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.