“My neighborhood to Middlebury College made me bitterly feel the
disparity in educational facilities between the sexes.”
_From a letter of Mrs. Willard_
_Published by Middlebury College on the
100th anniversary of the issue
of the first edition_
MIDDLEBURY, VERMONT
1918
_The following pages reproduce without change a document which has been
called the Magna Carta of the higher education of women in America. It
was written during the two or three years preceding 1819 in Middlebury,
in a house just across the street from the campus of Middlebury
College. Some years earlier Mrs. Willard had conducted in Middlebury
a school for young women not essentially different from the boarding
schools she condemns so vigorously. It was in contact with the worthier
education offered to young men in the college that she developed her
conviction of the need of radical change in the education of women and
the principles she put in force in her second school in Middlebury,
which was later removed to Troy._
_The world war and its attendant changes in the position and
occupations of women is leading to a re-examination of the purposes and
methods of women’s education. This notable address of one of the great
pioneers in the higher education of women in America is re-published,
not merely as a bit of antiquarian zeal on the part of the college
which furnished stimulus and suggestion to its author, but also as a
statement of principles and ideals which ought not to be neglected in
the effort to adapt the higher education of women to the larger place
in the life of the world which they are henceforth to occupy._
AN
ADDRESS
TO THE PUBLIC;
PARTICULARLY
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE
LEGISLATURE
OF
NEW-YORK,
PROPOSING
A PLAN
FOR IMPROVING
FEMALE EDUCATION.