neighborhood, beg leave to present our respectful petition:
That in view of the present state of public opinion, both here
and in other countries, touching the justice and expediency of
admitting women to the same educational advantages as men, a
state of opinion especially evidenced by the recent action of
the English universities of Cambridge and London, and in view
of the influential position of Columbia College as among the
oldest and most richly endowed educational institutions in the
United States, and pre-eminently representing the intellectual
interests of the city of New York, you will be pleased to
consider how best to extend, with as little delay as possible,
to such properly qualified women as may desire it, the many and
great benefits of education in Columbia College, by admitting
them to lectures and examinations.”
To many sober and conscientious persons, both men and women, this demand
sounds absurd, needless, improper, and dangerous. But do these objectors
remember that every appeal for a better female education seemed, in
its day, equally preposterous? It is hardly three centuries since
Mademoiselle Françoise de Saintonge was hooted through the streets of her
native village for proposing so disreputable a plan as the establishment
of schools for girls in France, and her anxious father called in four
learned doctors to determine whether this mad idea was not due to her
possession by devils. The doctors pronounced her in her right mind,
but her pious fellow-citizens stopped the spread of immoral ideas by
the conclusive argument of insults levelled at the teacher and stones
addressed to the pupils. The progress of the next century and a half is
recorded in Dean Swift’s observation that men constantly asked each other
whether it was prudent to choose a wife who had good natural parts,
some sense of wit and humor, a little knowledge of history, the capacity
to relish travels or moral and entertaining discourse, and to discern
the more obvious beauties of poetry. The general verdict, he says, was
against such attainments in women, because their tendency was to make
wives pretentious and conceited, and not duly subject to their husbands.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, translating Epictetus at nineteen, and sending
her work to her kind friend, the Lord Bishop of Salisbury, apologizes at
length for attempting a task universally pronounced unfit for a woman,
and certain to draw down censure upon her (excusing herself, however,
by citing the opinions of Erasmus, in the Latin!). Nearly fifty years
afterwards, in advising her daughter concerning the education of a
bright little namesake, she entreats that free scope may be accorded
the child’s capacity, for the sake of the pure delight of learning and
of her future happiness. But she adds the warning that, to insure a
satisfactory marriage, the young girl’s wit and acquirements must be
as carefully concealed as a deformity from a world which suspected or
despised a learned woman. So strong, almost to our day, has been this
half-conscious contempt of the feminine mentality, that even Charles
Lamb, that gentle and charitable soul, could speak of “L.E.L.” with an
unmanly sneer, and declare that a female poet, or female author of any
kind, invited disrespect.
It is but ninety years since an Englishwoman, the famous Mary
Wollstonecroft, published the first serious demand for the higher
education of Englishwomen. Her public found the book immodest,
irreligious, anarchic. Issued to-day, it would appear a harmless plea,
a trifle heavy and conservative, perhaps, for the thorough cultivation
of the female mind, urged on social, moral, and religious grounds, and
protesting against the sentimentalism of Rousseau and the now forgotten
Dr. Gregory. Mrs. Hannah More’s dull novel of “Cœlebs in Search of a
Wife,” issued in 1808, contained, perhaps, the first argument in fiction
that a ninny is not necessarily the ideal wife, or a knowledge of the
Latin grammar incompatible with a turn for house-keeping.
It was no scoffer, but the sweet-spirited Fénelon, who taught that
contact with learning would be almost as fatal to womanly delicacy as
contact with vice. To Voltaire’s love of epigram might be pardoned his
saying that “Ideas are like beards; women and young men have none.”
But Lessing was serious when he declared that “The woman who thinks
is like the man who puts on rouge, ridiculous.” And even Niebuhr, the
large-minded, believed that he should not have educated a girl well, for
he should have made her know too much.
It was the first care of the Pilgrim Fathers to establish schools. Girls
were allowed to attend these, two hours a day. But afterwards the system
was remodelled in a spirit of wide liberality, and girls were suffered
all day—in the summer. When women teachers came to be employed, they
were required to “teach the English language correctly and the rudiments
of arithmetic.” In 1826, after a discussion of three years, the city
fathers of Boston resolved to establish a high-school for girls on the
model of its admirable high-school for boys. But such an army of young
women battered the gates of that educational heaven with storms of
prayers that, after a trial of eighteen mouths, the dismayed corporation
decided—to enlarge the building and multiply teachers? No, but to close
the school altogether.
We smile at Monsieur de Saintonge and the sages of Boston. The two
hundred and fifty advertisements refute the ancient prejudices. The
innumerable names of women who have conquered success in literature,
science, art; as great organizers, administrators, educators, refute
them. The very discussion of the hour puts them to silence, for it
declares that the question is no longer whether women are worth
educating, but what education is worth most to them. The point of view is
changed because the social conditions are changed.
If the cultivated judgment of ages held the female understanding to
be inferior, doubtless it was inferior. Without incentives, means, or
opportunities for growth, the mind of woman did not grow. And these helps
were denied her, not by any mean desire of man to defraud her, not by any
divine limitation of her needs, but because her time had not come. Just
as war and slavery have been inevitable conditions and natural agents of
human progress, so has the subjection of woman. In a rude society man
was her necessary protector, she his helpless dependent. Some sort of
marriage utilized the capacity, such as it was, of every woman, because
every man needed a household of cheap servitors. If he fought to protect
his property in wives and concubines, they cancelled the debt by labor.
Ignorance was their normal and necessary estate. So long as the exercise
of brute force remained the chief satisfaction of man, so long was woman
insignificant. As advancing civilization has required them, the feminine
qualities have answered, with growing adequacy, to the requirement. But
of necessity the traditions of the time of man’s legitimate supremacy
lived on, and still survive in the general if vague notion that something
external, mechanical, eleemosynary, must be done continually _for_
woman; whereas the modern spirit, which has been so long struggling into
recognition, maintains that little of permanent value can be done for
woman which is not done _by_ woman. Growth is from within.
In his attitude of guardian, man—as, in the progress of time, he has felt
the need of a companion and ally rather than of a servant and toy—has
gradually released to woman the freedom of certain tracts of knowledge,
finding his own account in this concession. And if he has not hitherto
been ready to endow her with the whole fair domain, neither has she been
free to occupy it. Ever since the Old Testament matrons ground the corn
between stones, and sewed the skins their husbands brought home, and
baked, and brewed, and made wine, and taught their slaves, and tended
their sick, and reared their children, and adorned themselves to find
favor in the sight of their lords, have generations of women found their
first untroubled rest in the grave. But now machinery does half their
work at half the cost, while organization still further relieves them
from drudgery. Moreover, the great increase of wealth following on the
arts of peace, fosters a growing class of unemployed and luxurious women,
free to use the means of the higher education which their higher needs
demand.
How, then, shall we make the most of that great indeterminate factor
of the new civilization—the feminine intelligence? It would seem
self-evident that those studies which have taken their place in the
higher education of man, because philosophy and experience found in them
the surest and readiest means of symmetrical mental development, must be
equally valuable to woman. If the languages, mathematics, modern science,
logic, metaphysics, psychology, best train the faculties of observation,
comparison, reflection; if they give flexibility and strength to the
mind, and mould it to be always progressive, always acquiring more
knowledge by thoughtful experience—ought not their salutary discipline,
as administered in college, to be extended to girls?
It is answered, first, that girls, being different, do not need the same
training as boys; second, that they already have it; third, that they
could not endure it. But whether likeness or difference predominates
can never be known until like training develop the one or emphasize the
other. “As long as boys and girls run about in the dirt and trundle hoops
together,” wrote Sydney Smith, “they are precisely alike. If you catch up
one-half of these creatures and train them to a particular set of actions
and opinions, and the other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course
their understandings will differ, as one or the other sort of occupations
has called this or that talent into action. There is surely no occasion
to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning to explain so very
simple a phenomenon.” Teachers of mixed classes agree that what profits
the one profits the other. Seneca advocated the study of the Greek
philosophy for women, who, he said, needed it as a restraint upon their
more impulsive temperament; and Plutarch urged upon his countrywomen
the study of the Greek language and literature for a like reason. No
less forcible is Doctor Johnson’s plea for this culture—that whatever
withdraws us from the power of the senses, whatever makes the past, the
distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the
dignity of human beings.
The education of women is notoriously defective in the cultivation
of definite ideas and the training of the judgment. Familiarity with
scientific methods of study would dissipate their general and perilous
confidence in “luck,” and in that impossible condition known as “about
right.” Of directly practical value, also, would they find the capacity
to deduce a conclusion from its premises, to estimate the worth of
evidence, and understand the nature of proof. In every household affairs
come daily to judgment requiring more or less scientific knowledge and a
scientific habit of thought. An exact mental training would mitigate the
evils and enlarge the best possibilities of woman’s existence.
This training both private schools and high-schools must fall short of.
Girls’ high-schools afford four years of what is projected as an eight
years’ term, and girls are expected to be satisfied with what is merely
a preparatory course for their brothers. Private schools necessarily
reflect the indefinite and various demands of their patrons. Undue stress
must be laid upon accomplishments, undue cramming must be encouraged,
the period of study being far too short; the methods of teaching must
be empirical rather than scientific, and the end aimed at temporary
and unreal, having no relation to life beyond the examination and the
class-room. Our best private schools are indeed admirable, but there is
no recognized standard of worth, and the bad are as ten to one. Besides,
in apparatus, cabinets, libraries, and professorships, the richest among
them is poor, compared with the richer colleges. There is but so much
first-rate teaching capacity existent at any one time, and the larger
salaries, honors, and pleasant conditions of the colleges inevitably
absorb the most of it. Agassiz thought that a young student would gain
more from coming into contact for a single month with a man of really
profound knowledge on any subject than he could from many months spent
under the tutelage of one who himself knows but very little more than
he attempts to teach. But the majority of teachers fall into this latter
classification. Even the women’s colleges, proposing the same curriculum
as the men’s, deserving the most sincere respect for their aims and
their successes, must long be hampered by the difficulty of securing the
ablest teaching talent and appliances. The best high-class boys’ schools
are conceded to be those which send the best equipped candidates to the
universities. Were pupils from the girls’ schools admitted to the same
examinations, there is no doubt that their standards and their methods of
teaching would immediately advance.
If, however, the health of our girls is threatened by hard study, further
opportunities of self-immolation must, of course, be denied them. The
average health of boarding-schools is indeed low. From the graded and
normal schools girls are withdrawn more frequently than boys by reason of
physical inability. But the monstrousness of the prevailing curriculum,
the high pressure, bad dressing, bad diet, external distractions, and
the almost total want of healthful exercise among girls, explain this
difference. The experience of twelve years at Ann Arbor, of eight at
Cornell, of nine at Boston University, of much longer terms at the Ohio
colleges, and of the entire existence of Vassar and Smith, testifies to
a constant improvement in the health of their girls, and a wholesome and
preservative power in severe study, provided the conditions are right.
If it be true that the higher the civilization, the more nearly is
companionship of the sexes reached, it seems a paradox that they should
be united everywhere except in study, the most refining and least
self-conscious of employments. Yet there is a general feeling that some
vague danger, to manners if not to morals, lurks in the demand for the
admission of girls to the precincts of the college. When the trustees
of Cornell were debating the wisdom of accepting the munificent Sage
endowment, with its conditions, their committee gathered the opinions of
nearly all the educators of note in the country as to the feasibility
and propriety of opening the classes to women. The speculations of
the officers of the older colleges (inheriting their traditions from
semi-monastic institutions, founded and administered by men vowed to
celibacy, and dreading the influence of women,) almost uniformly
discouraged and disapproved such a step. The testimony of the colleges
already open to both sexes, of academies and high-schools, in the hands
of men touching life at more points, with equal uniformity encouraged
it. In theory it was averred that the girls would become mannish, or
the boys effeminate; that the standard of scholarship would be lowered
in concession to feminine limitations; and that sentimentalism would be
developed, with a consequent deterioration of morals. In practice it was
proved that while the boys acquired finer manners, the girls advanced in
truthfulness, sincerity, and courage; that the standard of scholarship
was raised, and that the predicted period of sentimentalism, though
everywhere overdue, had persistently failed to appear. Cornell took
the forward step, and President White adds the great weight of his own
approval to the side of the innovators.
By some subtle process of reasoning, quite inscrutable to the ordinary
mind, it is maintained, however, that though co-education may do for the
bucolical regions of Michigan and Cornell universities, the metropolis,
as represented by Columbia College, cannot with propriety extend her
lectures and examinations to girls. But what, then, shall be thought of
Cambridge? For, after all, the experience of the great English university
offers the best precedent, since the demand upon her was almost identical
with that made to-day upon Columbia. It is, perhaps, twenty-five years
since the English advocates of the higher education of women began
to feel that their educational advantages could never equal those of
men, until not only the subjects taught should be the same, but the
teachers of equal and equally acknowledged ability. In ten years this
feeling organized itself into the opening to them of the Cambridge local
examinations, which are simply for standing. A little later the famous
Girton College was founded, its object being “to hold in relation to
girls’ schools and to home teaching a position analogous to that occupied
by the universities toward the public schools for boys,” and “to obtain
for the students of the college admission to the examinations for degrees
of the University of Cambridge, and generally to place the college in
connection with that University.” It was understood that the immediate
instruction should be given daily by the professors, lecturers, and
fellows of the University and its colleges.
The new college went into operation with six students, in a hired
building, in October, 1869. It now possesses a building of its own, and
even in its first decade recorded the admission of eighty-six candidates,
of whom nineteen were graduated with honors, according to the university
standard, and eleven passed the examinations which qualify for the degree
of Bachelor of Arts. These examinations, however, presented only an honor
standard, and it was not until February, 1881, that the liberal action
of the Senate placed women students of Cambridge, for all practical
purposes, upon an equal footing with men. In 1875 Newnham Hall was
erected for the accommodation of women students coming to Cambridge to
avail themselves of the new opportunities. Newnham Hostel was presently
added, and the two, constituting Newnham College, to-day overflow with
students.
Following on the Cambridge success came the opening, at Oxford, of
Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville College, the free admission of women
to the examinations of the University of London, and the granting
of liberal opportunities on the part of Edinburgh, Dublin, Glasgow,
Aberdeen, Durham, and St. Andrews. The University of London is a young
institution, unhampered by the prejudices and restrictions of its
elders. “Hence it has been able to take a more decisive step than any
other university in the direction of improvement in women’s education.
For several years it tried the experiment of a special examination for
women, with a curriculum framed in supposed deference to special feminine
needs. But though many women availed themselves of this examination,
it soon became evident that the successes they won were all on the
old lines—in classics, science, mathematics, literature; in fact, the
subjects which belong to an ordinary course of liberal education, and
not in any of the special studies which were presumed to be appropriate
for them as women. Moreover, it was manifest that a distinctly feminine
examination was not what women wanted; for the public believed that it
was inferior, or specially lenient, whereas female students desired to
have their knowledge and intellectual cultivation tested by the ordinary
and recognized standards, and asked for no special tenderness or favor.
Accordingly, after much discussion, it was determined, in 1877, to
obtain from the crown a new charter, _admitting women on exactly the
same footing as men to all the degrees in all the faculties_—arts,
laws, medicine, science, music—and permitting them to receive the same
honors and degrees. An increasing number of women has each year come up
for matriculation and graduation, and some of the successes they have
attained have been remarkable. The gold medal in anatomy—one of the chief
and most coveted prizes in the medical profession—was won last year by
a woman. Another came out first in mental and moral philosophy, and the
proportion of women who pass _well_ in the examinations is much greater
than that of the men. This, however, is easily accounted for by the fact
that at present the numbers are much smaller, and are necessarily made
up of students of exceptional ability and enterprise; whereas the crowds
of men, of course, include a large number of the rank and file of those
who are treading the usual path towards professional life, and who have
no special aptitude or enthusiasm for study.” This is the testimony of J.
G. Fitch, Esquire, inspector of schools, member of the senate of London
University, and one of the most distinguished educators of England.
Professor Jackson, of Trinity College, Cambridge, writes:
“Having taken classes of ladies through the Ethics and part of
the Metaphysics of Aristotle, and the ‘Republic,’ the ‘Phaedo,’
and the ‘Philetus’ of Plato, I can speak in the very highest
terms of their industry and capacity. I put their attention to
a severe test, as I sometimes lectured for an hour and a half,
and even for an hour and three-quarters without interruption.
As a proof of their capacity, I may mention that at the end of
the Academic year, 1877-78, I examined some of my lady pupils
in the Aristotle papers, which I was giving to the Trinity
men who graduated in 1879, and the Plato papers which I was
giving to the Trinity men who graduated in 1880, and that one
of the ladies was third in Aristotle and first in Plato. In the
following year another lady was second in my Aristotle paper.
In both cases these ladies had among their competitors some of
the very best men of the time.”
J. P. Postgate, Esquire, M.A., Fellow of Trinity, and Professor of
University College, London, writes:
“The performances of women in examinations at Cambridge and
elsewhere I look upon as wholly encouraging. The standard by
which I should test them is an absolute one, and judged by
that they show work which is intrinsically good and worth
doing. I have been surprised at the numbers of first-class and
other distinctions that they have gained. Both at Cambridge
and at University College the women not unfrequently beat
the men in the lists. Last year two-thirds of those examined
in Comparative Philology were women; and a woman was easily
first in the paper, beating another very good candidate, a
man who has since taken a scholarship at Oxford, I believe.
She did extremely well in the paper, and has been working at
the subject since, and showing a very remarkable linguistic
aptitude not merely in ancient, but in modern languages. The
third candidate was a young lady who has since brought out a
Hebrew grammar, which I believe is very well done. She also
distinguished herself in Greek and Latin.”
From the other colleges come equally favorable reports of feminine
application, persistency, and accomplishment. Here, then, are some
hundreds of women doing the same tasks as men, submitting to the same
tests as men, showing at least as good work as men, without injury to
their health. For no complaint of physical inability comes from any
source; while at Girton the pleasant apartment thoughtfully provided
as a hospital for the delicate women who were to break down under the
strain of constant brain-work has never been used except as a room for
examinations. Equally satisfactory is the testimony to the moral safety
of the new system, not the slightest suggestion of impropriety having
arisen.