Why is it, that, whenever anything is done for women in the way of
education, it is called "an experiment,"--something that is to be long
considered, stoutly opposed, grudgingly yielded, and dubiously watched,--
while, if the same thing is done for men, its desirableness is assumed as a
matter of course, and the thing is done? Thus, when Harvard College was
founded, it was not regarded as an experiment, but as an institution. The
"General Court," in 1636, "agreed to give 400 _l_. towards a schoale or
colledge," and the affair was settled. Every subsequent step in the
expanding of educational opportunities for young men has gone in the same
way. But when there seems a chance of extending, however irregularly, some
of the same collegiate advantages to women, I observe that respectable
newspapers, in all good faith, are apt to speak of the measure as an
"experiment."
It seems to me no more of an "experiment" than when a boy who has usually
eaten up his whole apple becomes a little touched with a sense of justice,
and finally decides to offer his sister the smaller half. If he has ever
regarded that offer as an experiment, the first actual trial will put the
result into the list of certainties; and it will become an axiom in his
mind that girls like apples. Whatever may be said about the position of
women in law and society, it is clear that their educational disadvantages
have been a prolonged disgrace to the other sex, and one for which women
themselves are in no way accountable. When Françoise de Saintonges, in the
sixteenth century, wished to establish girls' schools in France, she was
hooted in the streets, and her father called together four doctors of law
to decide whether she was possessed of a devil in planning to teach
women,--"_pour s'assurer qu'instruire des femmes n'était pas un oeuvre du
démon_." From that day to this we have seen women almost always more ready
to be taught than was any one else to teach them. Talk as you please about
their wishing or not wishing to vote: they have certainly wished for
instruction, and have had it doled out to them almost as grudgingly as if
it were the ballot itself.
Consider the educational history of Massachusetts, for instance. The wife
of President John Adams was born in 1744; and she says of her youth that
"female education, in the best families, went no farther than writing and
arithmetic." Barry tells us in his "History of Massachusetts," that the
public education was first provided for boys only; "but light soon broke
in, and girls were allowed to attend the public schools two hours a
day."[1] It appears from President Quincy's "Municipal History of
Boston,"[2] that from 1790 girls were there admitted to such schools, but
during the summer months only, when there were not boys enough to fill
them,--from April 20 to October 20 of each year. This lasted until 1822,
when Boston became a city. Four years after, an attempt was made to
establish a high school for girls, which was not, however, to teach Latin
and Greek. It had, in the words of the school committee of 1854, "an
alarming success;" and the school was abolished after eighteen months'
trial, because the girls crowded into it; and as Mr. Quincy, with exquisite
simplicity, records, "not one voluntarily quitted it, and there was no
reason to suppose that any one admitted to the school would voluntarily
quit for the whole three years, except in case of marriage!"
How amusing seems it now to read of such an "experiment" as this, abandoned
only because of its overwhelming success! How absurd now seem the
discussions of a few years ago!--the doubts whether young women really
desired higher education, whether they were capable of it, whether their
health would bear it, whether their parents would permit it. An address I
gave before the Social Science Association on this subject, at Boston, May
14, 1873, now seems to me such a collection of platitudes that I hardly see
how I dared come before an intelligent audience with such needless
reasonings. It is as if I had soberly labored to prove that two and two
make four, or that ginger is "hot i' the mouth." Yet the subsequent
discussion in that meeting showed that around even these harmless and
commonplace propositions the battle of debate could rage hot; and it really
seemed as if even to teach women the alphabet ought still to be mentioned
as "a promising experiment." Now, with the successes before us of so many
colleges; with the spectacle at Cambridge of young women actually reading
Plato "at sight" with Professor Goodwin,--it surely seems as if the higher
education of women might be considered quite beyond the stage of
experiment, and might henceforth be provided for in the same common-sense
and matter-of-course way which we provide for the education of young men.
And, if this point is already reached in education, how long before it will
also be reached in political life, and women's voting be viewed as a matter
of course, and a thing no longer experimental?
[Footnote 1: Vol. iii. 323.]
[Footnote 2: Page 21.]