With the help of the wardens of halls and the ladies’ committees, the colleges are able to face the complications of joint clubs and societies for both sexes. All these involve some special regulations, in regard to the composition of committees, the return from evening meetings, etc. but the difficulties have not proved insuperable. It would hardly be going too far to say that the women’s halls of residence have saved the situation in Wales, and made this most complete example of co-education possible. It is not surprising that they are being adopted elsewhere. The advocates of educational equality for the sexes, even where the instruction is given to both together, have assuredly no desire to complicate or revolutionise social relations, nor yet to confer full liberty on those who are hardly emerged from the schoolgirl stage. For both sexes the residential arrangement seems on many grounds desirable, and while congratulating the women on their pleasant halls of residence, we can but hope that the male students may not be left out in the cold much longer, without the chance of learning for themselves the true meaning of collegiate life.
The opportunities for advanced study open to women have indeed increased and multiplied at a rapid rate during the last few years. Beyond the northern boundary we find all the Scottish Universities have admitted them freely to membership, and if we cross St. George’s Channel, the Royal University of Ireland—like London, only an examining body—takes no note of sex, and even Trinity College, Dublin, is making some tentative essays in the teaching and examining of women. This represents what has been done in our own islands, but the same movement has been going on simultaneously all over the world. Thanks to Mr. M. E. Sadler,[[15]] we are now in a position to compare the position of women at a hundred and thirty-nine different Universities. Questions were sent to the Universities of Great Britain and Ireland, the continent of Europe, the United States of America, Canada, India, and Australia. ‘It appears,’ says Mr. Sadler, ‘that at a hundred of these, the distinctions between men and women students are, if any, comparatively unimportant; at seven Universities women students are admitted, by courtesy or special permission, to some lectures and examinations; at twenty-one others women are, by like favour, admitted to some of the lectures; and at eleven Universities they are not admitted at all.’ Of the exceptions five are in Germany, three in Russia, one in Ireland, one in Belgium, one in the United States. France and Italy are specially remarkable for their generous recognition of women, and Germany, long obdurate, is making constant fresh concessions; but intending students should study the special conditions of the one they wish to attend, since many of the regulations are most complicated.[[16]]
This general advance all over the civilised world is the chief gain this half century has brought to women’s education. Though each country has proceeded on its own lines the movement has unconsciously been an international one. That gives it a strength which will make it permanent.
CHAPTER VIII
BOARDING AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Once more our chronicle takes us back to 1867. A new era was then inaugurated, that of girls’ day schools. Not that these were anything new; small cheap day-schools for girls abounded, but the majority of them were bad. With fees ranging from £3 to £10 a year, and pupils of every variety of age, a little simple arithmetic will prove that the mistress had not sufficient funds at her disposal to pay for suitable premises and adequate teaching, to say nothing of winning a modest competence for herself. From all parts of the country came condemnation of these small, cheap schools. The opinions about boarding-schools were by no means so unanimous. They were censured for the excessive attention given to accomplishments, the insufficient education of the teachers, and their neglect of physical training; but these were faults common to nearly all the schools of that day, and not characteristic of boarding-schools as such. A careful perusal of the Commissioners’ report leads to a far more favourable impression of boarding than day-schools, due, probably, to their being less hampered for funds. But the general public is influenced by impressions rather than facts; and certainly an impression did gain ground that a day-school was in itself a good and a boarding-school an evil.
Unquestionably the reformers were right in first turning their attention to the former. Large schools of this kind were easier to organise, and really made for efficiency and economy, that much desired combination, which in this case is not, as so often, a mere contradiction in terms. The establishment of high and endowed schools has brought a good education within reach of thousands of girls who could by no other means have obtained it. The extinction of the small, cheap boarding-school which for the past century had been struggling to give the lower middle classes a poorer imitation of the poor education given elsewhere to their social ‘superiors,’ is a thing no one can seriously deplore. Painless extinction is, unhappily, impossible. The suffering which such changes bring in their train is to be deplored, but the article itself may be relegated to the class of those that ‘never will be missed.’
The new day-schools met a real want, and success came to them at once. It was natural they should attract the first relays of the ‘graduates’ that the women’s colleges were beginning to send out. Thus they were the first to introduce improved teaching, and for a while they were supposed to have a monopoly of it. In the prevailing dearth of good mistresses they were able to get first choice; now, after the lapse of thirty years, the supply exceeds the demand, and a good teacher is attainable by any school of any grade that can satisfy the very moderate demands of university women.
The high schools started with a very definite principle—the combination of school teaching with home influence—doubtless the ideal for all girls, supposing that each side duly fulfils its share of the obligation. But now, in 1898, it is curious to note how far the high school has travelled in twenty-five years. The original scheme of morning-school, from nine to one, and afternoon preparation for a few girls who had no quiet room at home, still prevails in theory, but quantum mutatus ab illo can best be realised by tracing a day’s routine in school. First come the morning lessons, usually five in number, with the short break for play or drill, then the school dinner, to which over fifty girls sometimes sit down; again a short interval before the afternoon classes, music lessons and preparation, which usually go on till four, though girls who have no special duties at the time may be found at play in the playground. Still later, if it be summer, there may be an adjournment to the school field, often at a considerable distance. Not till darkness sets in can it be said that the day’s school life is over; and the elder girls still have some lessons to prepare before bed-time. A healthful, well-filled happy day is behind them, but where does the home influence come in? The girls might as well be weekly boarders for all the share they have in the real life of home. Saturday may see a cricket practice or a work party, or a school committee, or a sketching expedition, or a match with some distant school. Sunday alone belongs to the home. The numerous clubs, charities, old girls’ meetings, etc. fill up all the time the girls can spare from their lessons. Girls who do not live quite near frequently become day-boarders, though the word is not used, and take dinner, and sometimes even tea, at school. In some few cases the school even undertakes to supply medical supervision and the general direction of the pupil’s health, thus relieving parents of one more responsibility. In fact the day-school is well on the road to become a boarding-school, and the establishment of boarding-houses more or less loosely connected with it is a further step in the same direction.
How far these schools have travelled from their original intentions becomes evident if we refer back to a controversy on school hours that took place in 1880 in consequence of some strictures passed by Mrs. Garrett Anderson on the arrangements in the High Schools. She considered the strain of the four hours’ morning excessive, and proposed reducing it, introducing afternoon school and a considerable interval for outdoor games between the two. This was met with general opposition by headmistresses. Day-schools, it was said, could not be expected to provide dinner, it was most undesirable for girls to return from school as late as four or five on cold winter afternoons, teachers could not be expected to undertake so much afternoon work, while the strongest opposition of all was made to the games. Miss Buss pointed out that the mixture of classes which was unobjectionable as long as girls only met at lessons where talking was forbidden, or in the short intervals which were largely devoted to lunch and drill, might cause serious difficulties if the whole day were spent in school. She also thought the games would be a difficulty; only rough girls would take part in them, and the rest simply lounge about.
How wrong these predictions have proved we all know. Girls’ athletics have made startling progress during the last ten years; cricket and hockey, seemingly rough games, have found favour with the most feminine of girls; the school dinner is a regular institution, and is accompanied by pleasant chat about practices, matches, election of club officers, etc. A new feature, never contemplated by the promoters, has entered these day-schools; and, oddly enough, is doing more than anything else to bring back to favour the once despised boarding-school.