those whom they affect. It may be matter of regret that the young men
are not given similar supervision, and that the “practical lectures on
general habits,” etc., to which women in all departments are required to
listen, are, in the case of young men, limited to those of the
preparatory schools. The propriety and value of these requirements is,
however, not the subject of discussion. They are referred to here only
because they illustrate the difference between the methods of Oberlin
and the methods of what is popularly understood by the term
“co-educational college.” Because, indeed, taken in connection with the
preceding eight points, they show that while Oberlin is largely
co-instructional, it is also largely not, in the current sense of the
term, co-educational at all.
The history and method of co-education at Oberlin, as summed up above,
proves the truth of what the presidents and professors of Oberlin have
said in one and another form again and again: viz., that co-education
there did not originate in any radically new idea of the sphere and work
of women; nor in any conscious purpose to do justice to woman as an
individual.
Oberlin originated in religious zeal. As a high school, it admitted
women because of the great need of educated women who could serve their
own country as teachers, or foreign countries as missionaries or
missionaries’ wives; women were, upon their own petition, suffered to
enter the college course by men too just and too logical to deny a
request grounded in justice and reason; but they were not welcomed by
men who saw in this petition the realization of any theory of the mental
equality of the sexes.
The present Oberlin system has been molded slowly by poverty and
resulting economy, by local needs and, partially, too, though
resistingly, by the progressive spirit of the times. It is curious and
interesting that so conservative a college (independently of her own
intention or desire) should have been appealed to as their inspiration,
and cited as their model, by colleges between whom and Oberlin great
dissimilarity exists; but it is true that Oberlin has done more for the
cause of co-education than she could possibly have done had she taken
the attitude of a propagandist. Probably no college for men has opened
its doors to women in the last thirty years without first consulting
Oberlin’s experience. The Oberlin authorities have always unhesitatingly
testified to the success of the Oberlin plan; almost always the
testimony of these witnesses has indicated their conviction that the
Oberlin plan, being the outgrowth of peculiar conditions, would not be
certain to flourish if transplanted; and this moderation, this abatement
of enthusiastic advocacy, has given the testimony of Oberlin men
incomparable weight during this controversy in the West.
In 1853, Antioch College was opened at Yellow Springs, O. It was
the first endeavor in the West to found a college under Christian
but non-sectarian auspices. Its president, Horace Mann, wrote of
it: “Antioch is now the only first-class college in all the West
that is really an unsectarian institution. There are, it is true,
some State institutions which profess to be free from proselyting
instrumentalities; but I believe without exception they are all
under control of men who hold as truth something which they have
prejudged to be true.”
This fact has a distinct bearing on co-education, and it is curious to
observe that even this most non-sectarian of colleges provided by
charter that two thirds of the trustees and two thirds of the faculty
should belong to the “Christian Connection”; a body of people who, by
separating themselves from the sects, had really become a new sect.
The opening of this college under so distinguished an educator as Mr.
Mann, gave a new _impulse_ to higher education throughout the West.
Antioch was from the first avowedly co-educational; this was demanded by
the liberality of the Christian thought by which it was supported. But
the best friends of the higher education of women, even Mr. Mann
himself, regarded this feature of the new college with suspicion, if not
with aversion. How serious the objection that marriages might grow out
of the intimacies of college life was considered, may be inferred from
the fact that Mr. Mann discussed it in his inaugural address; and from
the passage of a by-law providing that marriages should not take place
between students while retaining their connection with the college. At
one time Mr. Mann advised against co-education on this ground.
The effect that his experience with a co-educational institution
produced upon Mr. Mann’s own opinion has been frequently urged as a
strong argument in the behalf of co-education.
In view of the probable necessity of closing the college, Mr. Mann
wrote: “One of the most grievous of my regrets at this sad prospect is
the apprehension that the experiment (as the world will still call it)
of educating the sexes together will be suddenly interrupted, to be
revived only in some indefinite future.”
In his baccalaureate address of 1859, there occurs a passionate
paragraph expressing Mr. Mann’s longing to do more and better than he
had done for the higher education of women, which shows that he had
found women at Antioch worthy of their opportunities.
Women were not only received as students at Antioch, but also, in the
beginning, were included in the faculty. These facts, especially the
latter, excited marked attention, and, notwithstanding the disasters
which interrupted the work of Antioch, and the poverty which has kept it
a small college, the fame of Horace Mann, inseparably connected with its
history, has made its influence in behalf of co-education potent.
OPENING WEDGES.
The conditions of pioneer life are favorable to co-education. The
exigencies incident to life in a new country destroy certain barriers
between men and women which are fixed in old and settled communities.
The women in a pioneer settlement not infrequently join in labors in
which, under more settled conditions, they would never be called to
participate. Many women in the West have assisted their husbands and
fathers in the field, the office, and the shop, simply because hired
male labor was unattainable. On the other hand, men in pioneer homes
assist their wives in household labors, because domestic help cannot be
found. In the organization of churches, schools, and Sunday-schools, the
sparseness of the population compels men to divide the work with women.
Thus, without intention on the part of either men or women, they become
used to working together in many unaccustomed ways; and the idea of
going to college together does not seem so unnatural as in older
communities, where traditions of long standing have separated men and
women in their occupations.
The almost universal connection of preparatory departments with colleges
in the West is properly deplored; but the “preparatory” has been a
stepping-stone to co-education. In their origin the Western colleges
found it necessary to maintain preparatory schools in order to obtain
any college classes. This is illustrated by the experience of Antioch.
Out of 150 students who applied for admission to that college in 1853,
but 8 were able to pass the examinations for admission to the freshman
class, meager as were the requirements. These 8 included men and women,
married and single. The older colleges in this new country have a
similar chapter in their history. There were few high schools, and the
course of study of those was narrow. To have students, each college was
compelled to prepare them. The preparatory department in a college town
did the work of the present high school; it was very natural that the
residents of those towns should desire to send both their sons and
daughters to the “preparatory,” which was usually, perhaps always, the
best school accessible to them. This desire, however, gave no forecast
of a desire to send both to the college later on. Sometimes the
“preparatory” was not provided with a separate building, but its work
was done in some room or rooms of the college building proper. The
preparatory course finished, some bright girl would wish to go forward
with her class into college work; she could not enter the class
formally, but “if the professor was willing” she could attend lectures
in this or the other subject; in many college towns there are
middle-aged and elderly women who, as young girls, with the tacit
consent of parents and college instructors, thus obtained the larger
part of a college education. They had no formal recognition from any
one; their names appeared in no catalogues, but they acquired
substantial benefits. The present permitted but unacknowledged presence
of women at Leipzig and other universities on the Continent, was thus
antedated in the West.
Occasionally one of these students, spurred by what she considered the
demands of her self-respect, made formal application for regular
admission to the college; and not a few of our Western colleges became
co-educational by these natural, easy, and noiseless approaches.
The manner in which the desire of one woman for a college education has
transformed a men’s into a co-educational college, is illustrated in the
history of the State University of Indiana. Miss Sarah P. Morrison
wished to enter college, and began agitating the question of opening the
State University to women. Mr. Isaac Jenkinson of Richmond, Ind., tells
the whole pregnant story thus briefly. He writes me:
“I was a member of the board of trustees in 1866, when Miss Morrison’s
appeal was made to the trustees. (Miss Morrison had for several years
been agitating the question among her friends.) I at once offered a
resolution admitting young women on equal terms with young men, but I
had no support whatever in the board at that time; at a following
session the same year, my resolution was adopted by a vote of 4 in
favor, to 3 against it.”
Many colleges in the West had from the beginning a “female course” much
like the “ladies’ course” at Oberlin. This course was, like the
preparatory department, a way of approach for the more ambitious. The
story of one is, with a change of names, the story of many such
colleges. The following from “A Report on the Position of Women in
Industries and Education in the State of Indiana,”[12] illustrates the
function of the “ladies course” in facilitating co-education.
“Butler University at Irvington, Ind., founded in 1855, admitted women
as students from the outset, but at first only into what was denominated
its female course. In its laudable endeavor to adapt its requirements to
an intermediate class of beings, the university, in its ‘female course’
substituted music for mathematics and French for Greek. Few young women
availed themselves of this ‘course’ and it was utterly repudiated by
Demia Butler, a daughter of Ovid Butler, the founder of the university,
and a gentleman of most enlightened views concerning woman’s place in
life. Miss Butler, upon her own petition, indorsed by her father,
entered the university in 1858, and graduated from what was then known
as the ‘male course’ in 1862. From that time the ‘female course’ became
less popular, and in 1864 was formally discontinued.”
The normal class was another of the steps toward co-education. In the
middle of this century it was not uncommon for special short terms of
instruction for teachers to be held during the fall or spring vacations
of the common schools. To secure the advantage of good lecture rooms and
appliances, and also to secure the aid of distinguished professors, the
State Superintendent of Public Instruction would obtain permission to
hold his normal class at the State university; or for similar reasons a
county Superintendent would hold such a school for the teachers within
his jurisdiction, in a college town. In these “normal schools,” having
no formal or permanent relation with the college at which they were
held, one sees the origin in many colleges of their present “departments
of the theory and practice of elementary instruction.”
From the earliest settlement of the West women taught the district
schools in the summer, and the work of elementary instruction fell
naturally more and more into their hands, until it was, during the war
of 1861–5, almost monopolized by them. Necessarily, when the “normal
classes” were organized, women entered and sometimes exclusively
composed them. After the normal class had transcended its original
limits of four or six weeks, and had developed into a “normal
department,” women still, in part or in whole, constituted it. Lectures
were always being delivered in other departments of the college which
would be beneficial to the students in the normal department, whose
members were, therefore, gradually admitted to one privilege after
another, until at last the college awakened to a consciousness that it
had no reserves.
More State universities than denominational colleges have been entered
by women _viâ_ the “normal class,” though many of the latter have been
opened by the same insidious influence. So far as the State university
was concerned, the end must have been seen from the beginning by all
clear-sighted people.
The State university, like the common school, is supported at public
expense, and free to the children of the State, who pass into it from
the common school. What more natural indeed, more necessary, than that
the teachers who are to prepare the boys for the university shall know,
by their own experience in it as students, what the requirements of the
university are? In illustration of this view, the steps by which
co-education was attained in the universities of Wisconsin and Missouri
are briefly indicated.
In the spring of 1860 a ten weeks’ course of lectures was given at the
University of Wisconsin, to a “normal class” of fifty-nine, of whom
thirty were ladies. In the spring of 1863 a “normal department” was
opened, which was at once entered by seventy-six ladies. At this time
the Regents announced that the lectures in the university proper upon
chemistry, geology, botany, mechanical philosophy, and English
literature would be free to the “normal” students.
Conditions at the close of the war demanded a reorganization of the
university. This was effected in 1866, and Section Fourth of the Act
under which the university was reconstructed, says: “The university in
all its departments and colleges shall be open alike to male and female
students.”
However, the Regents were obliged to ask the State to recede from this
broad statement of co-education, and the next year the Legislature
amended the charter upon this point as follows: “The university shall be
open to female as well as to male students under such regulations and
restrictions as the Board of Regents may deem proper.” The charter was
thus amended because Dr. Chadbourne, to whom the presidency had been
offered, had refused it on the ground that he feared that this
innovation would lose to the university the confidence and support of
the public.
Up to 1868 the ladies pursued the course which had been laid down for
the “normal department.” This course, limited to three years, was now
enlarged to four.
Until 1871 the recitations of the young women were separate from those
of the young men. In that year, the number of professors and instructors
being insufficient to carry on separate classes, the young women were
permitted at their option to enter the regular college classes. In 1875
the president reported that “for the first time women have been put, in
all respects, on precisely the same footing, in the university, with
young men.”
The year 1875 does not date the end of the contest in Wisconsin, but it
dates the last incident pertinent to this part of the discussion, the
object of which is to show the relation between the “normal class” and
co-education.
In Missouri, State university co-education was reached by similar steps.
A “normal class” was organized for women, who were next invited into the
“normal department,” which was originally open to men only. Then the
women were admitted to such lectures in the university proper as were
thought to have a special value for them as teachers. They were next
invited to attend chapel, but at first only as silent witnesses to the
worship of the male students; later they were solicited to join in the
services of song and prayer; and finally, in 1870, they were admitted to
the university on the same conditions with young men.
In the early years, denominational effort was on double lines; wherever
it founded a college for men, soon, in its nearer or more remote
vicinity, it established a “female seminary” or “ladies’ institute.”
Generally the ladies’ school was unsupplied with books, apparatus, or
cabinets; it often happened that an ambitious instructor sought and
obtained occasional permission to use the laboratory and the museum of
the college for the benefit of her pupils, and to draw books for them
from the college library. Sometimes, when a college professor was about
to perform experiments of especial interest before his classes, the
young ladies of the neighboring “seminary” would be invited, under
escort of their instructors, to witness them.
Usually the college maintained a lecture course, the benefits of which
were open to the seminary students. Unless the frivolous conduct of some
college youth and seminary maiden excited a scandal which terminated
such neighborly offices (a calamity that alone still withholds two or
three colleges from becoming co-educational), these friendly relations
were strengthened from year to year, and in many instances have resulted
in a reorganization by which the seminary has become a woman’s college
and an equal component part of the university which has been formed by
its union with the college for men.
This process of building up a co-educational institution is illustrated
in the history of the Northwestern University, at Evanston, Ill.
In reading current college history as presented in catalogues, college
papers, and the general press, it is very interesting to observe how
certain departures from ancient standards of college study have aided
co-education. The cry for the “practical” and the answer which colleges
have made to this cry, by offering their scientific courses, may be
named as one of these. The average person thinks of practical as a
synonym for _useful_. One opinion in which all men agree (the most
conservative with the most radical) is, that women should be useful. In
connection with education the average man thinks that “scientific” is
also a synonym for “practical.” The conviction that such a scientific,
practical course of study will enlarge a woman’s capacity for daily
usefulness has sent many a young woman to a college where such courses
of study were offered, who would not have been permitted to go to the
college which offered only the inflexible course of classics and
mathematics. The modern classical course, which permits the substitution
of French and German for Greek is, on similar grounds, favorable to
co-education.
The elective system has silenced a host of objectors to co-education.
All people who entertain vague notions that women are intuitional
creatures, that their perceptions are quicker, but their reflective
powers less developed than those of men, and who hold the consequent
conviction that women cannot so well conform to prescribed lines of
study, all of this class are reconciled to co-education by the elective
system. The following quotation supports this view. A father writes: “My
daughter has entered Michigan University. Under the old régime I should
not have permitted it, for I do not believe in a woman’s undertaking a
man’s work; but under the elective system she can take what she likes,
can take just what she would in a woman’s college, in short; and as all
of the professors are men, the subjects will be much better taught.”
This letter is written by an intelligent but rather old-fashioned
gentleman, and the sentiments here expressed and implied concerning the
elective system are entertained by a still numerous class.
The influence of the introduction of co-education at State universities
upon the policy of smaller colleges has been irresistible.
Although, as has been shown, State universities did not take the
initiative in co-education, the influence of the admission of women into
such universities as those of Michigan and Wisconsin, has secured a
similar change of policy in a large number of denominational and smaller
non-sectarian colleges, founded for men only.
Appendix B., Table II., will show the relative number of colleges opened
to women prior and subsequent to 1870, the year of the admission of
women into Michigan University.
GENERAL ARGUMENT.
On the appearance of Dr. Clarke’s book, “Sex in Education,” in 1873, the
controversy, which up to that time had been limited to the localities
where co-education was being introduced, at once became general. For the
next ten years this subject was discussed in the press, in the pulpit,
in meetings of medical societies, and on the platform. In a large
collection of old programs there is proof that every phase of the
question was considered by all kinds of organizations of teachers, from
national conventions to township institutes. Young teachers advanced
their opinions, old teachers recited their experience, and the press
everywhere gave the widest publicity to these discussions. At the end of
a decade the public mind had fully expressed, and, through expressing,
had gradually formed its opinion, which was in general favorable to
co-education. In 1883 the whole question was opened in a new form by the
attempt to exclude women from Adelbert College of Western Reserve
University, which had already been open to them for twelve years.
Every reason which had formerly been urged against the admission of
women was now offered for their exclusion. The peculiar origin of the
discussion and the able and gallant defense of the rights of the women
already enrolled in its classes which was made by Dr. Carroll Cutler,
the president of Adelbert, attracted wide notice, and the arguments, pro
and con, were reviewed by the press of the country.
Dr. Cutler wrote to the authorities of all the principal co-educational
colleges, for the results of their experience. The courtesy of Dr.
Cutler makes this voluminous correspondence available for this chapter.
Stated briefly and in the chronological order of their development, the
arguments against co-education are as follows:
_a._ Women are mentally inferior to men, and therefore their presence in
a college will inevitably lower the standard of its scholarship.
_b._ The physical constitution of women makes it impossible for them to
endure the strain of severe mental effort. If admitted to college they
will maintain their position and keep pace with men only at the
sacrifice of their health.
_c._ The presence of women in college will result in vitiating the
manners, if not the morals, of both men and women; the men will become
effeminate and weak, the women coarse and masculine.
_d._ If women are admitted to college, their presence will arouse the
emotional natures of the men, will distract the minds of the latter from
college work, and will give opportunity for scandal.
_e._ The intimacies of college life will result in premature marriages.
_f._ Young men do not approve of the collegiate education of women; they
dislike to enter into competition with women, and if the latter are
admitted to our colleges it will result in the loss of male students,
who will seek in colleges limited to their own sex, the social life
which cannot be furnished by a co-educational institution.
_g._ A collegiate education not only does not prepare a woman for the
domestic relations and duties for which she is designed, but actually
unfits her for them.
_h._ Colleges were originally intended for men only, and the wills of
their founders and benefactors will be violated by the admission of
women.