LIGHT IN DARK PLACES
The fifties had witnessed the rise of these earliest colleges, and given
hope to a little band of reformers whose efforts on behalf of light and
progress were the chief feature of the sixties. Never was a reform
happier in its advocates. Frances Buss, dreaming, while yet in her
teens, of giving to future generations of girls that public school life
which had been denied to her; Anne Clough, recording in her early diary
the longing to do her country some great service; Emily Davies, devoting
all her thought and energy to making that dream of a women’s college a
reality; Dorothea Beale, struggling against opposition and prejudice to
build up the wonderful organisation at Cheltenham—these were some of the
pioneers whose names have become as household words, whose portraits
hang in many a home even beyond the seas, the patron saints of our girl
students.
Side by side with these worked others, both men and women, who had come
to realise the deplorable condition of girls’ education. On the one
hand, complaints were heard of their incompetence in domestic matters.
‘They cannot keep house accounts,’ says one writer; ‘they neither can
make puddings nor direct servants in making them; they cannot make or
mend their clothes; in a sick-room they are either so nervous or so
senseless that their presence is worse than useless.’ On the other, we
hear of the terrible strain consequent on what was by curious irony
called over-education—girls sitting at their books or piano from morning
to night, loading their memories with undigested facts. Both evils
proceeded from the same cause. ‘Everything that is taught is taught
dogmatically, and consequently the powers of research, inquiry,
analysis, and reason either are altogether crushed out or rust from want
of use.’[11]
At this time public schools for girls were practically unknown. Teaching
was no profession for women—it was the acknowledged resource of the
middle-aged spinster left penniless by her father, or the widow whose
husband had made ducks and drakes of the money. It was the one thing
that anybody could do, since it required neither knowledge nor
experience. All that was necessary was to hire a house, with a little
saved or borrowed capital, and put up a brass plate on the door,
announcing the existence of a select establishment for young ladies.
Each schoolmistress did what seemed good in her own eyes or those of her
pupils’ parents, and though, when the principal was herself a cultivated
woman, she often inspired her pupils with a love of books that remained
with them in after years, these cases were the exceptions. The condition
of the great mass of cheap day-schools was deplorable.
An attempt to penetrate beyond these brass-plated doors was made by
Madame Bodichon, who as Barbara Leigh Smith had attended some of the
earliest classes at Bedford College. The results of her inquiry were
given to the Social Science Congress at Glasgow in 1860. She strongly
denounced the little cheap private day-schools, academies, and such
like, ‘often conducted by broken-down trades-people, who failing in
gaining a livelihood in a good trade, take in despair to what is justly
considered, in consequence of the competition of the schools assisted by
government, as a very bad business.’ Happily, times have changed, and we
can afford to smile at the picture of these ‘genteel’ establishments,
with their ‘insufficient room and ventilation,’ where the young ladies
were taught about the ‘four elements, earth, air, fire, and water,’ and,
shutting their eyes and their windows, studied the wonders of nature in
little cheap catechisms.
Some test for distinguishing good schools from bad ones seemed desirable
in the best interests of teachers and pupils. In 1857 and 1858 Oxford
and Cambridge had instituted local examinations for young persons not
members of the Universities. These had proved useful in raising the
standard of middle-class education, giving an aim and a stimulus to
small schools. Why not do the same for girls? It was decided to make the
attempt. In October 1862 a small committee was formed in London, with
Miss Emily Davies as secretary. Permission was asked and given to
conduct an informal examination for girls with the same papers as were
set to the boys. The examiners looked over the answers and reported on
them. The results were somewhat startling. Out of forty senior
candidates thirty-four failed in preliminary arithmetic. The juniors did
a little better. The average work in English was pronounced fair, and in
grammar very good. French did not compare unfavourably with the boys. In
German only twelve candidates presented themselves; all passed—three
with distinction. Not such a bad record after all, but of course it was
only the progressive schools that were represented. These learned that
they must look to their arithmetic, and they did so with excellent
results. Both the successes and the failures showed the value of the
experiment, and it was resolved to repeat it. A memorial was sent to the
Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, signed by more than a thousand persons
engaged in teaching or interested in education. The result was the
formal admission of girls to these examinations. In 1865 they were held
at six places: Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Manchester, London, and
Sheffield. A hundred and twenty-six candidates entered; ninety passed. A
great advance had been made in two years. Arithmetic was no longer a
stumbling-block. Out of the whole number of candidates only three failed
in it. English history came in for a share of praise. ‘The examiners
thought the style of the girls’ replies better than that of the boys.’
‘The answers of the senior and junior girls were orderly and methodical,
and the writing and expression good. The papers of many gave proof of
care and ability on the part of both teacher and scholar,’ and more to
the same effect. In 1866 there were two hundred and two girls at ten
centres. This time the report was even more satisfactory.
These results were most valuable. They proved that there must be many
good schools in the country, and some teachers who could learn from the
success and failure of their pupils. No time could have been more
opportune for this experiment, for just then a Royal Commission was
making an inquiry into all the schools that had not been included in the
Popular Education Commission, or that which examined into the nine great
public schools. This really meant a general survey of boys’ secondary
education; and to boys it would have been confined, had it not been for
those same energetic women who had inaugurated the reform of girls’
education. Here was an opportunity not to be missed. Once more
signatures were collected for a memorial, this time to beg for the
inclusion of girls’ schools in the scope of the inquiry. This was
granted, and consent given to the admission of a few ladies to give
evidence. Some trepidation was felt at so novel a proceeding. Thirty
years later, when another such Commission was appointed, and women were
included among the Commissioners, their appointment caused less remark
than the invitation given in 1865 to a few ladies to give information on
a subject on which none were better qualified to speak. So quickly has
public opinion changed!
Nine ladies gave evidence before the Commission. The most valuable
testimony came from Miss Buss, at that time head of a large private
school, Miss Beale, Principal of Cheltenham College, and Miss Emily
Davies, who was taking so active a part in all reforms that concerned
girls. Eight Assistant Commissioners were requested to make special
inquiries as to the girls’ schools in selected districts. Their task
proved no easy one. The request to be allowed to inspect schools or
procure information about them by other means was met sometimes by
indignant refusal, at others by a silence as eloquent. However, in spite
of difficulties, it proved possible to obtain returns from a good number
and examine some more or less thoroughly. Since the assumption seems
fair that it was the superior schools which were most ready for
inspection, the reports must be read with the mental addition of an even
worse state of things behind that remained unrevealed. At any rate,
there was enough to make out a case for action.
The report which was issued in 1867 summarised the impression formed by
the Assistant Commissioners. ‘It cannot be denied that the picture
brought before us of the state of middle-class female education is, on
the whole, unfavourable. The general deficiency in girls’ education is
stated with the utmost confidence, and with entire agreement, with
whatever difference of words, by many witnesses of authority. Want of
thoroughness and foundation; want of system; slovenliness and showy
superficiality; inattention to rudiments; undue time given to
accomplishments, and those not taught intelligently or in any scientific
manner; want of organisation—these may sufficiently indicate the
character of the complaints we have received in their most general
aspect. It is needless to observe that the same complaints apply to a
great extent to boys’ education. But, on the whole, the evidence is
clear that, not as they might be but as they are, the girls’ schools are
inferior in this view to the boys’ schools.’ Mr. Norris, one of the
Assistant Commissioners, says: ‘We find, as a rule, a very small amount
of professional skill, an inferior set of school-books, a vast deal of
dry, uninteresting task-work, rules put into the memory with no
explanation of their principles, no system of examination worthy of the
name, a very false estimate of the relative value of the several kinds
of acquirement, a reference to effect rather than to solid worth, a
tendency to fill or adorn rather than strengthen the mind.’
There is unanimous testimony as to the undue amount of time given to
accomplishments, music in particular. There are some elaborate
calculations as to the total number of hours spent on acquiring a
mechanical skill on the piano, though about a third of the pupils never
make the slightest use of it after they have left school. The music
played is bad; there is little training for the taste and none for the
mind in this study to which girls devote almost as much time as their
brothers do to classics. Next to music modern languages absorbed most of
the time and energies of the pupils, and yet the Commissioners
unanimously report with severity on the results attained. Very few girls
could compose a French sentence correctly; slipshod grammar and bad
pronunciation are noted, and set down to the habit of speaking French
out of school hours, by which a sort of jargon was developed
incomprehensible to an outsider, and not even up to the standard of
Stratford-atte-Bowe. On the subject of Science Mr. Fitch wrote: ‘Few
things are sadder than to see how the sublimest of all physical sciences
is vulgarised in ladies’ schools. No subject, if properly taught, is
better calculated to exalt the imagination and to kindle large thoughts
in a pupils mind. Yet all the grandeur and vastness are eliminated from
the study of Astronomy as commonly pursued; and the pupils whose
attention has never been directed to any one of the great laws by which
the universe is governed, think they are learning astronomy when they
are twisting a globe round and round, and solving a few problems in
latitude and longitude.’
Arithmetic comes in for the worst censure. It is spoken of as ‘the weak
point in women teachers.’ ‘It would be an affectation of politeness,’
says Mr. Hammond, to say a word on behalf of the arithmetic taught by
ladies. It is always meagre and almost always unintelligent.’ The
school-books receive almost unqualified abuse, in particular _Mangnall’s
Questions_ and ‘all the noxious brood of catechisms.’ History and
‘miscellaneous subjects’ are too often taught from these, geography and
grammar from wretched little text-books, all the sciences in the course
of a few lectures. Now and then a word of praise is given to English
literature and composition, _e.g._, ‘English literature occupies a more
prominent position in the education of girls than of boys.... The object
of the lessons is to exercise the memory and to cultivate the
imagination of the scholars; their most beneficial result is observable
in the style of composition acquired by girls at a comparatively early
age. Whereas a boy of fifteen hardly ever succeeds in putting together
half a dozen readable sentences, a girl of the same age often writes
with much freedom and fluency.... A bundle of letters written by girls
of seventeen or eighteen afforded me real pleasure; many of these were
well conceived and well expressed, and they presented a variety of style
and subject which proved that they were not manufactured to order or
cast in any stereotyped mould.’[12]
One of the most serious defects is the lack of all physical training,
while attempts are made to combine exercise and instruction, _e.g._ by
repeating French verbs when out walking, thus achieving neither result
satisfactorily.
Not only were the Commissioners of one mind in their strictures, but
there is a striking unanimity about their recommendations. Mr. Giffard’s
lucid summary may be taken as also representing the views of his
colleagues: ‘If I were to sum up the impression I derived from my visits
to girls’ schools, I should say, (1) that the mental training of the
best girls’ schools is unmistakably inferior to that of the best boys’
schools; (2) that there is no natural inaptitude in girls to deal with
any of the subjects which form the staple of a boy’s education; (3) that
there is no disinclination on the part of the majority of teachers to
assimilate the studies of girls to those of boys; (4) that the present
inferiority of girls’ training is due to the despotism of fashion, or,
in other words, the despotism of parents or guardians.’
There is a general consensus of opinion on the following points:—
1. Most girls’ schools are too small.
‘There is little life, no collective instruction, and nothing to call
forth the best powers of either teacher or learner in a school where
each class consists of two or three pupils only.’—(Mr. Fitch.)
2. They lack proper organisation.
‘There is a certain number of classes or of girls learning particular
things, but there is neither any definite course of studies nor any
grouping of classes, so as to play into one another.’—(Mr. Bryce.)
3. Want of proper proportion in arranging subjects.
4. Poor quality of the teaching, due to the inferior education of the
teachers themselves.
5. Lack of an external standard to act as a stimulus to the learner and
help to the teacher.
Mr. Bryce’s recommendations are of special interest, since they mark out
the lines on which the chief reforms have proceeded. They are these:—
1. The establishment of schools for girls under proper authority and
supervision. ‘It would be at all events most desirable to provide in
every town large enough to be worthy of a grammar school a day school
for girls, under public management, where a plain, sound education
should be offered at the lowest prices (from £5 per annum or upwards)
compatible with the provision of good salaries for teachers, and which
should be regularly examined by competent persons thereto appointed.’
2. Considerable changes in the course of instruction for girls of all
classes. ‘It would be proper to lay more stress upon arithmetic, to
introduce mathematics everywhere, and Latin where there is a fair
prospect of a girl’s being able to spend four hours a week upon it for
three years.’
3. The foundation of institutions which should give to women the same
opportunity of obtaining higher education which the Universities give to
boys. The lack of this higher training injures the school education by
lowering its tone, and opening up no wider field of knowledge to the
more studious and eager scholars. An even worse result is ‘the low
standard of education and of knowledge about education among
schoolmistresses and governesses.’... ‘It is from the advent of more
highly educated teachers that the first improvement in the education of
girls is to be hoped for.’
Such was the verdict of this famous Commission, whose ‘revelations’ have
figured in so many prizegiving speeches. The report filled twenty stout
volumes, which were duly relegated to their place on official shelves,
to accumulate dust; and there, thirty years after, they have been joined
by the nine volumes drawn up by our latest educational Commission. Truly
has it been said that the best way to shelve a question in England is to
let a Royal Commission sit upon it. But even a Royal Commission and a
twenty-volume report could not shelve the subject of girls’ education;
the reformers were too much in earnest. Miss Beale extracted from these
ponderous blue tomes all that related to girls, and reprinted it in a
compact little volume. Even before its appearance action had been taken.
The Cambridge Local Examinations had drawn schoolmistresses together and
given them a common interest. They now began to form associations in
different parts of the country. One was started in London, with Miss
Buss as President and Miss Davies as Secretary. The North of England
proved a specially congenial sphere for this form of union. The Ladies’
Honorary Council of the Yorkshire Board of Education was an outcome of
the introduction into that county of the Local Examinations, but it soon
extended its operations over wider fields, _e.g._ domestic economy and
sanitary science, as well as the extension of endowments to girls.
Even more far-reaching in its results was the North of England Council.
This too originated in Schoolmistresses’ associations, among which Miss
A. J. Clough was a moving spirit. In 1865 she contributed to
_Macmillan’s Magazine_ an article setting forth certain schemes for
improving girls’ education. One of these was to establish in other large
towns courses of lectures similar to those given at Queen’s and Bedford
Colleges, to be attended by the older pupils from schools and by
teachers. Co-operation between several towns would make it possible to
engage really able lecturers from Oxford and Cambridge. The experiment
was first tried at Liverpool, and spread to Manchester, Leeds, and
Sheffield. Associations were formed in these four towns, and by the
election of two representatives from each, the ‘North of England Council
for Promoting the Higher Education of Women’ was constituted in 1867,
with Miss Clough as secretary and Mrs. Butler as president. The lectures
proved a phenomenal success. In the autumn of 1868 the numbers of the
combined audiences in nine towns amounted to 1500, and Mr. F. Myers
writing of them in _Macmillan_, enumerated their advantages thus:
‘1. They contain within themselves the germ of university extension.
‘2. They confront young women in a reasonable manner with reasonable
men.
‘3. They encourage and help governesses, who attend in large numbers,
and are glad to have good teaching and to know of the best books.
‘4. They form a nucleus for educational libraries and for the
friendships of fellow-students.
‘5. They pay.’
These lectures were in actual fact the beginning of University
Extension, but the work of the North of England Council did not stop
here. A further aim for study was needed, and some more advanced
examination than those for girls under eighteen, if women were to be
qualified to instruct girls in anything but elementary subjects. A
petition was drawn up and sent to Cambridge with the signatures of over
600 ladies engaged in teaching, 300 interested in it, and six members of
the late Schools’ Inquiry Commission. They pointed out ‘the great want
which is felt by women of the upper and middle classes, particularly by
those engaged in teaching, of higher examinations suitable to their own
needs.’ The petition was granted, and the first Women’s Examination held
in 1869.
Looking back on these past days now that it is the fashion to decry
examination as the death of education, it is interesting to realise what
this much abused system really did to give it fresh life. The Cambridge
Senior and Junior Locals were the first link established between girls’
schools and the university, and it would be difficult to over-estimate
their value in this period of chaos. Their utility was recognised at
once. They spread all over the country and to the colonies; and they are
widely used by schools, both public and private, and by children working
with governesses at home. Edinburgh and Durham soon followed suit in the
admission of girls, and in 1870 Oxford too relented. London did its part
by instituting a special Women’s Examination on the lines of
Matriculation, and in 1869 that of Cambridge was held for the first
time. These were the germs of future developments. At London the way was
paved for opening the degrees to women; the Cambridge Women’s
Examination led to the foundation of Newnham.
To some extent the work of these examinations is done. Conditions have
changed; and the establishment of the Oxford and Cambridge Joint Board,
and the opening of the universities to women have removed the necessity
for this kind of examination in schools of the first grade. But in small
private, and in middle-grade schools, and for children working with
governesses at home, they are still of distinct use, and their
popularity does not seem to diminish, if numbers are any test. Should
they ever become needless, owing to a more perfect school organisation,
we must still hold their memory in respect, for they can show a good
record. It is their merit that at a time when no schoolmistress had a
College training and no University examiner ever entered a girls’
school, they supplied a slender link between the school and the
university, and when there was no standard for girls’ education, and
often neither organisation nor curriculum, they did afford an aim and a
stimulus, which, if not absolutely the best, proved at any rate
trustworthy guides. If examination is not education it has often led to
it, and never more successfully than in the case of girls and women.