opposing in any way the higher education for women, has not only
encouraged but actually patronized it whenever there is a demand for
it on the part of any generation in history. Feminine education comes
and goes, so though in less markedly cyclical fashion does masculine
education. Just what the law behind these cycles is we do not know as
yet. One thing is sure, now that another cycle of interest has come to
feminine education in the world, the Church is not only willing but
anxious to give her children the benefit of it, and the growth of the
higher education among Catholics for Catholic young women in America
in the last decade is the best evidence of this. Our teaching
Sisterhoods in this country have nobly lifted themselves up to the
occasion demanded, and we may well be proud of our Catholic colleges
for women. Personally I know what is being done at some half a dozen
of them, and I have no hesitation {291} in saying that they are giving
a better, solider, though perhaps, a less showy education than their
secular rivals. Of your work at St. Elizabeth's I have had such
personal information as makes me realize how thorough are the efforts
to provide every possible opportunity for higher feminine education
and how successful they are.
Only less absurd than the notion that the Church is in any way opposed
to feminine education is the thought that seems to be in many people's
minds in our day, that the Church would prefer to keep woman in the
background and does not want her to do great influential things when
those are demanded of her. The feeling seems to be that only modern
evolution has brought such opportunities for women to exert the
precious humanitarian influence that is sometimes possible for her.
How much those who talk thus forget the history of the Church if they
ever knew it, but also of feminine influence in the world, is very
clear from even a short resume of feminine achievements in Christian
times. Whenever there has been a great movement in the Church that
meant much for the men and women of a time, beside the man who
initiated it, if she was not, indeed, the initiator herself, stood a
great woman only a little less significant in influence, as a rule,
and sometimes even greater than he. In the conversion of the first
people to Christianity, beside St. Patrick stood St. Brigid. In the
foundation of the monks of the west that {292} great institution that
meant so much for the Church and for Europe, beside St. Benedict stood
St. Scholastica, his sister, doing and organizing for the women of her
time and succeeding generations, what her brother did for the men.
When, in the newer dispensation of the foundation of the Mendicant
Religious Orders, St. Francis came to bring a great new message to the
world, beside him and only a little less influential than he in his
lifetime, and saving his work for its genuine mission after his death,
came St. Clare. When the tide of the religious revolt spreading down
from Germany, was pushed back in Spain, beside St. Teresa, for here
the greater protagonist of the movement was a woman, stood St. John of
God. When St. Francis De Sales came to do his great work for education
and for the uplift of the better classes, beside him and scarcely less
influential than he in every way, was St. Jane Frances De Chantal. In
the great new organization of modern charity under St. Vincent De Paul
beside that wonderful friend of the poor whose work is the underlying
impulse of all modern organized charity in the best sense of that much
abused term, stood the modest and humble but strongly beautiful woman,
the foundress of the Sisters of Charity, Madame Le Gras. Even in the
nineteenth century with the newer organizations of education demanded
by changed conditions, when such foundations as those of the Sacred
Heart and of the Sisters of Notre Dame {293} came into existence, men
and women co-operated in these works and only now are we realizing to
the full the sanctity of such women as Blessed Madame Barat or the
Venerable Julie Billiart and their adviser and friend, Father Varin,
the Jesuit.
Nor was it only in connection with work accomplished by men or
initiated by them that we find women doing great work. It must not be
forgotten that many of the religious orders which are accomplishing
fine work in every line of helpful endeavor, often hundreds of years
after their foundations, in conditions very different from those in
which they were established, originated in the minds of women and had
their constitutions worked out practically without any help from men,
and often, indeed, against the judgment of men. The world of our day
is not prone to appreciate at its proper worth these great works of
women who took for an aim in life unselfish purpose, rather than any
more personal ambition. It must not be forgotten, then, that the first
settlement worker of modern times, the dear St. Elizabeth of Hungary,
is one of the great influences that will never die. The cathedral
erected in her honor within a few years after her death is the most
beautiful monument to woman anywhere in the world. What St. Elizabeth
was to the thirteenth century, St. Catherine of Sienna was to the
fourteenth. Without her influence and her place in it, it would be
impossible to {294} understand the history of that century, though
sometimes history has been written without a mention of her. In the
fifteenth century came Joan of Arc, in the sixteenth and seventeenth
some of the brave women who founded great humanitarian works in
connection with the early missionaries in this country. Everywhere in
history you find Catholic women accomplishing great things.
After all, this is only what is to be anticipated from what is
symbolized and prefigured in the story of the foundation of the
Church. When the Son of God came as the Redeemer of Mankind, beside
Him in His life and mission, the highest of mortals in the influence
that she was to have over all succeeding generations, stood the Woman,
whose seed was to crush the serpent's head, the Mother from whom He
had chosen to take His human flesh. The Mother of the Messiah became
the Mother of the infant Church and the Mother of all Christians ever
since. Surely this was given for a sign not to be contradicted in the
after-time. As the Mother beside the Son, so was woman ever to stand
as the most precious influence in the work of Christianity. As the
great scheme of redemption was dependent on her consent, so ever was
woman to be God's greatest auxiliary in the accomplishment of good for
humanity.
You can understand, then, that when I say to you graduates of St.
Elizabeth's, go out and fulfill your missions, whatever they may be, I
mean {295} that you shall be ready to take up any work for which your
education and your training fit you, and God grant it may bring you
such opportunities for good as have been exemplified in the lives of
so many Catholic women all down the ages. There is nothing more than
this that I could say to you. Our mother Church, far from wanting to
keep women in the background, has always accorded them full and equal
rights in their own domains and, above all, has given them absolute
independence in the religious organizations as far as that is
compatible with effective co-operation in good work. You may be sure,
then, that any work that you find to do worthy of you, and that you
take up whole-heartedly, will have not only her blessing but you shall
find every encouragement. The glorious examples of the Catholic women
of the past, educated, intellectual women, some of whom like St.
Teresa, St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Jane Frances De Chantal and St.
Brigid are high among the greatest intellectual women that ever lived,
will be your guiding stars, and if you keep them in mind you shall not
go wrong. Remember that we expect much and we have a right to expect
much of the women graduates of our Catholic Women's Colleges--you have
a great mission, you have put your hand to the plow, do not look
back,--onward and upward. God's in his world and all's well. Only our
co-operation is needed.
{296}
{297}
ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
{298}
"Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt."
--Caesar, _Bell. Gall., iii:8._
[Men believe readily what they want to.]
"Great additions have of late been made to our knowledge of the
past; the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth has
gradually given away .... It has become impossible for the
historical writer of the present age to trust without reserve even
to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest student
finds himself continually deserted, retarded, misled by the classics
of historical literature."
--_Preface of "Cambridge Modern History."_
{299}
ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION [Footnote 19]
[Footnote 19: The material for this address was collected for a
lecture on the History of Education for the Sisters of Charity of
Mount St. Vincent's, New York, and the Sacred Heart Academy,
Kenwood, Albany, N. Y. Subsequently it was developed for an address
to the parochial school teachers of New Orleans and for the summer
normal courses of St. Mary's College, South Bend, Ind., and St.
Mary's College, Monroe, Mich. Very nearly in its present form the
address was delivered in a course at Boston College in the spring of
1910.]
Here in the United States we have been somewhat amazingly ignorant of
our brother Americans of Mexico and of South America. Our ignorance
has been so complete as to have the usual result of quite intolerant
bigotry with regard to the significance of what was being done in
these Spanish-American countries. A distinguished ex-president of one
of our American universities said in his autobiography, that a
favorite maxim of his for his own guidance was, "The man I don't like
is the man I don't know." If we only know enough about people, we
always find out quite enough about them that is admirable to make us
like them. Whenever we are tempted to conclude that somebody is
hopelessly insignificant then what we need to correct is our judgment
by better knowledge of them. For most Americans, for we have arrogated
to ourselves the title of Americans to the exclusion of any possible
share {300} in it of our South American brethren, Spanish America has
been so hopelessly backward, so out of all comparison with ourselves,
as to be quite undeserving of our notice unless it be for profound
deprecation.
Fortunately for us in recent years our knowledge of Spanish America
has become larger and deeper and more genuine, and as a consequence
there has been less assumption of knowledge founded on ignorance.
Every gain in knowledge of Spanish America has raised Spanish America
and her peoples in our estimation. Not long since at a public dinner
the president of a great American university said, "We have only just
discovered Spanish America." This is literally true. We have thought
that we knew much about it, and that that much showed us how little
deserving of our attention was Spanish America, while all the while a
precious mine of information with regard to the beginnings of the
history of education, of literature, of culture, nay, even of physical
science on this continent, remained to be studied in these countries
and not our own. Our scholars are now engaged in bringing together the
materials out of which a real history of Spanish America can be
constructed for their fellow-Americans of the North, and their
surprise when it is placed before them is likely to be supreme. In the
meantime there are some phases of this information that, I think, it
will be interesting to bring together for you.
{301}
Josh Billings, writing as "Uncle Esek" in the _Century Magazine_ some
twenty-five years ago, made use of an expression which deserves to be
frequently recalled. He said: "It is not so much the ignorance of
mankind that makes them ridiculous as the knowin' so many things that
ain't so." We have a very typical illustration of the wisdom of this
fine old saw in the history of education here in America as it is
being developed by scholarly historical research at the present time.
The consultation of original documents and of first-hand authorities
in the history of Spanish-American education has fairly worked a
revolution in the ideas formerly held on this subject. The new
developments bring out very forcibly how supremely necessary it is to
know something definite about a subject before writing about it, and
yet how many intelligent and supposedly educated men continue to talk
about things with an assumption of knowledge when they know nothing at
all about them.
Catholics are supposed by the generality of Americans to have come
late into the field of education in this country. Whatever there is of
education on this continent is ordinarily supposed to be due entirely
to the efforts of what has been called the Anglo-Saxon element here.
At last, however, knowledge is growing of what the Catholic Spaniards
did for education in America and as a consequence the face of the
history of education is being completely changed. Every {302} advance
in history in recent years has made for the advantage of the Catholic
Church. Modern historical methods insist on the consultation of
original documents and give very little weight to the quotation of
second-hand authorities. We are getting at enduring history as far as
that is possible, and the real position of the Church is coming to
light. In no portion of human accomplishment is the modification of
history more striking than with regard to education. There was much
more education in the past centuries than we have thought and the
Catholic Church was always an important factor in it. Nowhere is this
truth more striking than with regard to education here in America in
the Spanish-American countries.
Professor Edward Gaylord Bourne, professor of history at Yale
University, wrote the volume on Spain in America which constitutes the
third volume of "The American Nation," a history of this country in
twenty-seven volumes edited by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, who
holds the chair of history at Harvard University. Professor Bourne has
no illusions with regard to the relative value of Anglo-Saxon and
Spanish education in this country. In his chapter on "The Transmission
of European Culture" he says: "Early in the eighteenth century the
Lima University (Lima, Peru) counted nearly two thousand students and
numbered about one hundred and eighty doctors (in its faculty) in
theology, civil and canon law, medicine and the arts." Ulloa {303}
reports that "the university makes a stately appearance from without
and its inside is decorated with suitable ornaments." There were
chairs of all the sciences and "some of the professors have,
notwithstanding the vast distance, gained the applause of the literati
of Europe." "The coming of the Jesuits contributed much to the real
educational work in America. They established colleges, one of which,
the little Jesuit college at Juli, on Lake Titicaca, became a seat of
genuine learning." (Bourne.)
He does not hesitate to emphasize the contrast between Spanish America
and English America with regard to education and culture, and the most
interesting feature of his comparison is that Spanish America
surpassed the North completely and anticipated by nearly two centuries
some of the progress that we are so proud of in the nineteenth
century. What a startling paragraph, for instance, is the following
for those who have been accustomed to make little of the Church's
interest in education and to attribute the backwardness of South
America, as they presumed they knew it, to the presence of the Church
and her influence there.
"Not all the institutions of learning founded in Mexico in the
sixteenth century can be enumerated here, but it is not too much to
say that in number, range of studies and standard of attainments by
the officers they surpassed anything existing in English America
until the nineteenth {304} century. Mexican scholars made
distinguished achievements in some branches of science, particularly
medicine and surgery, but pre-eminently linguistics, history and
anthropology. Dictionaries and grammars of the native languages and
histories of the Mexican institutions are an imposing proof of their
scholarly devotion and intellectual activity. Conspicuous are
Toribio de Motolinia's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana,'
Duran's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana,' but most important
of all Sahagun's great work on Mexican life and religion."
Indeed, it is with regard to science in various forms that one finds
the most surprising contributions from these old-time scholars. While
the English in America were paying practically no attention to
science, the Spaniards were deeply interested in it. Dr. Chanca, a
physician who had been for several years physician-in-ordinary to the
King and Queen and was looked upon as one of the leaders of his
profession in Spain, joined Columbus' second expedition in order to
make scientific notes. The little volume that he issued as the report
of this scientific excursion is a valuable contribution to the science
of the time and furnishes precious information with regard to Indian
medicine, Indian customs, their knowledge of botany and of metals,
certain phases of zoology, and the like, that show how wide was the
interest in science of this Spanish physician of over four hundred
years ago.
{305}
After reading paragraphs such as Professor Bourne has written with
regard to education in Spanish America, how amusing it is to reflect
that one of the principal arguments against the Catholic Church has
been that she keeps nations backward and unprogressive and
uneducated--and the South American countries have been held up
derisively and conclusively as horrible examples of this. Even we
Catholics have been prone to take on an apologetic mood with regard to
them. The teaching of history in English-speaking countries has been
so untrue to the realities that we have accepted the impression that
the Spanish-American countries were far behind in all the ways that
were claimed. Now we find that instead of presenting grounds for
apology they are triumphant examples of how soon and how energetically
the Church gets to work at the great problems of education wherever
she gains a position of authority or even a foothold of influence.
Instead of needing to be ashamed of them, as we have perhaps
ignorantly been, there is a reason to be deservedly proud of them.
Their education far outstripped our own in all the centuries down to
the nineteenth, and the culture of the Spanish-Americans, quite a
different thing from education, is deeper than ours even at the
present time. It is hard for North America to permit herself to be
persuaded of this, but there is no doubt of its absolute truth.
It is only since the days of steam that the {306} English-speaking
races in America have come to possess a certain material progress
above that of the Spanish-American countries. Bourne says:
"If we compare Spanish America with the United States a hundred
years ago we must recognize that while in the North there was a
sounder body politic, a purer social life and a more general
dissemination of elementary education, yet in Spanish America there
were both vastly greater wealth and greater poverty, more imposing
monuments of civilization, such as public buildings, institutions of
learning and hospitals, more populous and richer cities, a higher
attainment in certain branches of science. No one can read
Humboldt's account of the City of Mexico and its establishments for
the promotion of science and the fine arts without realizing that
whatever may be the superiorities of the United States over Mexico
in these respects, they have been mostly the gains of the age of
steam."
While we are prone to think that a republican form of government is
the great foster-mother of progress and that whatever development may
have come in South American countries has been the result of the
foundation of the South American republics, Professor Bourne is not of
that opinion and is inclined to think that if the Spanish Colonial
Government could have been maintained at its best until the coming of
the age of steam or well on into the nineteenth century, then the
South American republics would have been serious {307} rivals of the
United States and have been kept from being so hampered as they were
by their internal political dissensions. His paragraph on this matter
is so contradictory of ordinary impressions, here in the United States
particularly, that it seems worth while calling attention to it
because it contains that most precious of suggestions, a thought that
is entirely different from any that most people have had before. He
says:
"During the first half-century after the application of steam to
transportation Mexico weltered in domestic turmoils arising out of
the crash of the old regime. If the rule of Spain could have lasted
half a century longer, being progressively as it was during the
reign of Charles III; if a succession of such viceroys as Revilla
Gigedo, in Mexico, and De Croix and De Taboaday Lemos, in Peru,
could have borne sway in America until railroads could have been
built, intercolonial intercourse ramified and a distinctly
Spanish-American spirit developed, a great Spanish-American federal
state might possibly have been created, capable of self-defense
against Europe, and inviting co-operation rather than aggression
from the neighbor in the North."
Lima was the great centre for education in South America, and Mexico,
in Spanish North America, was not far at all behind. The tracing of
the steps of the development of education in Mexico emphasizes
especially the difference between the Spaniards and the Englishmen in
their {308} relation to the Indian. Bishop Zumaraga wanted a college
for Indians in his bishopric, and it was because of this beneficent
purpose that the first institution for higher education in the New
World was founded as early as 1535. At that time the need for
education for the whites was not felt so much, since only adults as a
rule were in the colony, the number of children and growing youths
being as yet very small. Accordingly, the College of Santa Cruz, in
Tlaltelolco, one of the quarters of the City of Mexico reserved for
the Indians, was founded under the bishop's patronage. Among the
faculty were graduates of the University of Paris and of Salamanca,
two of the greatest universities of Europe of this time, and they had
not only the ambition to teach, but also to follow out that other
purpose of a university--to investigate and write. Among them were
such eminent scholars as Bernardino de Sahagun, the founder of
American anthropology, and Juan de Torquemada, who is himself a
product of Mexican education, whose "Monarquia Indiana" is a great
storehouse of facts concerning Mexico before the coming of the whites,
and precious details with regard to Mexican antiquities.
Knowing this, it is not surprising that the curriculum was broad and
liberal. Besides the elementary branches and grammar and rhetoric,
instruction was provided in Latin, philosophy, Mexican medicine,
music, botany (especially with {309} reference to native plants), the
zoology of Mexico, some principles of agriculture, and the native
languages. It is not surprising to be told that many of the graduates
of this college became Alcaldes and Governors in the Indian towns, and
that they did much to spread civilization and culture among their
compatriots. The English-speaking Americans furnished nothing of this
kind, and our colleges for Indians came only in the nineteenth
century. It is true that Harvard, according to its charter, was "for
the education of the Indian youth of this country in knowledge and
godliness," but the Indians were entirely neglected and no serious
effort was ever made to give them any education. It was a son of the
Puritans who said that his forefathers first fell on their knees and
then on the aborigines, and the difference in the treatment of the
Indians by the English and the Spaniards is a marked note in all their
history.