institution in America designed to give girls better advantages than the
common schools. A female seminary was opened by them in Bethlehem, Pa.,
in 1749. Its service went beyond its own work, for Rev. Mr. Woodbridge
records that “after the success of the Moravians in female education,
the attention of gentlemen of reputation and influence was turned to the
subject. Dr. Morgan, Dr. Rush,—the great advocate of education,—with
others, instituted an academy for females in Philadelphia. Their
attention and influence and care were successful, and from them sprang
all the subsequent and celebrated schools in that city.”
It is presumed that it was of the “Philadelphia Female Academy,” which
held commencement exercises from as early as 1794, that Mr. Woodbridge
says, “In 1780, in Philadelphia, for the first time in my life, I heard
a class of young ladies parse English.”
The “Penn Charter School” has a long and honorable record and has
admitted girls for more than a century.
The Penn Charter School was founded in Philadelphia in 1697 as a public
school, and has been carried on down to the present day under three
charters granted by William Penn in the years 1701, 1708, 1711. These
make provision, at the cost of the people called Quakers, for “all
Children and Servants, Male and Female ... the rich to be instructed at
reasonable rates, the poor to be maintained and schooled for nothing.”
Provision is made in the charters for instruction of both sexes in
“reading, writing, work, languages, arts, and sciences.”
The foundation laid is broad enough for a university for the people. As
a matter of fact the girls and boys have always been educated
separately, and the curriculum of the girls’ school has always been less
advanced than that of the boys. The Latin school has not been opened to
them, nor, it is believed, have the ancient languages been taught them.
In 1795, “Poor’s Academy for Young Ladies” became “a place of proud
distinction to finished females.”
The earliest academy for girls in New England was founded in 1763, at
Byfield, Mass., by bequest of William Dummer, whose name it took. In
1784, Leicester Academy, open to both sexes, was incorporated.
In the same year the “Friends” established a school which offered the
higher education to girls at Providence, R. I. This has been of high
repute down to the present day.
In the same city we find, in 1797, the advertisement of a gentleman who
“will conduct a morning school for young ladies in reading, writing, and
arithmetic,” and in 1808 Miss Brenton, at South Kingston, R. I., offers
instruction which will include “epistolary style, as well as temple
work, paper work, fringing, and netting.”
In 1785 Dr. Dwight founded a Young Ladies’ Seminary at Greenfield, Conn.
About 1787, Mr. Caleb Brigham, a noted teacher, opened a school for
girls in Boston. This has been spoken of as “the most vigorous and
systematic experiment hitherto made, and the most systematically
antagonized.” Upon opening, however, the school was immediately filled.
The supply created a demand. More sought admission than could be
accommodated. With the selectmen’s daughters in school female education
was becoming popular.
In 1789 a female academy was opened in Medford, the first establishment
of the kind in New England. This was the resort of scholars from all the
Eastern States.
We get here and there, proof of the espionage exercised over young women
in those days.
Mrs. Rawson was a distinguished teacher who established a
boarding-school for girls. The town voted, May 12, 1800, that the second
and third seats in the women’s side of the gallery of the meeting-house
be allowed for Mrs. Rawson, for herself and scholars; and that she be
allowed to put doors and locks on them.
In 1791–92 the Maine Legislature incorporated academies at Berwick,
Hallowell, Fryeburg, Westminster, and East Machias.
In 1792 Westford (Mass.) Academy was organized. It offered a very
extensive programme. The body of rules and laws for governance provides
that “the English, Latin, and Greek languages, together with writing,
arithmetic, and the art of speaking shall be taught, and, if desired,
practical geometry, logic, geography, and music; that the said school
shall be free to any nation, age, or sex, provided that no one shall be
admitted unless able to read in the Bible readily without spelling.”
The impulse which single individuals often give to progress had its
exemplification in this awakening period.
Two students of Yale College, during a long vacation after the British
troops invaded New Haven, had each a class of young ladies for the term
of one quarter. One of these students, well known later as the Rev.
William Woodbridge, and before quoted here, during his senior year in
college, in 1779, kept a young ladies’ school in New Haven, consisting
of about twenty-five scholars, in which he taught grammar, geography,
composition, and the elements of rhetoric, and the success of this
school led to the establishment of others elsewhere.
Mr. Woodbridge, on graduating, took for the subject of his thesis,
“Improvement in Female Education.” It would be interesting to know
whether the school of Mr. Woodbridge led, as seems probable, to the
following curious bit of history.
From Yale College, or from as near to it as a girl could get, issued, in
1783, the following attested certificate:
“BE IT KNOWN to you that I have examined Miss Lucinda Foote, twelve
years old, and have found that in the learned languages, the Latin and
the Greek, she has made commendable progress, giving the true meaning
of passages in the Æneid of Virgil, the select orations of Cicero, and
in the Greek testament, and that she is fully qualified, except in
regard to sex, to be received as a pupil of the Freshman Class of Yale
University.
“Given in the College Library, the 22d of December, 1783.
“EZRA STILES, _President_.”
Miss Foote afterwards pursued a full course of college studies and
Hebrew, under President Stiles. She then married and had ten children.
Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College, traveled in 1803 through New
England and New York, and made careful observation of educational
conditions. He reports that “of the higher class of schools, generally
styled academies, where pupils are qualified for college, there are
twenty in Connecticut and forty-eight in Massachusetts.” He adds: “Two
of those in Connecticut and three in Massachusetts are exclusively
female seminaries. Some others admit children of both sexes.” He does
not say that any one of the thirteen in New Hampshire or of the twelve
in Vermont was open to girls. A third of a century afterwards
Massachusetts had 854 academies and private schools. Later, the advance
in grade of the public school system so reduced the number of personally
supported schools, that in 1886 there were but 74 academies and 348
private schools, about one-half the number of a century before. The
rapid growth and as rapid decline of the academy system was due to the
fact that, while personal and associated effort had taken up a work for
which the people were not prepared, its success proved a rapid educator,
especially as to the capacity of girls, and the free school system was
steadily pressed to higher levels.
Salem established an English high school for boys in 1827; one for girls
eighteen years later, in 1845.
It was in 1836, as has been stated, when the school committee of
Newburyport decreed “that one female grammar school be kept though the
year”; it was only six years afterwards, in 1842, that the town voted to
establish a female high school. This was encouraging, but when, later,
the valuable “Putnam Fund” came into use for advanced education, there
was much discussion between the special committee, appointed by the
town, in conference with the trustees of the fund, as to whether Mr.
Putnam designed, by his bequest, to include the instruction of females,
and it required a decision of the Supreme Court to sustain the position
of the trustees that _“youth” might include both sexes_.
The city of Lowell, Mass., which held its first town meeting in 1826,
and was not incorporated until 1836, established a high school in 1831,
midway between these events, and, to its lasting credit, on a
co-educational basis. The first class which it graduated gave to Lowell
its first woman principal of a grammar school, and to the country
General B. F. Butler. This was one of the earliest high schools, and, so
far as the writer can learn, the first that was co-educational.
In connection with the first and ephemeral high school for girls, in
Boston, we have unusual opportunities in the “Municipal History of
Boston,” by Josiah Quincy, to learn the public sentiment of the time
among the most intelligent and worthy, and to observe the struggle which
it cost the more progressive to persuade those in power that girls had
as great need of instruction, and as real claim on the public funds, as
their brothers.
In 1825 the school committee of Boston asked an appropriation from the
city council for a high school for girls. A few years previous the
monitorial, or mutual, system of instruction had been tried in a town
school. Some claimed that it had been successful; its cost was certainly
less than one-third that of the old system.
Speaking of the formation of the plan for a high school for girls, Mr.
Quincy says: “There being at that time a very general desire in the
school committee to test the usefulness of monitorial instruction, it
was proposed that the school should be conducted on that system; and in
respect of expense the report supposed that one large room would be
sufficient, at least for one year.”
It was objected to the foundation of the school that the best scholars
would be drawn away from the grammar schools, to the loss of their
influence and of their services as monitors; in spite of this the city
council voted an appropriation of $2000 to carry out the plan. “The
anticipations of difficulty were, however, so strong and so plausible,
that the project was adopted expressly as an experiment, if favorable,
to be continued, if adverse, to be dropped, of course.”
Difficulties appeared immediately. “Before the examination of candidates
occurred, it becomes apparent that the result of a high school for girls
would be very different from that of the high school for boys; and that,
if continued upon the scale of time and studies which the original
project embraced, the expense would be insupportable, and the effect
upon the common schools positively injurious.
“Instead of 90 candidates, the highest number that had ever offered in
one year for the school for boys, it was ascertained that nearly three
hundred would be presented for the high school for girls ... and it was
evident that either two high schools for girls must be established the
first year, or that more than one-half of the candidates must be
rejected.”
Two hundred and eighty-six candidates presented themselves, and an
arbitrary system was adopted to keep all but 130 out. “The girls
admitted were the _élite_ of the grammar schools, and were among the
most ambitious and highly educated of them, and of private schools, from
which a majority of those admitted were derived.
“It was impossible that such a school should not be highly advantageous
to the few who enjoyed its benefits.”
After six months’ existence of the school, an alarming report was sent
to the school committee to the effect that according to the best
calculations, the number of candidates for admission at the next
examination would be 427.
Mr. Quincy notes that “the school was chiefly for the advantage of the
few and not for the many, and those, also, the prosperous few,” and he
regards with evident apprehension this large number of girls “to whom a
high classical education (though Greek and Latin were excluded) was
extremely attractive.”
“Again this experiment showed that in the school for boys the number of
scholars diminished every year, whereas of all those who entered this
high school for girls, not one, during the eighteen months that it was
in operation, voluntarily quitted it; and there was no reason for
believing that any one admitted to the school would voluntarily quit it
for the whole three years, except in case of marriage.
“It was apparent to all who contemplated the subject disinterestedly,
that the continuance of this school would involve an amount of expense
unprecedented and unnecessary, since the same course of study could be
introduced into the grammar schools.
“To meet the exigency many schemes were proposed, the principal being
that the age of admission should be fourteen instead of eleven, and no
female to be admitted after the age of sixteen; that the requisitions
for admission should be raised; and that the school should be only for
one year instead of three.
“These modifications, in which the school committee and city council
generally concurred, so greatly diminished the advantages which the
original plan proposed, that much of the interest which its creation
excited was also diminished. The school, however, was permitted to
continue, subject to this modification, until November 27, when a
committee was raised to consider the expediency of continuing it, which,
on December 11, following, reported ‘that it was expedient to continue
it.’”
Much debate followed, in course of which “the Mayor declared that his
opinion was so decidedly adverse to the continuance of the school, that
he could not vote in its favor.” Largely, no doubt, through the
influential opposition of Mr. Quincy, who was then Mayor of the city,
and on motion of a Mr. Savage, who said that, though, “as a member of
the city council he had voted for the appropriation for the high school
for girls, it was merely to make a public experiment of the system of
mutual instruction as regards females”; it was voted on June 3, 1826,
“that the girls be permitted to remain in the English common school
throughout the year.” Precisely what was meant by this vote, beyond the
abolition of the high school, appears, if we recall that girls were not
yet admitted to the grammar school except for half the year.
As Mr. Quincy states it, “The project of the high school was thus
abandoned and the scale of instruction in the common schools of the city
was gradually elevated and enlarged.” As in 1834, eight years later, it
was voted “that the school committee be directed so to arrange the town
schools that the girls enjoy equal privileges with the boys throughout
the year,” it is to be presumed that the permission voted in 1826 was
inoperative until this date. But the end was gained. The school was
abolished, of which Mayor Quincy said in an address to the board of
aldermen in 1829: “It may be truly said that its impracticability was
proved before it went into operation”; and he again refers to “this
high, classical school” with the remark that “no funds of any city could
endure the expense.”
It may have been that those who were parents of daughters as truly as of
sons, saw this action in relation to the fact that the English High
School, “for boys only,” had been supported for four years, and the
Latin School, “for boys only,” for almost two centuries, both from the
public funds; for, when Mr. Quincy wrote the account from which the
above quotations and summary have been made, he recalled the intense
opposition to his views of “a body of citizens of great activity and of
no inconsiderable influence.”
In 1851, speaking of his former opinions with regard to the high school,
he wrote: “The soundness of these views and their coincidence with the
permanent interests of the city, seem to be sanctioned by the fact that
twenty-three years have elapsed, and no effectual attempt during that
period has been made for its revival, in the school committee, or in
either branch of the city council.”
He did not consider that ideas of which the germ is sound have,
nevertheless, their periods of incubation; but, if shades are permitted
to “revisit the glimpses of the moon,” we can imagine the venerable
ex-Mayor, ex-President of Harvard, and most worthy man, reflectively
regarding the “Girls’ High School,” established in connection with the
Normal School in 1852, almost before his words of self-gratulation had
ceased to echo; and, with still more astonishment, contemplating the
Girls’ Latin School, established in 1878 _to fit girls for college_.
In Massachusetts in 1888, 198 cities and towns supported high schools,
most of them co-educational. The population of the cities and towns in
which these schools are maintained is over ninety-five per cent. of the
whole population of the State.
It is not to be understood that this marvelous progress had come without
resistance at every step, or had been achieved except in the way that a
plant with the growing power in it struggles to light from under the
pavement.
We have seen that in the lower schools when girls, in process of time,
came to be taught at all, it was out of fitting season, sometimes out of
due hours, without the best instructors, with limited range of study,
and always with deference to the superior claim of boys. In the endeavor
of girls toward the higher education, one is too sadly reminded of the
struggles of the plebeians against the patricians in Rome, when
positions wrung from usurping hands, were yielded, only to be, to the
uttermost, shorn of advantage.
As girls have gained successive opportunities for advanced study, the
aim of the opponents has always been to keep those only analogous to,
not identical with, those of boys. They have, therefore, been steadily
weighted with limiting conditions, as the educational history of Boston
serves to illustrate.
We have seen that the experimental high school of 1825 was, in its
feebleness, hampered by, if, indeed, it was not founded for the trial of
the monitorial system, and was moribund from its inception.
When, a quarter of a century later, the demand for better education for
girls again took form, those most active thought it discreet to avoid
the controversy of the past, and, as a more feasible measure, a Normal
School for teachers was projected, and was established in 1852.
It was soon found that girls fresh from the grammar schools were not fit
candidates for normal training. To remedy this difficulty a few
additional branches of study were introduced, a slight alteration made
in the arrangement of the course, and the name changed to the Girls’
High and Normal School. Under this name it continued until 1872, when it
was found that the normal element had been absorbed by the high school,
and had almost lost its independent, distinctive, and professional
character. The two courses were then separated and the normal department
was restored to its original condition, for the instruction of young
women who intended to become teachers in Boston.
Boston had now, at length, a school for girls, devoted, like that for
boys, to general culture, though still without opportunity for full
classical training, such as had been freely offered Boston boys for
almost two and a half centuries. But to taste intellectually, as well as
physically, is to stimulate appetite.
In 1877 a society of 200 thoughtful and influential women, incorporated
as the “Massachusetts Society for the University Education of Women,”
supported by men of equal dignity, and prominently associated with
educational and kindred movements, petitioned the school committee “that
a course of classical instruction may be offered to girls in the Boston
Latin School, as is now offered to boys.”
This petition was reinforced by a similar one from the “Woman’s
Educational Association,” which, later, instigated and supported the
Harvard examination for women. The trustees of “Boston University”
officially memorialized the school board in the same interest.
The claim was urged by distinguished divines, physicians, educators,
presidents of colleges, a founder of a college, statesmen, and by
mothers of girls. They argued a public advantage, a public demand, and a
public right. They showed that almost every prominent city and town in
the State gave to girls in its public high school,—which was usually
co-educational,—a chance to fit for college; while the towns that had
been annexed to Boston,—Charlestown, Dorchester, Brighton, and West
Roxbury, had thereby lost such advantage, which their girls had
previously enjoyed. The presidents of co-educational and female colleges
testified that while no Boston high school girl was prepared to enter
their institutions, they were receiving well-prepared young women from
the more liberal West.
The ladies petitioning, called attention to the fact that the colonial
law of 1647 required every township of 100 families “to provide for the
instruction of youth so far as to fit them for the University,” and that
in Massachusetts, from that time, there never has been a law passed
concerning any public school which has authorized instruction to one sex
not equally open to the other; that nowhere does the word “male” or
“boy” occur, but always “children” or “youth.”
It appeared that one young woman, daughter of a master, had pursued a
three years’ course of study in the Latin School, sitting and reciting
with the other pupils, and winning the highest esteem for modesty and
ability. From this course she had graduated with so solid a foundation
of scholarship that at the age of twenty-two she had received the title
of “Doctor of Philosophy” from “Boston University,” and was the first
woman in this country to take such a degree.
The opposition to the granting of the petition was most strongly
presented by six distinguished presidents of male colleges and by two
Harvard graduates.
President Eliot of Harvard College opposed the admittance of girls to
the Latin School, saying, “I resist the proposition for the sake of the
boys, the girls, and the schools, and in the general interest of
American education.”
Hon. Charles F. Adams wrote, “I suppose the experiment of uniting the
two sexes in education, at a mature age, is likely to be fully tried. It
will go on until some shocking scandals develop the danger.”
President Porter of Yale College thought “boys and girls from the ages
of fourteen to eighteen should not recite in the same class-room, nor
meet in the same study hall. The natural feelings of rightly trained
boys and girls are offended by social intercourse of the sort, so
frequent, so free, and so unceremonious. The classical culture of boys
and girls, even when it takes both through the same curriculum, should
not be imparted by precisely the same methods nor with the same
controlling aims. I hold that these should differ in some important
respects for each.”
President Bartlett of Dartmouth College said: “Girls cannot endure the
hard, unintermitting, and long-continued strain to which boys are
subjected.... Were girls admitted to the Latin School I should have no
fear that they would not for the time hold their own with the boys,
spurred on as they would be by their own native excitableness, their
ambition, and the stimulus of public comparison. I should rather fear
their success with its penalty of shortened lives or permanently
deranged constitutions. You must, in the long run, overtask and injure
the girls, or you must sacrifice the present and legitimate standard of
a school for boys.... It should be added that almost every department of
study, including classical studies, inevitably touches upon certain
regions of discussion and allusion which must be encountered and which
cannot be treated as they ought to be in the presence of both boys and
girls.”
An eminent classicist, Prof. William Everett, said: “To introduce girls
into the Latin School would be a legal and moral wrong to the
graduates”; and declared that “Greek literature is not fit for girls”;
and, substantially, that what was a mental tonic for boys would be
dangerous for girls.