admits only women, and to enjoy some years of post-graduate work in a co-educational university, is the ideal of opportunity now cherished by some most careful and intelligent parents and by some ambitious young women. It is possible that provision for satisfying the first half of this ideal is held in germ by some or all of the thirty colleges for women only, now existing in the West.

CO-EDUCATION IN THE WEST.

That in the Western States and Territories, the higher education of women is generally identical with co-education is indicated, as has been previously suggested, by the following facts:

1. Of 212 institutions in the West, exclusive of colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts, which afford the higher culture to women, 165 are co-educational.

2. Of the 5563 women reported to the Bureau of Education in 1887–88 as students in the collegiate courses of these institutions, 4392 were in the co-educational colleges.

3. In the twenty-one States and Territories which boast 165 co-educational colleges and 47 colleges for the separate education of women, 30 of which are authorized to confer regular degrees, there are but 25 colleges devoted to the exclusive education of men.

4. Of these 25 (devoted to the exclusive education of men,) not one is non-sectarian, and they are all supported by the Roman Catholic, the Protestant Episcopal, the Lutheran, or the Presbyterian denomination. In several of the States most conspicuous for zeal in the cause of the higher education, as in Michigan, Iowa, and Kansas, not one college for the exclusive education of men exists.

These facts support the statement that the West is committed to co-education, excepting only the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Protestant Episcopal sects,—which are not yet, as sects, committed to the collegiate education of women at all,—and the Presbyterian sect, whose support, in the West, of 14 co-educational colleges against 4 for the separate education of young men, almost commits it to the co-educational idea.

How has this triumph of the higher co-education been achieved? How is the system regarded by the community in which it is established? What are its social effects and tendencies? What are its defects and limitations? These are the inquiries which next present themselves.

Of the 165 co-educational colleges under consideration, a few, like Ripon College, Wisconsin, were founded for women and subsequently admitted young men; a larger number have admitted both men and women from the date of their opening; these, with a few notable exceptions, like Oberlin College in Ohio, and Lawrence University in Wisconsin, are of recent origin, with charters dating from periods since 1860. The great proportion of the entire number were founded for the exclusive education of men, and have, one after another, yielded a participation in their benefits to women since 1860.[11]

To tell in detail the story of the struggles which have ended in the admission of women into each of these institutions would be quite impossible; if possible, it would, for general purposes, be quite unprofitable, since the principles involved have in all cases been the same. The same arguments, pro and con, have been advanced in every contest, the illustrations and modes of application being modified in each by local conditions and circumstances. Local history should preserve a record of such modifications of the argument and its application, together with the names of those persons who were conspicuous in the contest; but the purposes of general history do not require this, and the discrepancy between the extent of territory and the number of pages assigned to this chapter does not permit it.

In Ohio, the oldest of the Western States, the higher education of women first became a question; and in connection with its various institutions every aspect of the question has been exhibited. Moreover, as the oldest of the group, the example of Ohio has exerted a marked influence upon the other Western States. These facts justify the discussion of co-education in connection with Ohio colleges.

No institution has been more frequently cited in discussions of co-education than Oberlin; and perhaps the attitude of no other has been so persistently misunderstood. In reading numerous discussions incident to opening men’s colleges in other States to women, one finds it implied and asserted that “Oberlin was founded to give to women the same educational advantages enjoyed by men.”

Sketches and histories of Oberlin College, sermons, addresses, and letters, explanatory of its aims and policy, are numerous and accessible; and if these authoritative documents agree upon any one point it is in showing that Oberlin was not “founded to give to women the same educational advantages enjoyed by men”; that at the outset the intention to do this was not entertained by her founders; that such form of collegiate co-education as Oberlin now offers has been developed gradually; and, finally, that co-education at Oberlin to-day differs in many essential respects from the co-education to be found in our State Universities.

Let the following facts sustain these statements:

1. It was as “Oberlin Collegiate Institute” that Oberlin began its work in 1833, and the name of “Oberlin College” was not taken until 1850.

2. The original plan included a “female department,” under the supervision of a lady, where “instruction in the useful branches taught in the best female seminaries” could be obtained; the circular setting forth the plan also says: “The higher classes of the female department will also be permitted to enjoy the privileges of such professorships in the teachers’, collegiate and theological departments as shall best suit their sex and prospective employment.”

3. This “female department” contemplated a separate building, and separate classes in which women should pursue merely academic studies. But this department was never formed, according to the original plan, because at first poverty prevented the erection of a separate school building; and because, in the beginning, there were only high school classes, into which, for economy and convenience, young men and women were together admitted with no thought whatever of their ultimately entering collegiate classes together.

4. In lieu of the anticipated “female department,” a “ladies’ course,” was provided and maintained until 1875. This course demanded no Greek and but two years of Latin, and, according to its present president, required only “a year more time than is devoted to study in the best female seminaries.”

5. Separate classes were organized for ladies in essay-writing until the commencement of the junior year, when they were admitted to the regular college class; their work was still limited to writing and reading, none of the ladies having any practice in speaking.

6. At the present time the “literary course,” under the department of philosophy and arts, takes the place of the former “ladies’ course.”

7. In 1837, four ladies, having prepared themselves to enter the freshman class of the collegiate department, were admitted on their own petition; since then ladies have been received into all the college classes excepting those of the theological department, which has never been open to ladies as regular members, though at one time two ladies “attended all the exercises of this department through a three years’ course, and were entered upon the annual catalogue as resident graduates pursuing the ‘theological course.’” So long as the “ladies’ course” continued, the apparent expectation of the college was that a majority of ladies would take that course. The influence of the college was apparently exerted in that direction, and with such effect that the number of ladies graduating from the “ladies’ course” was, to the number graduating from the “college course,” nearly as five to one.

8. That the present “literary course” in the department of philosophy and arts is practically the same as the original “ladies’ course,” will be seen by comparing the lists of subjects upon which candidates for entrance into each must be examined, and also by considering the scheme of study followed in the “literary course,” as presented in the catalogue, for 1888–89. This view is further sustained by the fact that in 1888–89, 175 ladies and 3 gentlemen were registered in this course.

9. The latest catalogue states that: “Young women in all the departments of study are under the supervision of the principal of the ladies’ department and the care of the ladies’ board. They are required to be in their rooms after eight o’clock in the evening during the spring and summer months, and after half past seven during the fall and winter months.

“Every young woman is required to present, once in two weeks, a written report of her observance and her failure in the observance of the regulations of the department, signed by the matron of the family in which she boards.”

The catalogue in another connection says: “In addition to lectures announced in the course of study, practical lectures on general habits, methods of study, and other important subjects, are delivered once in two weeks to the young women by the principal of the ladies’ department, and _to the young men of the preparatory schools_ (the italics are my own), by the principals of these schools.”

The regulations here cited may be admirable, and highly advantageous to those whom they affect. It may be matter of regret that the young men are not given similar supervision, and that the “practical lectures on general habits,” etc., to which women in all departments are required to listen, are, in the case of young men, limited to those of the preparatory schools. The propriety and value of these requirements is, however, not the subject of discussion. They are referred to here only because they illustrate the difference between the methods of Oberlin and the methods of what is popularly understood by the term “co-educational college.” Because, indeed, taken in connection with the preceding eight points, they show that while Oberlin is largely co-instructional, it is also largely not, in the current sense of the term, co-educational at all.

The history and method of co-education at Oberlin, as summed up above, proves the truth of what the presidents and professors of Oberlin have said in one and another form again and again: viz., that co-education there did not originate in any radically new idea of the sphere and work of women; nor in any conscious purpose to do justice to woman as an individual.

Oberlin originated in religious zeal. As a high school, it admitted women because of the great need of educated women who could serve their own country as teachers, or foreign countries as missionaries or missionaries’ wives; women were, upon their own petition, suffered to enter the college course by men too just and too logical to deny a request grounded in justice and reason; but they were not welcomed by men who saw in this petition the realization of any theory of the mental equality of the sexes.

The present Oberlin system has been molded slowly by poverty and resulting economy, by local needs and, partially, too, though resistingly, by the progressive spirit of the times. It is curious and interesting that so conservative a college (independently of her own intention or desire) should have been appealed to as their inspiration, and cited as their model, by colleges between whom and Oberlin great dissimilarity exists; but it is true that Oberlin has done more for the cause of co-education than she could possibly have done had she taken the attitude of a propagandist. Probably no college for men has opened its doors to women in the last thirty years without first consulting Oberlin’s experience. The Oberlin authorities have always unhesitatingly testified to the success of the Oberlin plan; almost always the testimony of these witnesses has indicated their conviction that the Oberlin plan, being the outgrowth of peculiar conditions, would not be certain to flourish if transplanted; and this moderation, this abatement of enthusiastic advocacy, has given the testimony of Oberlin men incomparable weight during this controversy in the West.

In 1853, Antioch College was opened at Yellow Springs, O. It was the first endeavor in the West to found a college under Christian but non-sectarian auspices. Its president, Horace Mann, wrote of it: “Antioch is now the only first-class college in all the West that is really an unsectarian institution. There are, it is true, some State institutions which profess to be free from proselyting instrumentalities; but I believe without exception they are all under control of men who hold as truth something which they have prejudged to be true.”

This fact has a distinct bearing on co-education, and it is curious to observe that even this most non-sectarian of colleges provided by charter that two thirds of the trustees and two thirds of the faculty should belong to the “Christian Connection”; a body of people who, by separating themselves from the sects, had really become a new sect.

The opening of this college under so distinguished an educator as Mr. Mann, gave a new _impulse_ to higher education throughout the West. Antioch was from the first avowedly co-educational; this was demanded by the liberality of the Christian thought by which it was supported. But the best friends of the higher education of women, even Mr. Mann himself, regarded this feature of the new college with suspicion, if not with aversion. How serious the objection that marriages might grow out of the intimacies of college life was considered, may be inferred from the fact that Mr. Mann discussed it in his inaugural address; and from the passage of a by-law providing that marriages should not take place between students while retaining their connection with the college. At one time Mr. Mann advised against co-education on this ground.

The effect that his experience with a co-educational institution produced upon Mr. Mann’s own opinion has been frequently urged as a strong argument in the behalf of co-education.

In view of the probable necessity of closing the college, Mr. Mann wrote: “One of the most grievous of my regrets at this sad prospect is the apprehension that the experiment (as the world will still call it) of educating the sexes together will be suddenly interrupted, to be revived only in some indefinite future.”

In his baccalaureate address of 1859, there occurs a passionate paragraph expressing Mr. Mann’s longing to do more and better than he had done for the higher education of women, which shows that he had found women at Antioch worthy of their opportunities.

Women were not only received as students at Antioch, but also, in the beginning, were included in the faculty. These facts, especially the latter, excited marked attention, and, notwithstanding the disasters which interrupted the work of Antioch, and the poverty which has kept it a small college, the fame of Horace Mann, inseparably connected with its history, has made its influence in behalf of co-education potent.

OPENING WEDGES.

The conditions of pioneer life are favorable to co-education. The exigencies incident to life in a new country destroy certain barriers between men and women which are fixed in old and settled communities. The women in a pioneer settlement not infrequently join in labors in which, under more settled conditions, they would never be called to participate. Many women in the West have assisted their husbands and fathers in the field, the office, and the shop, simply because hired male labor was unattainable. On the other hand, men in pioneer homes assist their wives in household labors, because domestic help cannot be found. In the organization of churches, schools, and Sunday-schools, the sparseness of the population compels men to divide the work with women. Thus, without intention on the part of either men or women, they become used to working together in many unaccustomed ways; and the idea of going to college together does not seem so unnatural as in older communities, where traditions of long standing have separated men and women in their occupations.

The almost universal connection of preparatory departments with colleges in the West is properly deplored; but the “preparatory” has been a stepping-stone to co-education. In their origin the Western colleges found it necessary to maintain preparatory schools in order to obtain any college classes. This is illustrated by the experience of Antioch. Out of 150 students who applied for admission to that college in 1853, but 8 were able to pass the examinations for admission to the freshman class, meager as were the requirements. These 8 included men and women, married and single. The older colleges in this new country have a similar chapter in their history. There were few high schools, and the course of study of those was narrow. To have students, each college was compelled to prepare them. The preparatory department in a college town did the work of the present high school; it was very natural that the residents of those towns should desire to send both their sons and daughters to the “preparatory,” which was usually, perhaps always, the best school accessible to them. This desire, however, gave no forecast of a desire to send both to the college later on. Sometimes the “preparatory” was not provided with a separate building, but its work was done in some room or rooms of the college building proper. The preparatory course finished, some bright girl would wish to go forward with her class into college work; she could not enter the class formally, but “if the professor was willing” she could attend lectures in this or the other subject; in many college towns there are middle-aged and elderly women who, as young girls, with the tacit consent of parents and college instructors, thus obtained the larger part of a college education. They had no formal recognition from any one; their names appeared in no catalogues, but they acquired substantial benefits. The present permitted but unacknowledged presence of women at Leipzig and other universities on the Continent, was thus antedated in the West.

Occasionally one of these students, spurred by what she considered the demands of her self-respect, made formal application for regular admission to the college; and not a few of our Western colleges became co-educational by these natural, easy, and noiseless approaches.

The manner in which the desire of one woman for a college education has transformed a men’s into a co-educational college, is illustrated in the history of the State University of Indiana. Miss Sarah P. Morrison wished to enter college, and began agitating the question of opening the State University to women. Mr. Isaac Jenkinson of Richmond, Ind., tells the whole pregnant story thus briefly. He writes me:

“I was a member of the board of trustees in 1866, when Miss Morrison’s appeal was made to the trustees. (Miss Morrison had for several years been agitating the question among her friends.) I at once offered a resolution admitting young women on equal terms with young men, but I had no support whatever in the board at that time; at a following session the same year, my resolution was adopted by a vote of 4 in favor, to 3 against it.”

Many colleges in the West had from the beginning a “female course” much like the “ladies’ course” at Oberlin. This course was, like the preparatory department, a way of approach for the more ambitious. The story of one is, with a change of names, the story of many such colleges. The following from “A Report on the Position of Women in Industries and Education in the State of Indiana,”[12] illustrates the function of the “ladies course” in facilitating co-education.

“Butler University at Irvington, Ind., founded in 1855, admitted women as students from the outset, but at first only into what was denominated its female course. In its laudable endeavor to adapt its requirements to an intermediate class of beings, the university, in its ‘female course’ substituted music for mathematics and French for Greek. Few young women availed themselves of this ‘course’ and it was utterly repudiated by Demia Butler, a daughter of Ovid Butler, the founder of the university, and a gentleman of most enlightened views concerning woman’s place in life. Miss Butler, upon her own petition, indorsed by her father, entered the university in 1858, and graduated from what was then known as the ‘male course’ in 1862. From that time the ‘female course’ became less popular, and in 1864 was formally discontinued.”

The normal class was another of the steps toward co-education. In the middle of this century it was not uncommon for special short terms of instruction for teachers to be held during the fall or spring vacations of the common schools. To secure the advantage of good lecture rooms and appliances, and also to secure the aid of distinguished professors, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction would obtain permission to hold his normal class at the State university; or for similar reasons a county Superintendent would hold such a school for the teachers within his jurisdiction, in a college town. In these “normal schools,” having no formal or permanent relation with the college at which they were held, one sees the origin in many colleges of their present “departments of the theory and practice of elementary instruction.”

From the earliest settlement of the West women taught the district schools in the summer, and the work of elementary instruction fell naturally more and more into their hands, until it was, during the war of 1861–5, almost monopolized by them. Necessarily, when the “normal classes” were organized, women entered and sometimes exclusively composed them. After the normal class had transcended its original limits of four or six weeks, and had developed into a “normal department,” women still, in part or in whole, constituted it. Lectures were always being delivered in other departments of the college which would be beneficial to the students in the normal department, whose members were, therefore, gradually admitted to one privilege after another, until at last the college awakened to a consciousness that it had no reserves.

More State universities than denominational colleges have been entered by women _viâ_ the “normal class,” though many of the latter have been opened by the same insidious influence. So far as the State university was concerned, the end must have been seen from the beginning by all clear-sighted people.

The State university, like the common school, is supported at public expense, and free to the children of the State, who pass into it from the common school. What more natural indeed, more necessary, than that the teachers who are to prepare the boys for the university shall know, by their own experience in it as students, what the requirements of the university are? In illustration of this view, the steps by which co-education was attained in the universities of Wisconsin and Missouri are briefly indicated.

In the spring of 1860 a ten weeks’ course of lectures was given at the University of Wisconsin, to a “normal class” of fifty-nine, of whom thirty were ladies. In the spring of 1863 a “normal department” was opened, which was at once entered by seventy-six ladies. At this time the Regents announced that the lectures in the university proper upon chemistry, geology, botany, mechanical philosophy, and English literature would be free to the “normal” students.

Conditions at the close of the war demanded a reorganization of the university. This was effected in 1866, and Section Fourth of the Act under which the university was reconstructed, says: “The university in all its departments and colleges shall be open alike to male and female students.”

However, the Regents were obliged to ask the State to recede from this broad statement of co-education, and the next year the Legislature amended the charter upon this point as follows: “The university shall be open to female as well as to male students under such regulations and restrictions as the Board of Regents may deem proper.” The charter was thus amended because Dr. Chadbourne, to whom the presidency had been offered, had refused it on the ground that he feared that this innovation would lose to the university the confidence and support of the public.

Up to 1868 the ladies pursued the course which had been laid down for the “normal department.” This course, limited to three years, was now enlarged to four.

Until 1871 the recitations of the young women were separate from those of the young men. In that year, the number of professors and instructors being insufficient to carry on separate classes, the young women were permitted at their option to enter the regular college classes. In 1875 the president reported that “for the first time women have been put, in all respects, on precisely the same footing, in the university, with young men.”

The year 1875 does not date the end of the contest in Wisconsin, but it dates the last incident pertinent to this part of the discussion, the object of which is to show the relation between the “normal class” and co-education.

In Missouri, State university co-education was reached by similar steps. A “normal class” was organized for women, who were next invited into the “normal department,” which was originally open to men only. Then the women were admitted to such lectures in the university proper as were thought to have a special value for them as teachers. They were next invited to attend chapel, but at first only as silent witnesses to the worship of the male students; later they were solicited to join in the services of song and prayer; and finally, in 1870, they were admitted to the university on the same conditions with young men.

In the early years, denominational effort was on double lines; wherever it founded a college for men, soon, in its nearer or more remote vicinity, it established a “female seminary” or “ladies’ institute.” Generally the ladies’ school was unsupplied with books, apparatus, or cabinets; it often happened that an ambitious instructor sought and obtained occasional permission to use the laboratory and the museum of the college for the benefit of her pupils, and to draw books for them from the college library. Sometimes, when a college professor was about to perform experiments of especial interest before his classes, the young ladies of the neighboring “seminary” would be invited, under escort of their instructors, to witness them.

Usually the college maintained a lecture course, the benefits of which were open to the seminary students. Unless the frivolous conduct of some college youth and seminary maiden excited a scandal which terminated such neighborly offices (a calamity that alone still withholds two or three colleges from becoming co-educational), these friendly relations were strengthened from year to year, and in many instances have resulted in a reorganization by which the seminary has become a woman’s college and an equal component part of the university which has been formed by its union with the college for men.

This process of building up a co-educational institution is illustrated in the history of the Northwestern University, at Evanston, Ill.

In reading current college history as presented in catalogues, college papers, and the general press, it is very interesting to observe how certain departures from ancient standards of college study have aided co-education. The cry for the “practical” and the answer which colleges have made to this cry, by offering their scientific courses, may be named as one of these. The average person thinks of practical as a synonym for _useful_. One opinion in which all men agree (the most conservative with the most radical) is, that women should be useful. In connection with education the average man thinks that “scientific” is also a synonym for “practical.” The conviction that such a scientific, practical course of study will enlarge a woman’s capacity for daily usefulness has sent many a young woman to a college where such courses of study were offered, who would not have been permitted to go to the college which offered only the inflexible course of classics and mathematics. The modern classical course, which permits the substitution of French and German for Greek is, on similar grounds, favorable to co-education.

The elective system has silenced a host of objectors to co-education. All people who entertain vague notions that women are intuitional creatures, that their perceptions are quicker, but their reflective powers less developed than those of men, and who hold the consequent conviction that women cannot so well conform to prescribed lines of study, all of this class are reconciled to co-education by the elective system. The following quotation supports this view. A father writes: “My daughter has entered Michigan University. Under the old régime I should not have permitted it, for I do not believe in a woman’s undertaking a man’s work; but under the elective system she can take what she likes, can take just what she would in a woman’s college, in short; and as all of the professors are men, the subjects will be much better taught.” This letter is written by an intelligent but rather old-fashioned gentleman, and the sentiments here expressed and implied concerning the elective system are entertained by a still numerous class.

The influence of the introduction of co-education at State universities upon the policy of smaller colleges has been irresistible.

Although, as has been shown, State universities did not take the initiative in co-education, the influence of the admission of women into such universities as those of Michigan and Wisconsin, has secured a similar change of policy in a large number of denominational and smaller non-sectarian colleges, founded for men only.

Appendix B., Table II., will show the relative number of colleges opened to women prior and subsequent to 1870, the year of the admission of women into Michigan University.

GENERAL ARGUMENT.

On the appearance of Dr. Clarke’s book, “Sex in Education,” in 1873, the controversy, which up to that time had been limited to the localities where co-education was being introduced, at once became general. For the next ten years this subject was discussed in the press, in the pulpit, in meetings of medical societies, and on the platform. In a large collection of old programs there is proof that every phase of the question was considered by all kinds of organizations of teachers, from national conventions to township institutes. Young teachers advanced their opinions, old teachers recited their experience, and the press everywhere gave the widest publicity to these discussions. At the end of a decade the public mind had fully expressed, and, through expressing, had gradually formed its opinion, which was in general favorable to co-education. In 1883 the whole question was opened in a new form by the attempt to exclude women from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University, which had already been open to them for twelve years.

Every reason which had formerly been urged against the admission of women was now offered for their exclusion. The peculiar origin of the discussion and the able and gallant defense of the rights of the women already enrolled in its classes which was made by Dr. Carroll Cutler, the president of Adelbert, attracted wide notice, and the arguments, pro and con, were reviewed by the press of the country.

Dr. Cutler wrote to the authorities of all the principal co-educational colleges, for the results of their experience. The courtesy of Dr. Cutler makes this voluminous correspondence available for this chapter.

Stated briefly and in the chronological order of their development, the arguments against co-education are as follows:

_a._ Women are mentally inferior to men, and therefore their presence in a college will inevitably lower the standard of its scholarship.

_b._ The physical constitution of women makes it impossible for them to endure the strain of severe mental effort. If admitted to college they will maintain their position and keep pace with men only at the sacrifice of their health.

_c._ The presence of women in college will result in vitiating the manners, if not the morals, of both men and women; the men will become effeminate and weak, the women coarse and masculine.

_d._ If women are admitted to college, their presence will arouse the emotional natures of the men, will distract the minds of the latter from college work, and will give opportunity for scandal.

_e._ The intimacies of college life will result in premature marriages.

_f._ Young men do not approve of the collegiate education of women; they dislike to enter into competition with women, and if the latter are admitted to our colleges it will result in the loss of male students, who will seek in colleges limited to their own sex, the social life which cannot be furnished by a co-educational institution.

_g._ A collegiate education not only does not prepare a woman for the domestic relations and duties for which she is designed, but actually unfits her for them.

_h._ Colleges were originally intended for men only, and the wills of their founders and benefactors will be violated by the admission of women.

_i._ Whatever the real mental capacity or physical ability of women, so fixed is the world’s conviction of their inferiority, that colleges admitting them will inevitably forfeit the world’s confidence and respect.

This chapter affords no space for the _à priori_ arguments which answer these objections; and indeed the best answer to all objections against co-education is found in its result. Let the following letters testify to the fruits of experience. Extract from a letter from James B. Angell, president of the University of Michigan, dated September 2, 1884:

“Women were admitted here (Michigan University) under the pressure of public sentiment, against the wishes of most of the professors; but I think no professor now regrets it, or would favor their exclusion. The way had been well prepared. Denominational colleges had for years admitted women; and in the high schools, which are our preparatory schools, it was the universal custom to teach both sexes. Most of the evils feared by those who opposed the admission of women have not been encountered.

“We made no solitary modification of our rules or requirements. The women did not become hoydenish; they did not fail in their studies; they did not break down in health; they have graduated in all departments; they have not been inferior in scholarship to the men; the careers of our women graduates have been, on the whole, very satisfactory. They are teachers in many of our best high schools; six or seven are in the Wellesley College faculty.”[13]

Extract from a letter from Moses Coit Tyler, dated at Cornell University, September 30, 1884:

“I was connected with the University of Michigan before the advent of women there; was present during the process of their introduction; for several years afterward watched the results; and am now entering on my fourth year here at a co-educational university. And now, after all these years, upon my word, I cannot recall a fact which furnishes a single valid objection to the system; while the real utility, convenience, and wholesomeness of it have so long been before my eyes, that I am startled by your letter as implying that anybody still has any doubt about it.... I do not know a member of the faculty either at Michigan or here who would favor a return to the old plan, although, before the adoption of the new one, many were anxiously opposed to it. My observation has been that under the joint system the tone of college life has grown more earnest, more courteous and refined, less flippant and cynical. The women are usually among the very best scholars, and lead instead of drag; and their lapses from good health are rather (yes, decidedly) less numerous than those alleged by men. There is a sort of young man who thinks it is not quite the thing, you know, to be in college where women are, and he goes away, if he can, and I am glad to have him do so. The vacuum he causes by his departure is not a large one, and is more than made up by the arrival, in his stead, of a more robust and a manlier sort.”

Extracts from two letters written by the Hon. Andrew D. White while president of Cornell University, and bearing dates respectively of August 5, 1884, and October 25, 1884:

“My own opinion is that all the good results we anticipated, and some we did not anticipate, have followed the admission of young women; on the other hand, not one of the prophesied evils, unless possibly some young men may have imbibed a prejudice against the university from the presence of young women, and so have gone elsewhere. This, of course, we can hardly determine. I have never thought the admission of women injured us to any appreciable extent, even in this matter. Scholarship has certainly not been injured in the slightest degree, while order has been improved.... There have been no scandals. Hardly any attachments have ever grown up between the students of the two sexes.... The best scholars are, almost without exception, men; but there is a far larger proportion of young women than of young men who become good scholars. Having now gone through one more year, making twelve in all since women were admitted, I do not hesitate to say that I believe their presence here good for us in every respect. There has not been a particle of scandal of any sort. As to the relations between the sexes, they give us no uneasiness.”

Extract from a letter written by John Bascom, then president of the University of Wisconsin, dated August 20, 1884:

“Co-education is with us wholly successful. There is no difference of opinion concerning it, either in our faculty or our board. We find no additional difficulty in discipline; our young women do good work, and the progress of our young men is in no way impeded. It does not seem to us to be any longer an open question.

“I believe the character of both young men and women is helped, though the results in this particular are difficult of proof. The advantages of the system are manifold; the evils are none. We have ceased to think about its fitness save as questions from abroad redirect our attention to it.”

Extract from a letter by Joseph Cummings, president of Northwestern University:

“The effect of co-education in this institution, upon the manners and morals of both men and women, is only good. The history of co-education shows that men and women trained under its influence are less open to temptations of the passions than are those trained in separate institutions.

“Women are less inclined to pursue long courses of study, but the average scholarship of those who do persevere and graduate is higher than that of the men; and women here do not retard the progress of men.”

In more than 200 letters from presidents and professors in co-educational colleges, a part of which were written during the Adelbert College controversy, and a larger part of which have been received by the writer of this chapter within the last three months, there is not one which does not give testimony to the value of the system, similar to that above quoted.

I have chosen to quote from letters written in 1884 because the controversy then pending impelled the writers to a fuller and more specific statement of their experience than would be elicited by a series of questions propounded at this date. It is only necessary to add that in every instance letters dated in 1889 or 1890 fully accord with those written in 1883 and 1884.

Presidents Angell, White, Bascom, and Cummings, and Professor Tyler are quoted because of their distinguished reputation as educators, because their experience has been in institutions universally acknowledged to rank among the highest in our country, and because, as no one of them has ever taken the position of an apostle of co-education, their words will be received as the testimony of witnesses, and not as the pleadings of advocates.

THE SOCIAL EFFECTS AND TENDENCIES OF CO-EDUCATION.

But few of all the 165 colleges in the West now open to men and women have compiled statistics which present the records of their graduates, prior or subsequent to the admission of women, in reference to health, domestic state, occupation, social position, official place, financial or other form of success. Perhaps the most important and successful attempt to obtain such statistics is that made by the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, whose inquiries were limited to the women who had graduated from the small number of institutions for either separate or joint education, admitted to that association.

These statistics, of course, relate to women only; and, moreover, they are too incomplete to establish any general law; but they do permit the inference that college life confirms and improves the health of women; and that it does not disincline them to matrimony, or render them averse to or incapable of maternity and its consequent duties. In the absence of statistical data one can only consider the probabilities.

That a general impression that women were intellectually inferior to men formerly prevailed cannot be disputed.

If their work in co-educational colleges has (as, according to the testimony of their instructors, is the case) been, on an average, better than that of their male classmates, the young men who for four years have witnessed daily this exhibition of an intellectual vigor and interest equal to their own, will not be likely to entertain the doctrine of women’s natural and therefore necessary inferiority. The minds of the women in these colleges will be correspondingly affected; they will acquire a respect for themselves and for their sex greater than was formerly characteristic of women.

The intellectual association of men and women on a plane of accepted equality, begun in college, will continue after leaving it, and will modify the social life of every circle into which graduates of co-educational colleges enter.

These inferred effects of co-education are already visible in Western communities. Visitors from the Eastern States, and from over the sea, comment upon the relative absence of prudery among women and of false gallantry among men; they notice that sentimentality and condescension on the one hand, and affectation and soft flatteries on the other, are, to a degree, superseded by a mutual good understanding and respect.

Literary clubs, associations for the promotion of art and science, and committees engaged in philanthropy, are frequently composed of men and women; and the offices in these organizations are distributed between the two sexes in proportion to their respective representation in the membership. In communities where there are many graduates from co-educational colleges, one finds that societies of the kind above referred to have passed that transition state of mixed clubs, in which men always held the offices of president, secretary, and treasurer, while women held those of vice-president and corresponding secretary.

Men who have studied with women in college, almost invariably favor their admission to county and State, medical, legal, and editorial associations; and thus we already see that co-education prepares society to give women welcome and patronage in business and professional life.

The growth of this cordial recognition of equality, this _bonhomie_, has not, as it was feared would be the case, been accompanied by the decadence of man’s reverence for womanhood and woman’s admiration for manliness. Shrewd observers testify that both these sentiments apparently survive intellectual acquaintance, competition, and partnership; and that the former is expressed with more simplicity and the latter with more frankness than formerly, or than is still usual in sections of the country where co-education does not so generally exist.

But it is too soon for the final word on this subject to be spoken. Statisticians, sociologists, and novelists have much new work to do in recording the social consequences of co-education.

DEFECTS AND LIMITATIONS IN THE SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN IN THE WEST.

The ideal of higher education in the West suffers from an habitual exaggeration of speech. Nothing is more conducive to clear and accurate thinking than a strictly accurate vocabulary. The custom of calling institutions which do only secondary work—some of which offer a limited course of even this work—colleges, and of naming colleges universities, tends to mislead and confuse the public mind as to the distinctions between the different kinds of institutions and as to the essential character of each. The inhabitants of the West find their defense for this custom of giving things disproportionate names in the general vastness of their surroundings and in the consequent vastness of their plans and hopes. One of the simplest and surest remedies for the vague and contradictory notions now suggested in the phrase higher education, may be found in giving to every institution of learning a name that frankly implies the limit of its work; and every institution would gain in dignity through this nomenclature.

Nominal honors are too easy in Western institutions; and the conditions upon which different institutions confer them are so various that they have ceased to convey any fixed notion of the kind and amount of intellectual discipline which those bearing them have received.

The remedies for this are to be found in some concerted action among the colleges by which they will agree upon minimum requirements for admission to any one of them. The minimum adopted by the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ might answer this purpose. This would tend, not only to unify but also to raise the average requirements for admission to college, and this in turn would enable secondary schools to maintain a higher standard than is at present common.

As almost all colleges arrange their courses of study to occupy four years, unifying and raising the conditions of entrance would result in unifying and raising the requirements for graduation in the various courses; and this would tend to give to B.A., B.S., and B.L. an intelligible and honorable significance, long since lost. Legislative action could be taken in the different States, at least with reference to new colleges as they shall be founded, limiting the authority to confer degrees to those institutions adopting these improved minimum requirements; this would elevate the public ideal of the higher education and tend to save our young people from being betrayed by words and alphabetical combinations.

The defects above indicated should be frankly admitted to exist, but they are less universal and less disastrous than people living in the Eastern States are disposed to consider them.

A large number of the professorships in Western colleges are filled by men educated in Eastern institutions, who, after graduating from Harvard, Yale, Princeton or some other college which receives only young men, taught in Eastern colleges for either men or women separately before entering into their present connection with some one of our co-educational colleges. The experience of such men and their natural prejudice in behalf of early associations makes their favorable testimony to the merit of Western colleges particularly valuable.

The following extract from a letter from J. W. Bashford, of the Ohio Wesleyan University, is a very moderate statement of views expressed by many of my correspondents. He says: “Four women came to our university during the last two weeks of the term last spring, and afterward visited the leading colleges for women in New England. After personally inspecting the advantages for education for their daughters in the East and in the West, each of the four women decided in favor of co-education and of our university; each came with her daughter and entered her among our students at the opening of our university this year. Belonging to the East myself, I have a very high idea of the work done in our Eastern colleges, and personally do not hold that we can give students superior scholastic advantages, or in some respects equal scholastic advantages to those enjoyed in our best Eastern colleges. There is, however, a greater spirit of earnestness, and possibly a more strongly developed type of manhood and womanhood among our Western students than can be found in our Eastern colleges.”

The cause of higher education for women suffers from the fact that life offers fewer incentives to young women than to young men.

Dr. Smart, the President of Purdue University, and Dr. Jordan, the President of the Indiana State University, men of distinction in their profession, and well acquainted with educational questions, both say that the need of the young women in their respective institutions is that of sufficient incentive. The highest of all incentives, self-development and the possession of culture, appeals as directly to young women as to young men, and not less strongly; but this highest of incentives is sufficient for only the highest order of minds; and in the case of the average young person of either sex, must be reinforced by incentives more immediate and tangible. In this connection the need of improving the normal schools may be legitimately discussed. The normal school has done much to lift the occupation of teaching into the rank of the professions; but teaching can never be accounted one of the learned professions until the learning which is generally considered requisite in the doctor, the lawyer, and the clergyman is demanded in the teacher. It is quite true that the education implied by a full college course is not made a condition of entrance to schools of medicine, law, and theology; but if such preliminary culture is not demanded by these schools, it is expected by them. On the contrary, it is not only not demanded, but not expected, that applicants for admission to a normal school shall present a degree from some reputable college of liberal arts.

The professions which a majority of ambitious young men with intellectual tastes expect to enter, offer incentives to do preliminary college work; the one profession into which young women may enter with undisputed propriety not only does not offer incentives for taking a preliminary college course, but by its entrance requirements and its curriculum implies that such a course is not requisite.

Now that State universities are the direct continuance of the high schools, it would seem desirable that at least those teachers who expect to engage in high school work should have taken the courses of study implied by a college degree. Could the standard of normal school instruction and of high school preparation be thus lifted, it would act as a powerful incentive to young women.

The growth of progressive thought in the West, concerning the social and civil position and the industrial and professional freedom of woman, tends to supply women with incentives to obtain the best education: and the defects in their education hitherto caused by the absence of incentive, promise to be remedied with increasing rapidity.

The colleges, particularly the State universities of the West, are charged with being defective in their provisions for the development and culture of the social qualities of their students. Many of them have no dormitories, and the students upon entering them, women and men alike, go into boarding-houses or private families, or form co-operative boarding clubs, according to their own tastes and under conditions of their own making.

If in these universities students were received for post graduate work only, no criticism could attach to this custom of leaving every student to regulate his or her own domestic and social affairs, for such students are usually mature men and women. But this custom is open to criticism in institutions, in all of which the majority, and in most of which all the students, are undergraduates of immature age.

A study of their latest catalogues shows that, excluding the State universities, most of these institutions which enjoy more than a local patronage have erected or are contemplating the erection of dormitories for the accommodation of the young women in attendance upon them. Although some colleges, as, for example, the Ohio Wesleyan University, continue to build dormitories large enough to accommodate one or two hundred young women, there is a tendency favorable to the erection of less pretentious buildings under the name of hall or cottage, each of which shall accommodate from twenty to sixty young women. The refinement both of college life and of subsequent social life would be enhanced by the multiplication of these homes for moderate numbers of college women—if each were put under the charge of a woman whose intellectual culture, stability, and nobleness of character, and experience of life and the world, made her the evident and acknowledged peer of every member of the college faculty. But, if these college homes for women students are placed under the charge of matrons who are expected to combine motherly kindness and housewifely skill with devout piety, but in whom no other qualities or attainments are demanded, and if the matrons are the only women, besides the students, connected with the institution, the influence of the college home will tend to lower the ideal of woman’s function in society; to rob the ideal of domestic life of all intellectual quality; and in general to diminish for young women the incentives to study.

Every one knows that the strongest stimulus to exertion that young men experience in college is afforded by their contact with men whose cultivated talents, whose sound learning, whose successful experience, and whose rich characters they admire, venerate, and emulate.

The almost universal absence of women from college faculties is a grave defect in co-educational institutions; and negatively, at least, their absence has as injurious an influence upon young men as upon young women.

Under the most favorable conditions, the college home, in which a large number of young women are brought into a common life under one roof and one guidance, is abnormal in its organization. If, in the university town where young women find homes in boarding-houses or in private families, there could be a local board of ladies authorized to exercise some supervision over the young women, the arrangement might secure the aims of a college home under more natural conditions than the latter now provides.

But women in the faculty, women on the board of visitors, women on the board of trustees, holding these positions, not because of their family connections, not because they are wives or sisters of the men in the faculty and on the boards, but because of their individual abilities, are the great present need of co-educational colleges. Only the presence of women in these places can relieve the young men who are students in these institutions from an arrogant sense of superiority arising from their sex, and the young women from a corresponding sense of subordination.

In a statement of the “Theory of Education in the United States of America,” prepared by the Hon. Duane Doty and Dr. Wm. T. Harris, the present Commissioner of Education, we read the following:

“The general participation of all the people in the primary political functions of election, together with the almost complete localization of self-government by local administration, renders necessary the education of all, without distinction of sex, social rank, wealth, or natural abilities.” Farther: “The national government and the State government regard education as a proper subject for legislation, on the ground of the necessity of educated intelligence among a people that is to furnish _law-abiding_ citizens, well versed in the laws they are to obey, and likewise _law-making_ citizens, well versed in the social, historic, and political conditions which give occasion to new laws and shape their provisions.”

These statements are in perfect accord with the following words of Washington, quoted from his “Farewell Address to the American People”: “In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”

Here is the whole argument for the existence of State universities. In the West, these are destined to be the strongest, richest, and best equipped institutions for the higher learning; and are likewise clearly destined to have a determining influence upon the policy of other colleges in respect to co-education.

The “West” remains an indefinite term; and in that part of it which the word accurately describes, a people will be born who know nothing of distinctions in opportunity between men and women.

A people reared under such conditions will ultimately exhibit the influence of the “Higher Education of Women in the West.”