THE DISTAFF SERIES
WOMAN
AND
The Higher Education
EDITED BY
ANNA C. BRACKETT
[Illustration: EXCELSIOR 1893]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
MDCCCXCIII
Copyright, 1893, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS.
Page
GENERAL INTRODUCTION v
Mrs. BLANCHE WILDER BELLAMY.
PREFACE ix
Miss ANNA C. BRACKETT.
A PLAN FOR IMPROVING FEMALE EDUCATION 1
Mrs. EMMA WILLARD, 1819.
FEMALE EDUCATION 47
Mrs. EMMA C. EMBURY, 1831.
THE COLLEGIATE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 65
Prof. MARIA MITCHELL, Vassar College, 1880.
A NEW KNOCK AT AN OLD DOOR 79
Mrs. LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE, 1883.
A REVIEW OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 103
Mrs. ALICE FREEMAN PALMER, 1889.
THE TEACHING OF HISTORY IN ACADEMIES AND COLLEGES 131
Prof. LUCY M. SALMON, Vassar College, 1890.
THE PRIVATE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS 153
Miss ANNA C. BRACKETT, 1892.
INTRODUCTION.
The series of collections, of which this volume is a part, is made up of
representative work of the women of the State of New York in periodical
literature.
This literature has been classified under its conspicuous
divisions—Poetry, Fiction, History, Art, Biography, Translation, Literary
Criticism, and the like.
A woman of eminent success in each department has then been asked to make
a collection of representative work in that department; to include in it
an example of her own work, and to place her name upon the volume as its
Editor.
These selections have been made, as far as possible, chronologically,
beginning with the earliest work of the century, in order that the
volumes may carry out the plan of the “Exhibit of Women’s Work in
Literature in the State of New York,” of which they are an original part.
The aim of this Exhibit was to make a record of literary work, limited,
through necessity, both by sex and locality, but, as far as possible,
accurate and complete, and to preserve this record in the State Library
in the Capitol at Albany.
It includes twenty-five hundred books, beginning with the works of
Charlotte Ramsay Lennox, the first-born female author of the province
of New York, published in London in 1759, closing with the pages of a
translation of Herder, still wet from the press, and comprising the works
of almost every author in the intervening one hundred and forty years.
It includes also three hundred papers read before the literary clubs of
the State, a summary of the work of all writers for the press, and the
folios which preserve the work of many able women who have not published
books.
The women of the State of New York have had the honor of decorating and
furnishing the Library of the Women’s Building. Believing the best
equipment of a library to be literature, they have therefore prepared
this Exhibit; and have made its character comprehensive and historic,
in order that it may not be temporary, but that it may be preserved in
the State Library, and may have permanent value for future lovers and
students of Americana.
BLANCHE WILDER BELLAMY,
_Chairman of the Committee on Literature of the Board of Women Managers
of the State of New York_.
PREFACE.
These essays, arranged in the order of the dates at which they were
written, dating from 1819 to 1892, have no relation to each other but
a logical one, and their logic is the logic of events. Professor Maria
Mitchell’s article was published in _Education_, Mrs. Runkle’s in _The
Century Magazine_, Mrs. Palmer’s in _The Forum_, Professor Salmon’s
in _The Academy_, and the paper on _The Private School_ in HARPER’S
MAGAZINE. That so many periodicals offered material so valuable shows how
wide-spread is the interest in the training of our girls, and how general
and how intelligent is now the demand for the best. The change which has
come about in these seventy years needs no emphasis for those who read
in these pages the pleading words of Mrs. Willard to the members of the
New York Legislature in behalf simply of a girls’ seminary, and then look
through the collection to find that two of the articles have been written
by women professors in girls’ colleges, and one of them by a woman who
was for many years president of a girls’ college. She tells us that at
present the women’s colleges of this country reckon more than 50,000
students.
The facts speak for themselves. It is significant that we could find no
words to present here written during the period of the Civil War. Then
women found their opportunity practically to demonstrate to the world
that opportunity was all they needed.
But in all that has been written since there is nothing more subtile than
the argument presented by Mrs. Willard in 1819 in behalf of an education
“giving strength and expansion to the minds of women,” whom she asserts
to be “an essential part of the body politic,” with her warning to the
law-makers of America to avoid the example of other republics, where
“women have repaid the nations with ruin for their folly” in neglecting
them.
A difference of tone in the essays is also exceedingly suggestive:
In 1819 Mrs. Willard appeals to the “enlightened politicians” of her
time; in 1881 Maria Mitchell writes, “All that women ask for is the
enlightenment of our present rulers.”
ANNA C. BRACKETT.
NEW YORK, 1893.
WOMAN AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION.
A PLAN FOR IMPROVING FEMALE EDUCATION.
BY MRS. EMMA WILLARD.
An address to the public, particularly to the members of the
Legislature of New York.
The object of this address is to convince the public that a reform with
respect to female education is necessary; that it cannot be effected by
individual exertion, but that it requires the aid of the Legislature;
and, further, by showing the justice, the policy, and the magnanimity
of such an undertaking, to persuade that body to endow a seminary for
females as the commencement of such reformation.
The idea of a college for males will naturally be associated with that of
a seminary, instituted and endowed by the public; and the absurdity of
sending ladies to college may, at first thought, strike every one to whom
this subject shall be proposed. I therefore hasten to observe that the
seminary here recommended will be as different from those appropriated
to the other sex as the female character and duties are from the male.
The business of the husbandman is not to waste his endeavors in seeking
to make his orchard attain the strength and majesty of his forest, but to
rear each to the perfection of its nature.
That the improvement of female education will be considered by our
enlightened citizens as a subject of importance, the liberality with
which they part with their property to educate their daughters is a
sufficient evidence; and why should they not, when assembled in the
Legislature, act in concert to effect a noble object which, though
dear to them individually, cannot be accomplished by their unconnected
exertions?
If the improvement of the American female character, and that alone,
could be effected by public liberality, employed in giving better means
of instruction, such improvement of one-half of society, and that half
which barbarous and despotic nations have ever degraded, would of itself
be an object worthy of the most liberal government on earth; but if the
female character be raised, it must inevitably raise that of the other
sex; and thus does the plan proposed offer, as the object of legislative
bounty, to elevate the whole character of the community.
As evidence that this statement does not exaggerate the female influence
in society, our sex need but to be considered in the single relation
of mothers. In this character we have the charge of the whole mass of
individuals who are to compose the succeeding generation during that
period of youth when the pliant mind takes any direction to which it is
steadily guided by a forming hand. How important a power is given by this
charge! Yet little do too many of my sex know how either to appreciate or
improve it. Unprovided with the means of acquiring that knowledge which
flows liberally to the other sex, having our time of education devoted to
frivolous acquirements, how should we understand the nature of the mind
so as to be aware of the importance of those early impressions which we
make upon the minds of our children? Or how should we be able to form
enlarged and correct views, either of the character to which we ought to
mould them or of the means most proper to form them aright?
Considered in this point of view, were the interests of male education
alone to be consulted, that of females becomes of sufficient importance
to engage the public attention. Would we rear the human plant to its
perfection, we must first fertilize the soil which produces it. If it
acquire its first bent and texture upon a barren plain, it will avail
comparatively little should it be afterwards transplanted to a garden.
In the arrangement of my remarks I shall pursue the following order:
I. Treat of the defects of the present mode of female education, and
their causes.
II. Consider the principles by which education should be regulated.
III. Sketch a plan of a female seminary.
IV. Show the benefits which society would receive from such seminaries.
DEFECTS IN THE PRESENT MODE OF FEMALE EDUCATION, AND THEIR CAUSES.
Civilized nations have long since been convinced that education as it
respects males will not, like trade, regulate itself; and hence they have
made it a prime object to provide that sex with everything requisite to
facilitate their progress in learning; but female education has been
left to the mercy of private adventurers; and the consequence has been to
our sex the same as it would have been to the other had legislatures left
their accommodations and means of instruction to chance also.
Education cannot prosper in any community unless, from the ordinary
motives which actuate the human mind, the best and most cultivated
talents of that community can be brought into exercise in that way. Male
education flourishes because, from the guardian care of legislatures,
the presidencies and professorships of our colleges are some of the
highest objects to which the eye of ambition is directed. Not so with
female institutions. Preceptresses of these are dependent on their
pupils for support, and are consequently liable to become the victims
of their caprice. In such a situation it is not more desirable to be a
preceptress than it would be to be a parent invested with the care of
children and responsible for their behavior, and yet depending on them
for subsistence, and destitute of power to enforce their obedience.
Feminine delicacy requires that girls should be educated chiefly by their
own sex. This is apparent from considerations that regard their health
and conveniences, the propriety of their dress and manners, and their
domestic accomplishments.
Boarding-schools, therefore, whatever may be their defects, furnish the
best mode of education provided for females.
Concerning these schools it may be observed:
1. They are temporary institutions, formed by individuals whose object is
present emolument. But they cannot be expected to be greatly lucrative;
therefore, the individuals who establish them cannot afford to provide
suitable accommodations as to room. At night the pupils are frequently
crowded in their lodging-rooms, and during the day they are generally
placed together in one apartment, where there is a heterogeneous mixture
of different kinds of business, accompanied with so much noise and
confusion as greatly to impede their progress in study.
2. As individuals cannot afford to provide suitable accommodations as to
room, so neither can they afford libraries and other apparatus necessary
to teach properly the various branches in which they pretend to instruct.
3. Neither can the individuals who establish these schools afford to
provide suitable instruction. It not unfrequently happens that one
instructress teaches, at the same time and in the same room, ten or
twelve distinct branches. If assistants are provided, such are usually
taken as can be procured for a small compensation. True, in our large
cities preceptresses provide their pupils with masters, though at an
expense which few can afford; yet none of these masters are responsible
for the general proficiency or demeanor of the pupils. Their only
responsibility is in the particular branch which they teach, and to a
preceptress who probably does not understand it herself, and who is
therefore incapable of judging whether or not it is well taught.
4. It is impossible that in these schools such systems should be
adopted and enforced as are requisite for properly classing the pupils.
Institutions for young gentlemen are founded by public authority, and
are permanent; they are endowed with funds, and their instructors and
overseers are invested with authority to make such laws as they shall
deem most salutary. From their permanency their laws and rules are well
known. With their funds they procure libraries, philosophical apparatus,
and other advantages superior to what can elsewhere be found; and to
enjoy these, individuals are placed under their discipline who would not
else be subjected to it. Hence the directors of these institutions can
enforce among other regulations those which enable them to make a perfect
classification of their students. They regulate their qualifications for
entrance, the kind and order of their studies, and the period of their
remaining at the seminary. Female schools present the reverse of this.
Wanting permanency and dependent on individual patronage, had they the
wisdom to make salutary regulations, they could neither enforce nor
purchase compliance. The pupils are irregular in their times of entering
and leaving school, and they are of various and dissimilar acquirements.
Each scholar of mature age thinks she has a right to judge for herself
respecting what she is to be taught; and the parents of those who are
not, consider that they have the same right to judge for them. Under such
disadvantages a school cannot be classed, except in a very imperfect
manner.
5. It is for the interest of instructresses of boarding-schools to teach
their pupils showy accomplishments rather than those which are solid
and useful. Their object in teaching is generally present profit. In
order to realize this, they must contrive to give immediate celebrity to
their schools. If they attend chiefly to the cultivation of the mind,
their work may not be manifest at the first glance; but let the pupil
return home laden with fashionable toys, and her young companions, filled
with envy and astonishment, are never satisfied till they are permitted
to share the precious instruction. It is true, with the turn of the
fashion the toys which they are taught to make will become obsolete, and
no benefit remain to them of perhaps the only money that will ever be
expended on their education; but the object of the instructress may be
accomplished, notwithstanding, if that is directed to her own rather than
her pupil’s advantage.
6. As these schools are private establishments, their preceptresses are
not accountable to any particular persons. Any woman has a right to open
a school in any place, and no one, either from law or custom, can prevent
her. Hence the public are liable to be imposed upon, both with respect
to the character and acquirements of preceptresses; I am far, however,
from asserting that this is always the case. It has been before observed
that in the present state of things the ordinary motives which actuate
the human mind would not induce ladies of the best and most cultivated
talents to engage in the business of instructing from choice. But some
have done it from necessity, and occasionally an extraordinary female
has occupied herself in instructing because she felt that impulse to be
active and useful which is the characteristic of a vigorous and noble
mind, and because she found few avenues to extensive usefulness open to
her sex. But if such has been the fact, it has not been the consequence
of any system from which a similar result can be expected to recur with
regularity, and it remains true that the public are liable to imposition
both with regard to the character and acquirements of preceptresses.
Instances have lately occurred in which women of bad reputation, at a
distance from scenes of their former life, have been intrusted by our
unsuspecting citizens with the instruction of their daughters.
But the moral reputation of individuals is more a matter of public
notoriety than their literary attainments; hence society is more liable
to be deceived with regard to the acquirements of instructresses than
with respect to their characters.
Those women, however, who deceive society as to the advantages which
they give their pupils are not charged with any ill intention. They
teach as they were taught, and believe that the public are benefited
by their labors. Acquiring in their youth a high value for their own
superficial accomplishments, they regard all others as supernumerary if
not unbecoming. Although these considerations exculpate individuals, yet
they do not diminish the injury which society receives; for they show
that the worst which is to be expected from such instruction is not that
the pupils will remain ignorant, but that by adopting the views of their
teachers they will have their minds barred against future improvement by
acquiring a disrelish, if not a contempt, for useful knowledge.
7. Although, from a want of public support, preceptresses of
boarding-schools have not the means of enforcing such a system as would
lead to a perfect classification of their pupils, and although they
are confined in other respects within narrow limits, yet because these
establishments are not dependent on any public body within those limits,
they have a power far more arbitrary and uncontrolled than is allowed
the learned and judicious instructors of our male seminaries.
They can at their option omit their own duties, and excuse their pupils
from theirs.
They can make absurd and ridiculous regulations.
They can make improper and even wicked exactions of their pupils.
Thus the writer has endeavored to point out the defects of the present
mode of female education, chiefly in order to show that the great cause
of these defects consists in a state of things in which legislatures,
undervaluing the importance of women in society, neglect to provide for
their education, and suffer it to become the sport of adventurers of
fortune who may be both ignorant and vicious.
OF THE PRINCIPLES BY WHICH EDUCATION SHOULD BE REGULATED.
To contemplate the principles which should regulate systems of
instruction, and consider how little those principles have been regarded
in educating our sex, will show the defects of female education in a
still stronger point of light, and will also afford a standard by which
any plan for its improvement may be measured.
Education should seek to bring its subjects to the perfection of their
moral, intellectual, and physical nature, in order that they may be
of the greatest possible use to themselves and others; or, to use a
different expression, that they may be the means of the greatest possible
happiness of which they are capable, both as to what they enjoy and what
they communicate.
Those youth have the surest chance of enjoying and communicating
happiness who are best qualified, both by internal disposition and
external habits, to perform with readiness those duties which their
future life will most probably give them occasion to practise.
Studies and employments should therefore be selected from one or both of
the following considerations: either because they are peculiarly fitted
to improve the faculties, or because they are such as the pupil will most
probably have occasion to practise in future life.
These are the principles on which systems of male education are founded;
but female education has not yet been systematized. Chance and confusion
reign here. Not even is youth considered in our sex, as in the other, a
season which should be wholly devoted to improvement. Among families so
rich as to be entirely above labor, the daughters are hurried through the
routine of boarding-school instruction, and at an early period introduced
into the gay world; and thenceforth their only object is amusement. Mark
the different treatment which the sons of these families receive. While
their sisters are gliding through the mazes of the midnight dance, they
employ the lamp to treasure up for future use the riches of ancient
wisdom, or to gather strength and expansion of mind in exploring the
wonderful paths of philosophy. When the youth of the two sexes has been
spent so differently, is it strange, or is nature in fault, if more
mature age has brought such a difference of character that our sex have
been considered by the other as the pampered, wayward babies of society,
who must have some rattle put into our hands to keep us from doing
mischief to ourselves or others?
Another difference in the treatment of sexes is made in our country
which, though not equally pernicious to society, is more pathetically
unjust to our sex. How often have we seen a student who, returning from
his literary pursuits, finds a sister, who was his equal in acquirements
while their advantages were equal, of whom he is now ashamed. While
his youth was devoted to study and he was furnished with the means,
she, without any object of improvement, drudged at home to assist in
the support of the father’s family, and perhaps to contribute to her
brother’s subsistence abroad; and now, a being of a lower order, the
rustic innocent wonders and weeps at his neglect.
Not only has there been a want of system concerning female education, but
much of what has been done has proceeded upon mistaken principles.
One of these is that, without a regard to the different periods of life
proportionate to their importance, the education of females has been too
exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms
of youth and beauty. Though it may be proper to adorn this period of
life, yet it is incomparably more important to prepare for the serious
duties of maturer years. Though well to decorate the blossom, it is far
better to prepare for the harvest. In the vegetable creation Nature seems
but to sport when she embellishes the flower, while all her serious
cares are directed to perfect the fruit.
Another error is that it has been made the first object in educating our
sex to prepare them to please the other. But reason and religion teach
that we too are primary existences; that it is for us to move in the
orbit of our duty around the Holy Centre of perfection, the companions,
not the satellites, of men; else, instead of shedding around us an
influence that may help to keep them in their proper course, we must
accompany them in their wildest deviations.
I would not be understood to insinuate that we are not in particular
situations to yield obedience to the other sex. Submission and
obedience belong to every being in the universe, except the great
Master of the whole. Nor is it a degrading peculiarity to our sex to
be under human authority. Whenever one class of human beings derive
from another the benefit of support and protection, they must pay its
equivalent—obedience. Thus, while we receive these benefits from our
parents, we are all, without distinction of sex, under their authority;
when we receive them from the government of our country, we must obey our
rulers; and when our sex take the obligations of marriage, and receive
protection and support from the other, it is reasonable that we too
should yield obedience. Yet is neither the child, nor the subject, nor
the wife under human authority, but in subservience to the divine. Our
highest responsibility is to God, and our highest interest is to please
Him; therefore, to secure this interest should our education be directed.
Neither would I be understood to mean that our sex should not seek to
make themselves agreeable to the other. The error complained of is
that the taste of men, whatever it might happen to be, has been made
a standard for the formation of the female character. In whatever we
do, it is of the utmost importance that the rule by which we work be
perfect. For if otherwise, what is it but to err upon principle? A system
of education which leads one class of human beings to consider the
approbation of another as their highest object, teaches that the rule of
their conduct should be the will of beings, imperfect and erring like
themselves, rather than the will of God, which is the only standard of
perfection.
Having now considered female education both in theory and practice, and
seen that in its present state it is, in fact, a thing “without form,
and void,” the mind is naturally led to inquire after a remedy for the
evils it has been contemplating. Can individuals furnish this remedy?
It has heretofore been left to them, and we have seen the consequence.
If education is a business which might naturally prosper if left to
individual exertion, why have legislatures intermeddled with it at all?
If it is not, why do they make their daughters illegitimates, and bestow
all their care upon their sons?
It is the duty of a government to do all in its power to promote the
present and future prosperity of the nation over which it is placed. This
prosperity will depend on the character of its citizens. The characters
of these will be formed by their mothers; and it is through the mothers
that the government can control the characters of its future citizens,
to form them such as will insure their country’s prosperity. If this is
the case, then it is the duty of our present legislatures to begin now
to form the characters of the next generation by controlling that of the
females who are to be the mothers, while it is yet with them a season of
improvement.
But should the conclusion be almost admitted that our sex too are
the legitimate children of the Legislature, and that it is their
duty to afford us a share of their paternal bounty, the phantom of a
college-learned lady would be ready to rise up and destroy every good
resolution which the admission of this truth would naturally produce in
our favor.
To show that it is not a masculine education that is here recommended,
and to afford a definite view of the manner in which, a female
institution might possess the respectability, permanency, and uniformity
of operation of those appropriated to males, and yet differ from them so
as to be adapted to that difference of character and duties to which the
softer sex should be formed, is the object of the following imperfect
SKETCH OF A FEMALE SEMINARY.
From considering the deficiencies in boarding-schools, much may be
learned with regard to what would be needed for the prosperity and
usefulness of a public seminary for females.
I. There would be needed a building, with commodious rooms for lodging
and recitation; apartments for the reception of apparatus, and for the
accommodation of the domestic department.
II. A library, containing books on the various subjects in which the
pupils were to receive instruction; musical instruments; some good
paintings, to form the taste and serve as models for the execution of
those who were to be instructed in that art; maps, globes, and a small
collection of philosophical apparatus.
III. A judicious board of trust, competent and desirous to promote its
interests, would, in a female as in a male literary institution, be the
corner-stone of its prosperity. On this board it would depend to provide:
IV. Suitable instruction. This article may be subdivided under four heads:
1. Religious and Moral.
2. Literary.
3. Domestic.
4. Ornamental.
1. Religious and Moral.—A regular attention to religious duties would
of course be required of the pupils by the laws of the institution. The
trustees would be careful to appoint no instructors who would not teach
religion and morality, both by their example and by leading the minds
of the pupils to perceive that these constitute the true end of all
education. It would be desirable that the young ladies should spend part
of their Sabbaths in hearing discourses relative to the peculiar duties
of their sex. The evidences of Christianity and moral philosophy would
constitute a part of their studies.
2. Literary Instruction.—To make an exact enumeration of the branches of
literature which might be taught would be impossible unless the time of
the pupils’ continuance at the seminary and the requisites for entrance
were previously fixed. Such an enumeration would be tedious, nor do I
conceive that it would be at all promotive of my object. The difficulty
complained of is, not that we are at a loss what sciences we ought to
learn, but that we have not proper advantages to learn any. Many writers
have given us excellent advice in regard to what we should be taught, but
no legislature has provided us the means of instruction. Not, however, to
pass lightly over this fundamental part of education, I will mention one
or two of the less obvious branches of science which, I conceive, should
engage the youthful attention of my sex.
It is highly important that females should be conversant with those
studies which will lead them to understand the operations of the human
mind. The chief use to which the philosophy of the mind can be applied
is to regulate education by its rules. The ductile mind of the child is
intrusted to the mother; and she ought to have every possible assistance
in acquiring a knowledge of this noble material on which it is her
business to operate that she may best understand how to mould it to its
most excellent form.
Natural philosophy has not often been taught to our sex. Yet why should
we be kept in ignorance of the great machinery of Nature, and left to
the vulgar notion that nothing is curious but what deviates from her
common course? If mothers were acquainted with this science, they would
communicate very many of its principles to their children in early
youth. From the bursting of an egg buried in the fire I have heard an
intelligent mother lead her prattling inquirer to understand the cause
of the earthquake. But how often does the mother, from ignorance on this
subject, give her child the most erroneous and contracted views of the
causes of natural phenomena—views which, though he may afterwards learn
to be false, are yet from the laws of association, ever ready to return
unless the active powers of the mind are continually upon the alert
to keep them out. A knowledge of natural philosophy is calculated to
heighten the moral taste, by bringing to view the majesty and beauty of
order and design, and to enliven piety, by enabling the mind more clearly
to perceive, throughout the manifold works of God, that wisdom in which
He hath made them all.
In some of the sciences proper for our sex the books written for the
other would need alteration, because in some they presuppose more
knowledge than female pupils would possess; in others they have parts
not particularly interesting to our sex, and omit subjects immediately
relating to their pursuits. There would likewise be needed for a female
seminary some works which I believe are nowhere extant, such as a
systematic treatise on housewifery.
3. Domestic instruction should be considered important in a female
seminary. It is the duty of our sex to regulate the internal concerns of
every family, and unless they be properly qualified to discharge this
duty, whatever may be their literary or ornamental attainments, they
cannot be expected to make either good wives, good mothers, or good
mistresses of families; and if they are none of these, they must be bad
members of society; for it is by promoting or destroying the comfort
and prosperity of their own families that females serve or injure the
community. To superintend the domestic department there should be a
respectable lady, experienced in the best methods of housewifery, and
acquainted with propriety of dress and manners. Under her tuition the
pupils ought to be placed for a certain length of time every morning.
A spirit of neatness and order should here be treated as a virtue,
and the contrary, if excessive and incorrigible, be punished with
expulsion. There might be a gradation of employment in the domestic
department, according to the length of time the pupils had remained at
the institution. The older scholars might then assist the superintendent
in instructing the younger, and the whole be so arranged that each pupil
might have advantages to become a good domestic manager by the time she
has completed her studies.
This plan would afford a healthy exercise. It would prevent that
estrangement from domestic duties which would be likely to take place
in a length of time devoted to study with those to whom they were
previously familiar, and would accustom those to them who from ignorance
might otherwise put at hazard their own happiness and the prosperity of
their families.
These objects might doubtless be effected by a scheme of domestic
instruction, and probably others of no inconsiderable importance. It is
believed that housewifery might be greatly improved by being taught not
only in practice but in theory. Why may it not be reduced to a system,
as well as other arts? There are right ways of performing its various
operations, and there are reasons why those ways are right. And why may
not rules be formed, their reasons collected, and the whole be digested
into a system, to guide the learner’s practice?
It is obvious that theory alone can never make a good artist; and it
is equally obvious that practice, unaided by theory, can never correct
errors, but must establish them. If I should perform anything in a wrong
manner all my life, and teach my children to perform it in the same
manner still, through my life and theirs, it would be wrong. Without
alteration there can be no improvement; but how are we to alter so as to
improve, if we are ignorant of the principles of our art, with which we
should compare our practice and by which we should regulate it?
In the present state of things it is not to be expected that any
material improvements in housewifery should be made. There being no
uniformity of method prevailing among different housewives, of course
the communications from one to another are not much more likely to
improve the art than a communication between two mechanics of different
trades would be to improve each in his respective occupation. But should
a system of principles be philosophically arranged and taught, both
in theory and by practice, to a large number of females whose minds
were expanded and strengthened by a course of literary instruction,
those among them of an investigating turn would, when they commenced
house-keeping consider their domestic operations as a series of
experiments which either proved or refuted the system previously taught.
They would then converse together like those who practise a common art,
and improve each other by their observations and experiments; and they
would also be capable of improving the system by detecting its errors,
and by making additions of new principles and better modes of practice.
4. The ornamental branches which I should recommend for a female seminary
are drawing and painting, elegant penmanship, music, and the grace of
motion. Needle-work is not here mentioned. The best style of useful
needle-work should either be taught in the domestic department or made
a qualification for entrance; and I consider that useful which may
contribute to the decoration of a lady’s person, or the convenience or
neatness of her family. But the use of the needle for other purposes than
these, as it affords little to assist in the formation of the character,
I should regard as a waste of time.
The grace of motion must be learned chiefly from instruction in dancing.
Other advantages besides that of a graceful carriage might be derived
from such instruction if the lessons were judiciously timed. Exercise is
needful to the health, and recreation to the cheerfulness and contentment
of youth. Female youth could not be allowed to range unrestrained, to
seek amusement for themselves. If it was entirely prohibited, they
would be driven to seek it by stealth, which would lead them to many
improprieties of conduct, and would have a pernicious effect upon their
general character, by inducing a habit of treading forbidden paths.
The alternative that remains is to provide them with proper recreation,
which, after the confinement of the day, they might enjoy under the eye
of their instructors. Dancing is exactly suited to this purpose, as also
to that of exercise, for perhaps in no way can so much healthy exercise
be taken in so short a time. It has, besides, this advantage over other
amusements: that it affords nothing to excite the bad passions; but,
on the contrary, its effects are to soften the mind, to banish its
animosities, and to open it to social impressions.
It may be said that dancing would dissipate the attention and estrange it
from study. Balls would doubtless have this effect; but let dancing be
practised every day by youth of the same sex, without change of place,
dress, or company, and under the eye of those whom they are accustomed
to obey, and it would excite no more emotion than any other exercise
or amusement, but in degree, as it is of itself more pleasant. But it
must ever be a grateful exercise to youth, as it is one to which Nature
herself prompts them at the sound of animating music.
It has been doubted whether painting and music should be taught to young
ladies, because much time is requisite to bring them to any considerable
degree of perfection, and they are not immediately useful. Though these
objections have weight, yet they are founded on too limited a view of
the objects of education. They leave out the important consideration
of forming the character. I should not consider it an essential point
that the music of a lady’s piano should rival that of her master’s, or
that her drawing-room should be decorated with her own paintings rather
than those of others; but it is the intrinsic advantage which she might
derive from the refinement of herself that would induce me to recommend
to her an attention to these elegant pursuits. The harmony of sound has a
tendency to produce a correspondent harmony of soul; and that art which
obliges us to study Nature in order to imitate her often enkindles the
latent spark of taste—of sensibility for her beauties, till it glows to
adoration for their Author, and a refined love of all His works.
V. There would be needed for a female as well as for a male seminary a
system of laws and regulations, so arranged that both the instructors
and pupils would know their duty; and thus the whole business move with
regularity and uniformity.
The laws of the institution would be chiefly directed to regulate
the pupils’ qualifications for entrance; the kind and order of their
studies; their behavior while at the institution; the term allotted for
the completion of their studies; the punishments to be inflicted on
offenders; and the rewards or honors to be bestowed on the virtuous and
diligent.
The direct rewards or honors used to stimulate the ambition of students
in colleges are, first, the certificate or diploma, which each receives
who passes successfully through the term allotted to his collegiate
studies; and, secondly, the appointments to perform certain parts in
public exhibitions, which are bestowed by the faculty, as rewards for
superior scholarship. The first of these modes is admissible into a
female seminary; the second is not, as public speaking forms no part of
female education. The want of this mode might, however, be supplied by
examinations judiciously conducted. The leisure and inclination of both
instructors and scholars would combine to produce a thorough preparation
for these; for neither would have any other public test of the success of
their labors. Persons of both sexes would attend. The less entertaining
parts might be enlivened by interludes, where the pupils in painting
and music would display their several improvements. Such examinations
would stimulate the instructors to give their scholars more attention,
by which the leading facts and principles of their studies would be more
clearly understood and better remembered. The ambition excited among the
pupils would operate without placing the instructors under the necessity
of making distinctions among them, which are so apt to be considered as
invidious, and which are in our male seminaries such fruitful sources of
disaffection.
Perhaps the term allotted for the routine of study at the seminary
might be three years. The pupils probably would not be fitted to enter
till about the age of fourteen. Whether they attended to all or any of
the ornamental branches, should be left optional with the parents or
guardians. Those who were to be instructed in them should be entered
for a longer term, but if this was a subject of previous calculation
no confusion would arise from it. The routine of the exercises, being
established by the laws of the institution, would be uniform, and
publicly known; and those who were previously acquainted with the
branches first taught might enter the higher classes; nor would those
who entered the lowest be obliged to remain during the three years. Thus
the term of remaining at the institution might be either one, two, three,
four, or more years, and that without interfering with the regularity and
uniformity of its proceedings.
* * * * *
The writer has now given a sketch of her plan. She has by no means
expressed all the ideas which occurred to her concerning it. She wished
to be as concise as possible, and yet afford conviction that it is
practicable to organize a system of female education which shall possess
the permanency, uniformity of operation, and respectability of our male
institutions, and yet differ from them so as to be adapted to that
difference of character and duties to which early instruction should form
the softer sex.
It now remains to inquire more particularly what would be the benefits
resulting from such a system.
BENEFITS OF FEMALE SEMINARIES.
In inquiring concerning the benefits of the plan proposed, I shall
proceed upon the supposition that female seminaries will be patronized
throughout our country.
Nor is it altogether a visionary supposition. If one seminary should
be well organized its advantages would be found so great that others
would soon be instituted, and that sufficient patronage can be found
to put one in operation may be presumed from its reasonableness, and
from the public opinion with regard to the present mode of female
education. It is from an intimate acquaintance with those parts of our
country where education is said to flourish most that the writer has
drawn her picture of the present state of female instruction, and she
knows that she is not alone in perceiving or deploring its faults. Her
sentiments are shared by many an enlightened parent of a daughter who
has received a boarding-school education. Counting on the promise of her
childhood, the father had anticipated her maturity as combining what is
excellent in mind with what is elegant in manners. He spared no expense
that education might realize to him the image of his imagination. His
daughter returned from her boarding-school improved in fashionable airs
and expert in manufacturing fashionable toys; but in her conversation he
sought in vain for that refined and fertile mind which he had fondly
expected. Aware that his disappointment has its source in a defective
education, he looks with anxiety on his other daughters, whose minds,
like lovely buds, are beginning to open. Where shall he find a genial
soil in which he may place them to expand? Shall he provide them male
instructors? Then the graces of their persons and manners, and whatever
forms the distinguishing charm of the feminine character, they cannot
be expected to acquire. Shall he give them a private tutoress? She will
have been educated at the boarding-school, and his daughters will have
the faults of its instruction second-handed. Such is now the dilemma of
many parents, and it is one from which they cannot be extricated by their
individual exertions. May not, then, the only plan which promises to
relieve them expect their vigorous support?
Let us now proceed to inquire what benefits would result from the
establishment of female seminaries.
They would constitute a grade of public education superior to any yet
known in the history of our sex, and through them the lower grades
of female instruction might be controlled. The influence of public
seminaries over these would operate in two ways: first, by requiring
certain qualifications for entrance; and, secondly, by furnishing
instructresses initiated in their modes of teaching and imbued with their
maxims.
Female seminaries might be expected to have important and happy effects
on common schools in general, and in the manner of operating on these
would probably place the business of teaching children in hands now
nearly useless to society, and take it from those whose services the
State wants in many other ways.
That Nature designed for our sex the care of children, she has made
manifest by mental as well as physical indications. She has given us
in a greater degree than men the gentle arts of insinuation, to soften
their minds and fit them to receive impressions; a greater quickness of
invention to vary modes of teaching to different dispositions; and more
patience to make repeated efforts. There are many females of ability to
whom the business of instructing children is highly acceptable, and who
would devote all their faculties to their occupation. They would have no
higher pecuniary object to engage their attention, and their reputation
as instructors they would consider as important; whereas, whenever able
and enterprising men engage in this business, they consider it merely as
a temporary employment, to further some other object, to the attainment
of which their best thoughts and calculations are all directed. If, then,
women were properly fitted by instruction, they would be likely to teach
children better than the other sex; they could afford to do it cheaper;
and those men who would otherwise be engaged in this employment might be
at liberty to add to the wealth of the nation by any of those thousand
occupations from which women are necessarily debarred.
But the females who taught children would have been themselves instructed
either immediately or indirectly by the seminaries. Hence, through these
the government might exercise an intimate and most beneficial control
over common schools. Any one who has turned his attention to the subject
must be aware that there is great room for improvement in these, both as
to the modes of teaching and the things taught; and what method could be
devised so likely to effect this improvement as to prepare by instruction
a class of individuals whose interest, leisure, and natural talents would
combine to make them pursue it with ardor? Such a class of individuals
would be raised up by female seminaries. And, therefore, they would be
likely to have highly important and happy effects on common schools.
It is believed that such institutions would tend to prolong or perpetuate
our excellent government.